“Introducing a fun and playful unisex heavy cotton tee that brings a touch of whimsy to your wardrobe! Featuring a vibrant alligator graphic with the cheeky slogan "Make Alligators Great Again," this tee is perfect for those who love to express their unique personality.”
That’s what the ad says on a bright blue T-shirt with “Alligator Alcatraz” framing an alligator wearing a black ICE hat and the above-mentioned “cheeky slogan”.
It’s playful, cartoony, even the President is laughing it up while visiting this makeshift prison in the middle of a Florida swamp. I don’t know why this shirt got a one star rating - I mean, come on - it’s hysterical. Right?
No.
it’s not funny.
It’s not ‘cheeky’.
It’s not benign.
It’s just cruel.
It’s the kind of cruelty that looks at the suffering of human beings who have already endured a life of danger, poverty, and hardship only to be locked in a sweatbox cage prison swarming with disease-carrying mosquitoes, waiting to find out if a hurricane, lack of medical care and proper food, or another inmate is going to kill them before they see their kids again and thinks - “Hey, that would make great merch.”
And you know what? It will sell. Because not everyone has $90,000 for a Cybertruck to broadcast their self importance to the world, now they can do it for $26 with this poly-blend cotton T-shirt. And if that’s still too much - they can just get online and spread that picture of Trump and GOP officials laughing at the Concentration Camp…um…”detention facility”,,, and talk about how cool it is the Land of the Free is treating human beings this way. If they’re on the way to church, they can always add, “They should have come here legally” to take the sting off of it.
Why are people so brazenly, horrifically, laughing at the gates of this American Auschwitz? Because many, even people we thought were better than this, have fallen for the latest trend: Cruelty Culture.
Cruelty Culture is a social climate where mocking, demeaning, or dehumanizing others—especially the vulnerable—is normalized, monetized, or celebrated as entertainment, identity, or "truth-telling." It disguises harm as humor, prejudice as patriotism, and moral decay as moral clarity.
Cruelty Culture is what happens when we stop asking if it’s kind or moral and start asking if it’ll go viral.
Most people don’t wake up one day and say “wow, it’s so popular to be cruel.” They end up wearing a T-shirt like this or cheering as a child is being dragged from their parents because they caught an illness spreading through this land at an alarming rate - Othering.
It’s okay to hurt these people and then laugh at it because - They. Are. Not. Like. Us.
In fact, once you start drawing the “not like us” lines in your life about who deserves dignity and decency your world becomes smaller, more manageable, and effortlessly comfortable (even more comfortable than that cheap, scratchy T-shirt). By sorting out everyone who is not your race, your language, your religion, your sexuality, or your value system you can whittle away anyone who challenges you with something you don’t know or ideas you don’t like.
The tower grows higher and higher until all those “others” just look like little ants. And, since they look like ants, they probably are ants. They should be treated like ants. In fact, if you step on a bunch of them while they are just trying to survive - who cares? They shouldn’t have come to the picnic anyway. Nobody invited them.
And, before you know it, the little girl who once sang, “Jesus loves the little children, ALL the children of the world” is now worshipping a God who only speaks English and voting for a President who was convicted of breaking 34 laws while saying, “These ants didn’t do it legally so it’s good they will suffer.”
Othering is the seed of every poison tree in all the histories of all the world. Not just the deadly forests like the Holocaust and American Civil War, but the weeping willow of a family who sent a gay son away, or the thornbush borders that cause one neighbor to shoot another. Why are so many people angry, lonely, isolated, and compassion deficient? It all goes back to those othering lines that cut them out or wouldn’t let someone in.
The largest cause of othering is fear. Driven by ideas of scarcity and vulnerability, we close ourselves off from anything that requires understanding. The problem is, of course, that the sense of belonging and security we think we feel when we point out someone as an “other” is an illusion. The smaller our circle, the more insecure we become. The more we take away from others, the more we lose.
Cruelty Culture isn’t making America “Great” or even good. It’s just making this country desperately divided and lost in our hypocrisy. There is a better way.
In Buddhism we have a mandate of interdependence and an awareness of interconnection. There is no “me” and “them” in Buddhism, just a “we”. We aren’t saddled with the edicts like “love everyone” or “forgive everyone” that seem to be challenging so many people who claim to be Christian these days. In Buddhism you don’t have to love, you don’t have to forgive, and you certainly don’t have to fix anyone. All you have to do is remember that every person is exactly the same as you - beings who want to survive, to be happy, and not to suffer.
Instead of shrinking your world to people who look and sound like you, open it to embrace all beings. Then rather than feeling insecure about the smallness and fit-in-ness of your fortress, you’ll be secure in an impossibly big, immeasurably abundant world.
Once you’re secure, once you feel that bond, you won't need to find belonging or solace in other people’s pain.
I know, I know - I’m speaking to the choir. People reading this article are probably not buying that awful T-shirt and a side order of assholery. Still, I think it’s important we understand what is happening, why it’s happening, and what we can do. We don’t have to fix the whole system, just stop feeding the fire.
The first thing we can do is realize the people who are buying these shirts are the same as the people in those horrible cages. They are both suffering. The people in the T-shirts just don’t know it. They don’t see the cage of cruelty they are trapped in as well. Responding with quippy one-liners and witty memes doesn’t help them, doesn’t reach them. It just makes us feel “better than” and in that case - we are suffering too.
After that - refuse to laugh at anyone’s pain. Look for the human behind the headline - the one in the prison, the one in the T-shirt, the one in the mirror. Let that be the beginning of something new.
Compassion is not kind. Compassion is fierce. Call out inhumanity, avarice and greed, reject cruelty and live our interdependence in every way you can. The only way to end laughing at the gates is to stop putting them between us.
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