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It is dangerously naive to believe that cruelty can be directed only towards the guilty. An appetite for cruelty is equally sated by the victimization of innocents. There’s no reason that a straightforward prosecution of the administration’s crimes would be inferior to performative cruelty.

I’ve reported on war crimes tribunals, I spend most of my time documenting war crimes, and I think you’re the naive one if you believe we can break the will of these depraved beasts without extremely public and entirely legal consequences for their genocidal crimes.

Whose will do you think we’re breaking? There will be no “final victory” here. Fostering a taste for cruelty in the electorate is not conducive to preserving democracy. In any case, demonstrative cruelty (as you know) is not an effective strategy.

Why are you presenting this as though there’s a binary choice between inaction and performative cruelty? We can just prosecute them normally, without trying to mimic ICE’s temu-stormtrooper aesthetic

Because we need to make an example of these people to the public, because we live in an age of spectacle and this is how politics works. Which we have too long ignored to our peril.

Trump was adjudicated to be a rapist, convicted of a felony, and then elected president. Unfortunately, prosecutions don’t really make examples of people, and there’s no reason to believe performative cruelty (however you’re envisioning that) would change that.