A Primer on How to Create a Monster
God doesn't send people to hell. We do.
What breaks my heart in our current political hellscape is not that the billionaire oligarchs are fucking up the entire country by oppressing others, but that there are so many regular people who are okay with this. It’s been obvious for a long time now that the cruelty is the point, and while I’m absolutely horrified by the evil of those in power and the billionaire class, I’m not at all surprised. I called it.
People told me that I was crazy, because this sort of thing would never happen in America, that everyday Americans wouldn’t allow it. I’ve seen and experienced the torture that humans can inflict upon one another, and that’s why I knew where this would lead. I’ve had my humanity stolen from me by people with an unquenchable thirst for power, and I became a monster very early in life.
As images from “Alligator Alcatraz” hit social media and the news this week, I became more and more upset. It didn’t surprise me that some cruel motherfucker dreamed this up, or even that it was built so quickly, because honestly, this is who we are now.
What upset me was that even after kidnapping people in broad daylight in front of their loved ones and trafficking immigrants to a torture prison in El Salvador, putting people on a plane to Sudan never to return, or creating “Alligator Alcatraz,” is that people are still not only defending this shit but celebrating it.
I’ve seen lots of “this is exactly what I voted for” comments on social media and it makes me physically ill. They wanted this to happen (but only to OTHER people, not themselves). The amount of excitement and energy that people have for what is going on right now is something I cannot even fathom. I am not quite certain of when the switch flipped, but we are a nation of sadists now.
Watching other people be tortured and enjoying it is not only sadistic, but evil. I know that a good many people dislike labeling things evil, but at some point we really have to just accept that this is what we are looking at here. Evil exists and empire is it. The Christian Nationalist movement serves empire not Jesus. It’s not even Christian, it’s just a bunch of organized criminals who all want power. Project 2025 endorses mob rule and this racket has been in the works for the last fifty years at least.
Look, even the most hardcore of MAGA people shouldn’t be okay with this whole “Alligator Alcatraz” thing. There is no justifiable reason for this whatsoever, it’s purely an oppressive white supremacist tool designed to kill brown people. We are sacrificing human beings made in the image and likeness of God on the altar of Christian Nationalism and the MAGA movement and it’s despicable.
This. Is. Human. Sacrifice.
Even if we released all the people from these concentration camps by sunrise tomorrow, they would still be living in hell. My guess is that most of them have severe CPTSD or another severe trauma disorder by now, and that is something that won’t go away even if they were given their freedom. It’s quite possible that many of them wouldn’t be safe to live in the community because while the rest of us were living our lives, they were sacrificed to Christian Nationalism and they changed into something monstrous.
Now, I don’t believe that humans can become literal monsters, even those who are responsible for the evil things going on now, but I do know that this sort of thing chips away a person’s humanity and they can get to where they believe themselves to be a monster. I am 100% sure of this, because it’s what happened to me.
I know what it’s like to be the sacrifice, the one whose humanity is stolen, and the one who becomes a monster.
These people have already been broken and there will be no getting them back to “normal.” The crimes committed against them are so severe that they have been changed at a fundamental, primal level. I am a firm believer in God’s power to heal, but that doesn’t change the absolute horror of what we have allowed to happen here and there will always be scars.
What those who are excited and energized by the degredation and torture of others seem to miss is that this also changes who they are. When we deny the image of God in our neighbor, it’s because we have rejected our own humanity.