Cruelty is cheap

Cruelty is cheap, easy, and rampant.

It’s also chicken-shit

               Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, p.52

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Cruelty is cheap

It is easy

And it abounds

Even in my chicken coop

Where Cicely, Goldie, and Gwendolyn

Systematically beat up on Gertie

Why?

I have no idea

Just as I have no idea why a person, sitting in the White House

Would find it necessary to pursue policies that are cruel

Tweet things that are cruel

Or why people cheer when our country

Tries to act like a global bully

A tiresome act

What is it about us that causes us to beat up on other

More vulnerable people

We shame the poor

We demonize people who happened to be wired different in terms of sexual preference

We judge those who are addicted

All without even thinking

Frankly my dears

Its chicken-shit

Because where cruelty lives, other things die

Like compassion

Generosity

Love

Oh sure, it feels good for the moment

This gathering together of like souls to beat up on others

We feel big, and powerful

There is indeed a certain satisfaction

And our egos swell

We are the special ones

We are the ones with power

We whites, we “christians”, we Americans, we the wealthy

But it reveals a poverty of soul that is frightening

And what is even more frightening is how,

As we seek to combat cruelty,

We are willing to become cruel ourselves.

We become what we disdain

We become what we resist

We are such strange creatures,

We human beings

I do not have the answers

I do not have them for myself, or you

But this I know

We cannot go into cruelty

If we do

It will not matter if the stock market soars

Or the GNP rises

Or our military is the “greatest”

It will not even matter that we are safer

For cruelty, and all that comes with it

Destroys human beings

And all humans are

Sacred

Children