Introduction

There are people in our nation who have voted for the purpose of hurting other people – kicking people off of Medicaid, deporting hard-working immigrants, taking food from children, continuing to supply weapons to a foreign government that is bombing children and killing people in line for food. Despite their callous disregard for human suffering and human life, when calamity strikes close to them, they demand sympathy and are shocked, shocked, I tell you, when other people seem as callous toward them as they have behaved toward others. Even those only pointing out that karma always comes around.

The Pattern of Celebrated Cruelty

This isn’t about policy disagreements or different approaches to governance. This is about a documented pattern of public figures and their supporters who don’t just advocate for harsh policies, but actively celebrate human suffering.
Laura Loomer celebrating feeding the entire population of people with Central and South American heritage to alligators – https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/laura-loomer-alligator-post/
DHS – the government agency – bragging about the alligators (eating people implied) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alligators-ice-hats-dhs/
Ann Coulter saying we didn’t kill enough Indians – https://www.instagram.com/p/DLyuCwosgOJ/
Our government is still supporting ethnic cleansing, if not outright genocide, by Israel in Gaza – https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/un-famine-gaza/
You can find a ton of examples online of MAGA people celebrating – or at least condoning – the genocide in Gaza, the plain-clothes, masked, ICE “agents” kidnapping of US Citizens and immigrants going to their court dates (doing it The Legal Way), also ICE tackling US Citizens who step outside of their office while brown, Trump’s own nazi-esque rhetoric – https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/04/trump-poison-blood-quote/.
I encounter people on the internet all the time trying to paint Democrats or Liberals as evil and violent, despite all the evidence to the contrary – or the fact that right wing groups are more responsible for violence than any left-wing group. https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/08/17/are-antifa-and-the-alt-right-equally-violent/
The left wing may have riots after a brutal, unjustified killing by police, etc. and destroy property, but the right wing destroys people.

The rhetoric goes beyond political positioning into something darker: the open celebration of pain inflicted on vulnerable populations. When public figures post gleefully about violence against marginalized groups, or when they express satisfaction at the thought of families being separated, we’re witnessing something that transcends normal political discourse.

The Inevitable Reversal

What makes this pattern particularly striking is the predictable reversal that occurs when consequences reach their own communities. The same voices that celebrated cutting social safety nets suddenly demand government assistance when natural disasters strike their regions. Those who mocked “welfare queens” become the loudest advocates for federal aid when their own businesses struggle.

The cognitive dissonance is remarkable. The very people who have spent years dehumanizing others suddenly expect to be treated with the full dignity and compassion they’ve denied to entire populations. They demand empathy while having shown none.

The Empathy They Never Extended

Perhaps most telling is their genuine surprise when they encounter indifference to their suffering. Having spent years normalizing cruelty as a political tool, they seem genuinely shocked that others might respond with similar callousness. They’ve created a political culture where celebrating others’ pain is not just acceptable but rewarded with likes, shares, and votes.

When faced with their own hardships, they don’t seem to connect their current treatment with their past behavior. The immigrant families they supported separating, the children they voted to remove from school lunch programs, the communities they cheered being “cleaned up” through deportation – these weren’t abstract policy positions to the people affected. They were real families experiencing real trauma.

The Broader Implications

This pattern reveals something troubling about our current political moment. When cruelty becomes a feature rather than a bug of political rhetoric, it corrodes our capacity for democratic discourse. Democracy depends on the ability to see political opponents as fellow citizens deserving of basic human dignity.

The celebration of suffering breaks down this fundamental prerequisite for democratic society. It’s one thing to disagree about policy approaches to immigration, healthcare, or foreign aid. It’s another to actively celebrate when those policies cause human suffering.

Karma vs. Callousness: Understanding the Difference

The question becomes: how do we respond when those who have celebrated cruelty face their own hardships? There’s an important distinction to be made here between callous indifference and recognizing karmic justice.

When we observe consequences catching up to those who have sown cruelty, acknowledging this pattern isn’t the same as their original callousness. Recognizing karma – seeing people reap what they have sown – is an acknowledgment of universal justice. It’s understanding that actions have consequences, that the cruelty someone sends into the world has a way of circling back.

An event can be both tragic and justified at the same time. Seeing the repercussions of someone’s actions can be simultaneously sad and deserved. This isn’t about celebrating suffering for its own sake, as they have done. It’s about recognizing a fundamental truth: that those who build their lives on causing pain to others will eventually face the consequences of that choice.

This recognition serves a vital purpose – it provides a lesson to others who may be saying or doing the same things. The message is clear: “Stop the cruelty now, and you may yet be spared the repercussions of your actions.” This isn’t a threat; it’s a warning born from observing the natural consequences of sustained cruelty.

Breaking the Cycle

The goal shouldn’t be to become like them, but to model the kind of political discourse and human decency that democracy requires. Yet this doesn’t mean we must ignore the patterns we observe or pretend that consequences don’t exist.

Pointing out hypocrisy isn’t cruelty – it’s accountability. When public figures who have built careers on celebrating others’ suffering suddenly demand compassion, noting the contradiction isn’t heartless. It’s necessary for maintaining any kind of honest political discourse. And recognizing the karmic nature of their situation isn’t callousness – it’s an acknowledgment that the universe has a way of balancing the scales.

Moving Forward

The challenge is finding ways to hold people accountable for their past rhetoric while not abandoning our own principles of human dignity. We can acknowledge the irony, point out the hypocrisy, and refuse to forget their past behavior without becoming what they’ve been.

Perhaps most importantly, we can use these moments to reflect on what kind of political culture we want to build. Do we want one where celebrating suffering is normalized and rewarded? Or do we want one where basic human dignity is extended even to those who have failed to extend it to others?

There’s a fundamental truth that bears remembering: when you try to make someone else less than human, you only do that to yourself. This dehumanization doesn’t just harm the targets – it corrupts the perpetrators, stripping away their own humanity in the process. The cruelty they celebrate becomes a prison of their own making, isolating them from the very empathy and connection that make us human.

This is playing out on the streets of anywhere, USA – in every community where people have chosen cruelty over compassion, where they’ve traded their humanity for the temporary satisfaction of seeing others suffer. The karmic consequences we’re witnessing aren’t just about individual comeuppance – they’re about a society reaping what it has sown.

The choices we make in response to this pattern will determine not just how we respond to individual cases of comeuppance, but what kind of democracy we’re building for the future.