There is no polite way to say this, and there shouldn’t be.

We are becoming monsters.

We laugh now. Not nervously, not uncomfortably, but with real pleasure. We laugh when migrants cry for their children. We cheer when ICE buses pull away. We forward memes that mock asylum seekers. We say “go back to where you came from,” as if we didn’t all descend from someone else’s desperation.

A Republican voter was filmed last month holding up a sign that read, “Deport the Democrats” at a rally. And instead of being escorted out or denounced, he got applause. Somewhere along the line, cruelty stopped being the cost of policy — and became the point.

Let Them Die

“People are not — well, we all are going to die, so, for heaven’s sakes,” she said,

At a Town Hall gathering this week, Senator Joni Ernst was asked what she had to say to the 14 million Americans who would lose access to Medicaid under the Republican budget. Of course many of those affected are immigrants. The quite rational and human concern that many humans will suffer and die without medical coverage was answered with that Trumpian smirk we all know too well:

That was it. Not even the pretense of concern. This wasn’t policy. It was gallows humor from someone who built the gallows.

This is the world we’ve allowed to rot around us: a country where a sitting senator jokes about letting people die because they are poor or not white enough or foreign-born or just not useful to her anymore.

Maybe you didn’t vote for this. Maybe you didn’t find Senator Ernsts comments funny or acceptable.

But what are you going to do about this?

“If You Feel Sorry for Him, Don’t”

Then there’s President Donald J. Trump, the most powerful man in the country, and among the most spiritually bankrupt.

Last week, after news broke that Joe Biden has stage 4 prostate cancer, Trump took to the stage and mocked him. Not just politically but as is Trumps modus operandi, personally.

“He’s vicious. If you feel sorry for him, don’t.”

The crowd laughed.

A man is dying, and the President’s reaction is not pity or grace — but vengeance. This is who he is. And if you cheer for him, it’s who you are too.

TACO

And yet, the man who proudly calls his enemies “vermin,” who bullies the disabled, who mocks women’s appearances, cannot tolerate a joke.

When a Wall Street Journal columnist referred to him as a “TACO” — Trump Always Chickens Out — in reference to his trade policy flip-flops, Trump exploded. “Nasty,” he said. “Unfair.”

The man who turns every opponent into a punchline can’t take one himself. His skin is thinner than the wrapper his fast food is bundled in. And still, millions worship him, not because he is strong, but because he lets them be weak. He gives them permission to be petty, cruel, frightened little tyrants in their own lives.

The Harvard Vendetta

Trump’s war against Harvard has nothing to do with national security. He doesn’t care about China’s influence or the sanctity of education. He is attacking the university because they made him feel small. Because people there think. Because they laughed at him.

And like every dictator in training, he has one response to being ridiculed: punishment. He wants to revoke their funding. Ban their international students. Intimidate faculty.

None of it is about the good of the nation. It is about the vindictiveness of one broken man.

This Is Not Normal. This Is Not Okay.

We are not debating policy anymore. We are debating whether empathy should still exist. We are watching our leaders — and too many of our neighbors — become comfortable with the language of dehumanization, with jokes about mass death, with policies soaked in spite.

It’s not that America has lost its way. It’s that we’ve lit the map on fire and called it a torch.

So yes, we’re all going to die.

But until then, we have a choice. We can let this country slide into a pit of laughter and lies and vengeance… or we can stand up and say, enough.

And if you are not sure how to begin again, how to stop being numb, or afraid, or complicit, start here:

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

–Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

That’s it. That’s the revolution.