\n<\/p>\n
Order The Intercessor<\/em> paperback or ebook at Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Bookshop.org<\/a>, and other booksellers. Through 30 November 2025, order The Intercessor<\/em> paperback from Ingram at a 20% discount<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n You know that frog parable people always tell?<\/strong> If you drop a frog in boiling water, it will jump right out and save itself. But if you drop a frog in cool water and slowly heat it to the boiling point, the frog will allow itself to be cooked to death. <\/p>\n The idea is that it can be difficult to discern the turning-point, the moment in which something that seems merely familiar and ordinary becomes dangerous, demanding action. Humans are amazingly adaptable to almost anything, a wonderful trait that sadly contains its evil twin. By now, a lot of us know that the MAGA regime is fully on board with the boiled-frog approach. Over and over again, its operatives and critics alike have acknowledged the strategy of \u201cflooding the zone with shit.\u201d So many appalling and dramatic things happen each day that it quickly becomes the new normal. It is very hard to know what to focus on, let alone how to act on it. It\u2019s tempting to let the current carry you along. <\/p>\n Step out of the flooded zone, and it\u2019s easy to see what the MAGA regime is doing<\/strong>: turning the entire nation into a mass re-education camp to so inure us to the perpetual escalation of mass cruelty that it loses its charge, fading into just an ordinary way of doing business. (If you\u2019re not familiar for this euphemism for prison camps with an ideological agenda, check out this list<\/a>). <\/p>\n What does it take for political leaders to become instruments of extreme cruelty?<\/strong> First they must excise from their consciousness any capacity for moral or ethical discernment. They are trained to stand at a podium and defend their actions (usually by attempting to destroy those who question them) without even a whiff of shame. That human quality has been entirely expunged from their awareness. Once that\u2019s done, they\u2019re equipped to try to train the rest of us to get cozy with cruelty.<\/p>\n I keep thinking about the MAGA project of eliminating food subsidy for the hungry. As part of the federal shutdown, Trump chose to discontinue SNAP (formerly food stamp) payments, even though they had been paid during prior shutdowns. When some states said they would replace federal payments with their own funds to the extent possible, the Agriculture Department issued a memo threatening harsh financial penalties if they did not immediately desist. <\/p>\n Representative Angie Craig<\/a> put it clearly, stating that the MAGA regime was \u201cdemanding that food assistance be taken away from the households that have already received it. They would rather go door to door, taking away people\u2019s food, than do the right thing and fully fund SNAP for November so that struggling veterans, seniors, and children can keep food on the table.\u201d <\/p>\n The cold, hard truth is that the people in charge of our commonwealth are cruel to the core, making no attempt to hide the fact that further enriching their obscenely rich friends matters far more than feeding those who starve because of their actions.<\/strong><\/p>\n To take this position requires building a tremendous, impermeable wall of indifference around one\u2019s heart. \u201cIndifference\u201d may seem like a mild word, but I mean it in the sense it was used by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: \u201cIndifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.\u201d It is the foundation of the Republicans\u2019 prime directive, to turn this nation in an enormous re-education camp where the curriculum is cultivating cruelty and willful ignorance. It is nauseating, repugnant, and terrifying. It is not some distant prospect. It is really happening right now. <\/p>\n Indifference also floods the zone, reducing politics to a cover-story<\/strong>, a performance that masks the truth. Frogs are boiling in a million pots, and politicians are comparing recipes for frog soup. They\u2019re not all the same, thank goodness. Some Democrats and independents in Congress and other elective offices have spoken forthrightly and powerfully.<\/p>\n But the game continues to be played by most. I\u2019ve been listening to commentators talk about the Senate\u2019s just-passed bill to end the shutdown, a bill which must now be taken up in the House where it may or may not pass. The Republicans, somewhat chastened by their defeats in the recent elections, aren\u2019t exactly crowing. But I haven\u2019t seen a rush to repent, either. Just more cruel indifference. <\/p>\n Among Democrats, there are two major differing opinions on this action<\/strong>. One side says that regardless of how long the shutdown lasted and how much suffering ensued, the Republicans would never accede to the Democrats\u2019 core demand to fund the tax credits that make the Affordable Care Act actually affordable. This belief persists despite the fact that the Republicans are thereby multiplying healthcare costs, greatly affecting the constituents to whom Trump promised cost-cutting, earning the ire of many. The people on this side of the question point out that those who follow the news largely know that the Republicans are responsible for the vast suffering already inflicted through lost jobs and salaries, rising costs, the withdrawal of even basic humane benefits such as SNAP, which feeds one in eight Americans. They say the point has been made to the extent possible, and to prolong the shutdown would merely be to extend and amplify the damage, to be henceforth known as the party that wouldn\u2019t let people fly home for Thanksgiving. <\/p>\n The Senate legislation was very carefully choreographed so as not to expose vulnerable elected officials; the eight Democrats who broke ranks to pass it are retiring or not running next year or they represent districts where they need a lot of Republican votes to stay in office. They\u2019d like to call it a win and move on\u2014but evidently not for long, as the Senate bill only continues most spending for less than three months. For now, if the House agrees, planes will presumably fly, SNAP benefits will be paid, and furloughed federal workers will resume their jobs with back pay. <\/p>\n This all sounds fine and reasonable until you remember that the MAGA regime has unreasonableness dialed up to the max<\/strong>. Jamelle Bouie<\/a> offers a very cogent explanation of why a strategy designed for what he calls ordinary times doesn\u2019t fly when one party knows only a single tactic, escalation. <\/p>\n The other side condemns the eight who broke with their party<\/strong>, saying that Democrats failed by not holding the line on the critical issue of healthcare, by not making a bigger show of the true extent of Republicans\u2019 cruelty and indifference to the well-being of their constituents. This quote<\/a> from the New York Times<\/em> puts a fine point on it: <\/p>\n \u201cTrump and MAGA Republicans have been shutting down the government since Inauguration Day, gutting Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and engaging in the greatest health care heist in history \u2014 all to pay for tax cuts for CEO billionaires,\u201d said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. \u201cThe American people want us to stop the heist, not drive the getaway car.\u201d <\/p>\n There will be an opportunity to once again oppose Republican\u2019s refusal to support healthcare subsidies if and when a promised chance to take up the subject materializes before year\u2019s end. It would be very good if politicians\u2019 maneuvers released much-needed funds. But it would be a mistake to take that as a victory and applaud the workings of the system, because the system is currently rigged to cultivate cruelty and I am very afraid at how well it is working.<\/p>\n The subject matter was different, but the context was chillingly the same<\/strong> when at the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, Joseph Welch, attorney for the Army which had been targeted by the egregious Senator Joseph McCarthy as part of his witch-hunting campaign, said this to McCarthy: \u201cUntil this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness\u2026\u201dHave you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?\u201d No single remark can change the course of history, but that one will be remembered for invoking shame when it seemed to be missing in action, and triggering a backlash to the Red Scare.<\/p>\n Shame needs to be cultivated<\/strong>. It needs to be front and center, amplified until even the worst can\u2019t shut it out. Our future depends on it. <\/p>\n Jimmy Reed, \u201cShame, Shame, Shame<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n