Why the 1.6 percent matters

Beware the sweet allure of cruelty.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

Such an easy target…

Not that many to start with…1.6 percent of the population at most. Typically, for reasons not difficult to understand, they’ve kept a low profile. Not organized, not particularly wealthy or influential, but sharing a life experience that makes them instantly suspect to quite a number of folks … trans people are in the government’s crosshairs.

The Marine Band had barely packed up their trumpets on Inauguration Day before the freshly sworn Chief Executive signed off on an executive order Titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government” stripping transgender people not only of rights and protections under law, but the very right to determine, affirm, and claim respect for their own identities.

It is an order that claims to put an end to dangers and threats which, within reality, don’t exist. It paints a tiny defenseless population as an indefensible “other,” justifying itself in the name of common sense and inviting us all to support and join in the gratuitous cruelty.

Cruelty is what it is, what it comes down to. Plain and simple. Calculated cruelty lies at the heart of its appeal

Beware the sweet allure of cruelty.

We don’t like to think of it that way, do we?

But it’s true. To exert cruelty is to feel powerful, and feeling powerful feels good. But, of course, we don’t have to really be powerful to be cruel, we only need to share in causing the vulnerable to suffer … all in the cause of righteousness and the greater good, of course.

It’s such an easy feeling to manufacture. Us against them. It’s almost instinctive … the shabby kid in the grade school classroom we all knew had cooties; the refugee kid whose family ate cats and rats for supper; that girl who all the guys knew “does it” even though she’d never “done it” with any of them. Yeah, we’ve been there, thought that, said that, done that.

Us and them.

We don’t leave the bully behind at the schoolyard gate. These are lessons we’ve learned well. No more dancing around in a circle, pointed fingers and sing-song chant, “Cooties, cooties, cooties!” – much better to quietly nod approval to politicians, pundits, position papers and executive orders. All quite proper, even polite, but no less bitterly cruel and seductively sweet.

And oh, how seductive it is. To stand shoulder to shoulder in righteous condemnation – especially when there is all but no danger of the target of that cruelty gaining sympathy or striking back.

What was true in the schoolyard is no less so in politics. The bully chooses his target among the vulnerable, the unpopular, the few in number, those outside the norm – an easily stigmatized “them” to hold in opposition to the rest of us.

As a strategy it makes it possible for the greatest number to feel the inexorable pleasure of casting the first stone, while allowing the rest to feel comfortable not getting involved. Who, after all, wants to risk all by standing up for cooties?

Who wants to risk becoming one of “them?”

Civil society can be a fragile thing. In the 1920s Germany was among the world’s most open, tolerant cultures. In 1933 Jews made up less than 1 percent of Germany’s population. Beginning that year they were targeted by the government as a threat to German womanhood, as un-natural in their very being and posing a danger to the family and culture.

According to the latest estimates, transgender people make up perhaps 1.6 percent of the population of the United States, targeted by the government in the supposed defense of womanhood, truth, the nation, children and the family.

On March 22, 1933 Dachau concentration camp was opened “to restore calm to Germany.”

On January 29, 2025 an Executive Order was issued stating:

“I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

This memorandum is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”

And so it continues…