The Cruelty Is The Point

 

As well as the commodity.

There’s no way to look at what the US government is doing here and not think of it more as Auschwitz than Alcatraz. The parallels are unmistakable: hastily constructed camps in remote locations, euphemistic naming designed to obscure their true purpose, and—most tellingly—officials proudly touring the facilities while discussing plans to build “a system” of such camps nationwide.

But here’s where today’s American concentration camps differ from their 20th-century predecessors: the Trump regime isn’t trying to hide what they’re doing. They’re merchandising it. They’re selling t-shirts celebrating human suffering as if it were a sports team or a vacation destination.

The United States government is literally selling branded merchandise to celebrate putting human beings in cages surrounded by dangerous predators. This isn’t just about policy—it’s about turning cruelty into a consumer product. It’s about making the suffering of others into something you can wear to own the libs.

This commodification of human rights violations represents something uniquely American and uniquely horrifying: the gamification of genocide. Previous authoritarian regimes at least had the decency to be ashamed of their concentration camps. Trump is selling tickets to the show.

Reservations for Native Americans. The Oklahoma Territory. The Japanese Internment Camps. Eugenics laws. (We were the model the Nazis learned from. That, and our segregation laws, which were older.) Small slices of ignominious American hi

Everything old is new again. It’s just a matter of who is being affected this time. Oh, and what we think of it. Or do about it.

Even the merchandising isn’t wholly new. Lynchings were memorialized in the early 20th century by picture postcards. “Wish you were here.” We don’t condone (or do, on such a widespread basis) lynching anymore. Thanks to government; and what good people, moral people, made government do about it.

Government merchandising is a new angle. It can be an incentive to make government change this situation. If the moral people, the good people, make it one. The government has always been on the wrong side of good people. Some good people. The struggle against that is real. And worthwhile.

In case you’re wondering how much it costs to go full Nazi, this one concentration camp will cost the American taxpayer nearly half a billion dollars a year. That money will come from FEMA, the organization that Trump (with an assist from former friend Elon Musk and DOGE) stripped budget from, meaning there will be even less to pay for actual emergencies, because all of that money will be used to jail people Trump doesn’t like in a swamp.

Maybe we should start with Congress, and what they’re letting Trump do. By the time hurricane season is over, there may be half the country interested in answers.