Who but a bully is cruel for sake of cruelty?

By Eugene Robinson

The Washington Post

As the shambolic Trump presidency caroms and lurches into Year Three, a shameful governing philosophy has emerged: cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

Let us take stock:

Roughly one-quarter of the federal government has been closed for a month, in the longest shutdown in U.S. history. An estimated 800,000 employees are either furloughed or being forced to work without pay, not to mention untold contract workers who are also idled. Prospects for a near-term solution to the impasse between President Trump and Congress range all the way from dim to dimmer.

Imagine going a month without a paycheck. Imagine lining up the bills and deciding which get paid and which don’t: mortgage, electricity, heating. Imagine having to commute to work at an “essential” government job and trying to scrape together enough money for gas.

All of these hardships, and many more, are being inflicted on hard-working public servants for no earthly reason. From the beginning, Democrats have taken a reasonable position: Keep the government open, and let’s have a debate and a negotiation about border security. Trump agreed, until far-right pundits accused him of abandoning his border wall, which everyone knows will never be built.

So Trump made federal workers — and other citizens who depend on government services — into sacrificial lambs whose blood is an offering to the Trumpist base. Negotiations about a solution are at a standstill because Trump’s self-proclaimed negotiation prowess comes down to taunts and tweets. The next time you take a flight, hope that the agents who inspect passengers’ luggage and the traffic controllers who guide pilots through the sky are thinking about their work, not worrying how to make ends meet.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/robinson-who-but-a-bully-is-cruel-for-sake-of-cruelty/