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SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
You may have heard the phrase, cruelty is the point, used by many over the past few years. It has become something of a catchphrase among pundits as a way to criticize former President Donald Trump and his brand of politics. It was created by Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. His 2018 essay of that name is just one of many he wrote during Trump’s presidency as he tried to understand it and the larger political movement represented by Trump’s base. Now Serwer is out with a collection of essays, there is also that title. Here, he goes back in history to argue that Trump’s rise to power was not an aberration in American history and that the political project of Trumpism is still alive. The full title is “The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump’s America.”
Adam Serwer joins us today. How are you. Welcome to the program.
ADAM SERWER: Thank you for having me.
MCCAMMON: This book is, of course, a collection of essays, many, as we said, that have been published in The Atlantic, a few before. And it’s not all about Donald Trump, but the line through really Trump and his politics and how we got here. There are a ton of books published about the Trump presidency. What do you want to add to that collection?
SERWER: So I want to look at Trump as a reflection of some ideological trends in American history that have been dangerous to our democracy. You know, most people think of cruelty as an individual problem. And so it is, but what I focus on in the book is cruelty as part of American politics, specifically the way it is used to demonize certain groups so that you can justify denying people their basic rights to under the Constitution and exclude them from the political process, which is about what the Trump project is about, both as a means to power and also as a policy agenda.
MCCAMMON: One of those essays that really focuses on what we remember and how we remember is called “The Nationalist Delusion.” You write about Alexander Stephens, who was the second president of the Confederacy and was highly committed to racial hierarchies. But after defeating the war, he took a very different posture. Can you tell us more about him and why his story might be relevant today?
SERWER: So Alexander Stephens – he’s the vice president of the Confederacy. He gave this famous speech known as the Cornerstone Speech, in which he said that the cornerstone of the Confederacy was that Africa was not equal to the white man and he deserved to be a slave all the time. And then after he was captured after the Civil War, he sat in prison. And he writes his diary, and he says that slavery has nothing to do with war. I don’t have any problem with Black people whatsoever.
And this was the beginning of the whitening of the cause of the Civil War, which is still with us. But its role in “The Nationalist Delusion” is to illustrate how people with the most defined worldviews will try to tell themselves that that’s not based on their values. If Alexander Stephens could do that, it would be a simple thing for someone today who has racist views to tell themselves that if they support discriminatory policies, they are not really racist because, you know, they really have no problem with tao. they discriminate.
MCCAMMON: I want to talk about the word cruel. And I wonder how you can respond to someone who says, you know, Trump is vulgar. He was incendiary. I don’t like the way Trump says certain things. I don’t like the way he tweets, but I agree with what he stands for. Can you say that person’s politics is cruel?
SERWER: There will always be people with conservative views on immigration, on religious freedom, on things like that. What I mean by cruelty is specifically the demonization of particular groups to deny them rights or exclude them from morality. One thing to say is that we will not allow people based on religion. This is another thing to absolutely say that we will break families on purpose because we want to deter people from trying to go to the United States for a better life.
We will always have disagreements in a democracy. That is for democracy. For this in settling disputes. But what is not necessary is a policy where one side tries to disqualify or exclude the voters of the other party in order to maintain a grip on power. And that’s what I mean when I talk about cruelty at the political level.
MCCAMMON: So much of what has been Trump’s success as a politician seems to be about him. I mean, as long as there is a long history that led to the Trump moment, he was a unique, somehow, a political phenomenon, which makes me wonder what’s next for Trumpism. Is he important to Trumpism?
SERWER: No, Trump doesn’t care about Trumpism. The politics of brutality that Trump is working on is a product of a system that urges a minority of the country to engineer the government so that they are no longer accountable to the public. And what – Trump’s real change shows how much he can get away from the Republican Party. The only solution here is for the Republican Party to reach beyond the base it currently needs to serve a more diverse constituency so that it can no longer rely on fomenting the kind of intolerance that Trump’s brutal politics represents.
MCCAMMON: One thing I think about often and I think your book underscores is the degree to which our ugly racist history as a nation has always been there. And, you know, I think every time we think we’ve made progress, we realize the level that hasn’t been done yet. And a bit discouraging. And I wonder, you know, is there anything that will give you hope that we as a nation will just get out of this ugly, destructive cycle that we’re going to find?
SERWER: As I write this book, I am deeply inspired by the people who throughout American history have fought to extend the blessings of American democracy to all. And I think what people need to understand is that America is the Declaration of Independence, and this is the fifth fifth clause. They are both organic, authentic parts of the American tradition, and they will always be part of who we are as a nation. And the only thing we can do is try to delve as much as we can into our best traditions rather than those that embarrass us.
MCCAMMON: That’s Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of “The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present And Future Of Trump’s America.” It’s out on Tuesday.
Adam Serwer, thank you very much.
SERWER: Thank you so much for having me.
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