The Brutalism of Ted Cruz

But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy.

.. But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them.

.. The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind.

.. It became clear then, why right-wing conservative Republicans felt the need to explicitly add the adjective to their name – it certainly is not inherent in it. In fact, the phrase is oxymoronic. Imagine having to say “compassionate liberalism” – redundant.

.. Republicans are going to be faced with a choice—do they want their party’s message carried by a member of the Vengeance-is-Mine wing? It could win, in an election where angry sells and people may be looking for change, and therefore might be willing to throw the dice. But, I don’t think even most of the party, much less the rest of the country, would be especially happy with the results. You can only rule with that type of an approach, you can’t govern. The American people will not like rulers.

.. I keep thinking of Wiesel’s concentration camp character’s statement in Night that Hitler is the only one he trusts, because he is the only one who didn’t lie to the Jews.

.. And that platform is built exclusively on appeals to the very basest of human instincts: greed, selfishness, fear, prejudice, resentment, bigotry, ignorance, and aggression. Cruz and Trump merely express in plainer language what all the GOP candidates for president espouse as policy positions.

.. In advertising, the basic wisdom used to be: “sex sells.” Among conservatives, the basic wisdom is: “fear sells.”

Fearful people do not practice compassion and mercy.

.. As an evangelical, I am appalled by how most evangelicals act politically. Our faith never calls for us to use the force of government to impose our faith on others. We are to do it by example and win people over. We are to be the salt of the earth, not the gunpowder. We are to be a light unto the world, not a nuclear blast.

The Funny Thing About Adversity

Given that adversity is linked with anxiety and depression, why does compassion ever emerge from it?

.. The reason, we suspect, is that compassion isn’t as purely selfless as it might seem. While it might appear to be a response to the suffering of others, it is also a strategy for regaining your own footing — for resilience in the face of trauma. After all, having strong social relationships is one of the best predictors of psychological well-being in the long run, and so anything that enhances your bonds with others — like expressing compassion for them — makes you more resilient.

.. In an article recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Kellogg School of Management professor Loran Nordgren and colleagues found that the human mind has a bit of a perverse glitch when it comes to remembering its own past hardships: It regularly makes them appear to be less distressing than they actually were.

As a result of this glitch, reflecting on your own past experience with a specific misfortune will very likely cause you to underappreciate just how trying that exact challenge can be for someone else (or was, in fact, for you at the time). You overcame it, you think; so should he. The result? You lack compassion.

.. Those who had overcome more severe bullying felt less — not more — compassion for current bullying victims. Likewise, those who had faced greater difficulty with unemployment had less sympathy for the currently jobless. When the adversities didn’t match, no such empathy gap emerged.

 

The Limits of Jeb Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism

In his stated concern for the poor, George W. Bush was almost certainly sincere. “If he’s trying to allege that I’m a hardhearted person and I don’t care about children, he’s absolutely wrong,” Bush fumed after Al Gore criticized his healthcare policies in Texas. But Bush’s heart was irrelevant; his policies were typical GOP fare. As governor, he had passed the largest tax cut in Texas history. And on his watch, Texas had been one of only three states that failed to make it easier for poor children to receive Medicaid, with the result that while Medicaid enrollment increased nationwide between 1997 and 1999, it dropped in Texas by more than seven percent. When Bush left the governor’s office, Texas had theseventh-highest poverty rate in the country and the highest percentage of children without health insurance.

.. If George W. in 1999 set out to prove that he’s not Newt Gingrich, Jeb is out to prove he’s not Mitt Romney, whose perceived callousness towards the 47 percent helped doom his presidential chances. So Jeb announced his candidacy at Miami-Dade College, two-thirds of whose students are Latino. He filled his announcement video with African American and Latino strivers, who credit him for their success. And he named his Super PAC, “The Right to Rise.”

.. But former University of South Florida education professor Sherman Dorn attributes that less to school choice than to Jeb’s laudable decision to hire more primary school reading specialists—a decision he doesn’t talk about much on the stump, perhaps because it sounds like big government.

.. In 2000, the press paid too much attention to George W.’s rhetoric and persona and not enough to his policies. Now journalists have the chance to learn from that mistake. When it comes to the poor, Jeb’s offering the same basic formula as Romney and most of his rivals: tax cuts, deregulation, and school vouchers.