America’s right wing is a lot of things. It’s impervious to facts, immune to empathy, and prone to conspiracy theory. It worships wealth and loathes its absence, and it is sexist and racist and homophobic and transphobic. All of these things inform the American right’s approach to everything, from how it manages its social lives to its approach to public policy. Writer Adam Serwer captured this notably when he said, “The cruelty is the point.”
But it’s not just the cruelty that’s the point. It’s the delight they feel in meting out that cruelty.
This was driven home for me twice in the last few days.
Actor-director Mel Gibson is a deeply talented man whose work I used to enjoy greatly, before he decided to out himself as a racist, a homophobe, and an anti-Semite. I remain gobsmacked that Gibson, who has made no secret of how much hate he’s carrying around in his heart, made a movie as empathetic as The Man Without a Face. But Gibson has been finding his voice welcomed again of late, as the rest of America’s right-wing has in general, with the victory of President 47*. Gibson has been sharing his thoughts on public health issues on the Joe Rogan podcast (because of course you should listen to a right-wing actor-director and a grifting podcaster for your health policy information), and then this weekend he popped up with more opinions about the wildfires in California.
It’s been an article of faith with Republicans that the wildfires have been particularly bad because the governor of California has been doing bad things and because the LA Fire Department is loaded with incompetent leaders who were all DEI hires**. Of course this is total nonsense, but whatever, it’s what they believe. And Gibson believes it too, and he’s been spouting it. But in one particular interview he said something that caught my eye because it crystalizes how America’s right-wing thinks in a very blunt and true way:
“It’s like Daddy arrive and he’s taking his belt off, you know?”
See, it’s not just that they want to craft public policy that’s mean. That’s a given. And it’s not just that their policy proposals aren’t backed by any factual information at all about how things work in the real world, because that’s also a given. It’s that not only do they know that their policies will hurt people, they want their policies to hurt people. And why?
Because they view their policies as punitive in nature.
They aren’t looking to reverse progressive policy because they disagree with it. They are looking to pass as much harmful policy as possible because they are angry with America for ever having passed it in the first place, and they want to punish Americans for it.
“Daddy’s home and he’s taking off his belt.”
Remember that metaphor. These are the people who want to be able to hit kids. These are the people who advocate for spanking. And this is why they join militias and pass “Stand your ground” laws and claim to “Back the Blue”: because not only do they not see progressive Americans as equal citizens, but as wrongdoers who need to be punished.
You see this everywhere. Every time some right-winger opens their mouth on social media, the desire to see people suffer comes through loud and clear. Check out this viral video from TikTok the other day, in which some woman openly states that people getting deported and families getting broken up by ICE agents “gives her great comfort”. (This woman has apparently been identified and let go by her employer, so there’s that.) She’s not just advocating for a policy that hurts people because she thinks that in the end it’s the best policy; she’s advocating for that policy because she likes the idea of hurting people who have somehow wronged her.
“Daddy’s home and he’s taking off his belt.”
They want to punish you for being American and not thinking the way they do. They want to punish you for thinking that your sexual orientation shouldn’t matter. They want to punish you for observing how awfully Black people have been treated. They want to punish you for advocating for the self-determination of women. They want to punish you for having advocated wearing a mask during a pandemic whose disease was conveyed by respiratory transmission. They want to punish you for admitting that climate change is a thing.
Not one policy of theirs is geared toward making anyone‘s life better, except for the rich. Their only policy goal is to punish you. Don’t ask for what. It doesn’t matter. Because ultimately they don’t care about that, either.
* His name will not appear on this site. If that’s a problem for you, bummer.
** “DEI” in this context always means, “non-white”.
