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It is sufficiently incoherent as to suggest you aren't interested in the serious discussion you are requesting in response. You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.

Historically i've tended to agree that "the cruelty is the point" was too dismissive for the policies in question. But with immigration policy of this admin, I'm not sure that's the case. For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally. However seriously you think immigration should be taken, and however many people you feel should be deported, there are policy choices that do not involve that level of cruelty that could be chosen instead. That they are intentionally not is what the term "The cruelty is the point" is meant to imply.

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0xDEAFBEAD a day ago | parent [-]

>You could better refute this by starting with a policy you would consider cruel, and the in turn demonstrating how this one doesn't fit it.

I actually don't think it is that common for policy to be cruel just for the sake of being cruel ("the cruelty is the point")

>For a while they were deporting people to the equivalent of a Gulag, and literally suggested that if people were afraid of that outcome they should self deport. I think that would be a pretty fair example of a policy where the cruelty was the literal point: The hope was it would be viewed with sufficient fear as to dissuade people from staying in the country illegally.

The point of law enforcement is to deter and prevent lawbreaking, not be cruel for its own sake. Suppose you observe that meals in prison aren't very tasty. Would you criticize this policy on the grounds that "the cruelty is the point"?

You can argue that the punishment is too harsh, but that still doesn't prove that cruelty was the point.

	▲	Erem a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Nobody is buying the analogy comparing deportation to Gulag equivalents to imperfect prison meals
	▲	cloverich 21 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Government cruelty as such has been an explicit subject of American constitutional discourse since the founding - its in the Bill of Rights even. It comes out of a political tradition deeply suspicious of rulers using punishment to terrorize, humiliate, or vindictively hurt people. Case in point Obama was deporting just as many people as Trump and it didnt require cruelty to do so. Which begs the question, why is a Gulag needed by Trump? The "cruelty is the point" argument is that 1) it isnt, and 2) they know that.