#the cruelty is the point

[muffinlevelchicanery]

It’s maddening how often the phrase “cartoonishly evil” runs through my brain when I read things like this. Fuck 12.

[former-leftist-jew]

The world would be an objectively better place if not one person in it gave a shit about your hostages

What a delightful human being you are!

[guildofpriapus]

Antoinette Fussey, Security Officer, on hearing about another escape attempt.

"Shall we increase supervision, ma'am?"

"Personally, I wouldn't - just chop off his feet"

[odinsblog]

Veterans’ health care


A 1996 law set eligibility requirements for military veterans to receive hospital, medical and nursing home care and authorized spending for those services and patient enrollment. That law has not been renewed, but Congress regularly allocates additional Department of Veterans Affairs funding and allows benefits to increase automatically based on inflation. VA provides medical care to more than 9.1 million enrolled veterans, according to the agency.
​

Drug development and opioid addiction treatment

Most of this spending relates to the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. That law provided money to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration to modernize pharmaceutical research and medical trials. It funded research for cancer cures and state-level grants for opioid addiction and other substance abuse treatment.


​State Department

In 2003, Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which set policy priorities and created spending authority for the State Department. That law has not been renewed, but Congress every year since has passed annual funding bills for the department, which Trump has announced he’ll nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to run.


​Housing assistance

President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, which overhauled federal housing assistance policies, including voucher programs and other antipoverty assistance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies continue using this law to implement federal housing programs.


​Justice Department

In 1994, Congress passed the landmark Violence Against Women Act and has renewed it multiple times since. In 2006, lawmakers packaged a VAWA renewal with authorizing legislation for the Justice Department. As with the State Department, Congress has not approved new authorizing legislation for the Justice Department since, but it has funded the agency — and even authorized hundreds of millions of dollars more for a new FBI headquarters — every year.


​Education spending

The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act delegated power to state and local education officials to set primary and secondary education achievement standards. It gives billions of dollars in federal grant money to state and local education officials to fund schools and school districts. Those standards are still used by the Education Department, even though the legislation has not been reauthorized. Trump has suggested he’d like to eliminate the entire department.

NASA

Stripping funding for NASA, which was last reauthorized in 2017, could spell doom for Musk’s commercial spaceflight firm, SpaceX. The company has contracts worth more than $4 billion — including for return trips to the moon and retiring the International Space Station — linked to programs approved in the 2017 law.


​Health-care and student loan programs

What’s known as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was actually passed in two separate bills in 2010. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act represents the second bill, which included some tax revisions and technical changes to the ACA. The law has not been reauthorized since, but the Department of Health and Human Services reported in March that more than 45 million people have health insurance coverage backed by the Affordable Care Act.

The law that made those final tweaks to the ACA also overhauled the Education Department’s student loan program. Where some schools relied on private lenders to issue federally backed loans, with this law, the government itself became the lender. That change has since enabled President Joe Biden to offer student loan debt relief, though many of his most ambitious policies have been blocked by the courts. Student loans are generally funded through mandatory spending — similar to social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security — and not subject to annual spending laws.


​International security programs

The 1985 International Security and Development Cooperation Act bundled together authorizations for a number of international security programs, including funding and regulations for arms sales to allies, economic aid for developing countries, airport security, anti-narcotics-trafficking policies, the Peace Corps and more. This Reagan-era law continues to be foundational to congressional funding and federal policy.


​Head Start

Head Start provides preschool education for children from low-income families. In the 2023 fiscal year, more than 800,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs, according to the National Head Start Association. The program also helped place more than 530,000 parents in jobs, school or job-training programs. It was last authorized in 2007.

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[fuck-u-maga]

Jesus fuck

[originalleftist]

Trump is campaigning on defunding day care.

This will both help cut spending on helping anyone who isn't rich, and force more mothers to stay home, reinforcing patriarchal values and destroying womens' ability to have education or careers along with a family. Killing two rights with one stone, for these fuckers.

Of course, many mothers work not by choice but because they have to- because they're single mothers (which there will be a lot more of with Republican abortion bans) or because two pay checks isn't enough (which there will be a lot more of with Republicans gutting Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, probably abolishing minimum wage if they can, hiking prices with tariffs/trade wars, etc). So, I guess those mothers and their children would just... literally die.

The party of family values and pro-life, everyone!

But, just stop and think about this. This isn't something they're going to do that they're hiding because they know its unpopular. They are openly saying that they're going to do this.

Their entire campaign is: "We're going to hurt you, horribly. But we'll hurt other people more first, so vote for us!" As Adam Serwer famously wrote of MAGA, "The Cruelty Is the Point".

It is a cynical appeal to spite over all other emotions and basic self-preservation.

Will it work?

[corporationsarepeople]

Leopards, faces, etc. but there’s a bigger conclusion in this article:

“The story they told, on the whole, was that they backed Trump because they believed he was the best vehicle for winning the culture war. They trusted the people around Trump — Elon Musk and the tech right above all — to make sure that Trump’s wacky non-cultural ideas, like universal tariffs, didn’t cause too much pain.”

The idea that people voted for Trump on the economy is simply a myth perpetuated to excuse his supporters. They voted for him for the racism, the misogyny, and the cruelty, but it was much easier for our media to pretend the election was about anything other than that. It wasn’t. It never was.

Archived free link is here.

[sweetfirebird]

The grift continues on (because Republicans won't stop it). They are now trying to force Social Security users to communicate issues through Twitter aka X.

Elon so desperate for X users that he is trying to get a bunch of confused and desperate older people to sign up

PLUS

the cruelty in forcing mostly the elderly to do this, hoping that they will give up and just die.

[peoplemask]

In the book Cultish by Amanda Montell, I was introduced to the "thought-ending cliché" - it's commonly used by abusive groups but is not limited to them. This is a phrase that just kills discussion as everyone nods sagely because, yes, obviously. What's pernicious about them is most of the time people don't realize this is what they're doing.

One thought-ending cliché that I am absolutely tired of is when I point out how absolutely cruel a policy or law is and someone pops in with "the cruelty is the point". I don't think it's meant to be a thought-ending cliché, although at best it's still cliché.

The thing is, I don't care if the GOP is being cruel just to be cruel or if they're secretly unaware or if they are intentionally or unintentionally hypocrites or if they even care about such things. I'm by and large not talking to people who are hostile or indifferent to me on my socials.

What I do care about is the notion that we're just allowing ourselves to shrug and move on because *of course* it's cruel, *obviously* that's the point. There is value *to me* in still pointing out exactly what and why the policies are cruel and logically unsound.

Even if being terrible is the point, why give up and say, Well. There's no reason to outline why it's cruel because we all know that's all they're interested in?

I still find value in groping toward a less grim baseline by saying, No. This is cruel. This is wrong. It is cruel for these reasons.

I find value in saying, here is why this cruel policy can't even have the effect they're lying about it having.

Because for everyone who already knows that "cruelty is the point" there is another who didn't know HOW cruel it is.

It's a reminder, too, that it isn't just something to just ignore. The cruelty isn't something that we have to accept as our normal.

[vintageseawitch]

abortion bans in any way - whether they make exceptions or none at all - is the state getting away with raping you. forced birth is quite literally torture. abortion is healthcare & communities with access to safe abortions are healthier for it.

[shipperwolf1]

Feds suspend shipments headed to Ventura County food bank

Republicans: America first!

Also Republicans: what if we starved Americans?

[guildofpriapus]

Lady Hortensia Bergholt listening to you begging to see your wife before she is transported.

[spot-the-antisemitism]

I am so sick to death of people calling Jews white. It's only done by people who don't know the basics of Jewish identity/history and/or people who use it to justify hating Jews.

Dear anon,

exactly the cruelty is the point

Cecil

[inkpaperkiss]

i want a kind of loser man (cardan greenbriar) to grovel at my feet and tell me he likes my cruelty. like right now.

[inthemaelstrom]

So, Floridians waiting for Milton to lay waste to most of your state, folks still struggling after Helene, the Republican House just said "Fuck all y'all until after the election" to coming back to add funding for the Small Business Administration and FEMA. Good luck with that recovery thing.