Any time we feel joy at another’s suffering, we’ve already lost something essential—something human.
It should be unthinkable.
Laughing as a child screams for a parent being deported.
Laughing as journalists are dragged away for asking questions.
Laughing as rights are stripped, as if justice can be measured by cruelty.
It’s not just anger I feel—though that’s where it starts.
The rage rises like clockwork. My body wants to revolt. My voice wants to yell.
But then something else kicks in.
Disappointment.
It doesn’t feel better than the anger. Just colder. Quieter. Like a resignation that goes all the way down.
Because I know, underneath all this, people have been trained.
Conditioned to respond to dog whistles like Pavlov’s subjects.
It doesn’t take much—just a word from the right figurehead, and the crowd remembers who to hate.
I can feel the machinery behind it all.
The Determinism of it.
That’s the offramp my mind always takes. Once the anger crests, I don’t even fight it.
I just see the chain reaction:
Environment → Conditioning → Identity → Belief → Reaction → Cruelty.
No gap for reflection. No pause for seeing the human.
Just another stimulus-response sequence masked as moral certainty.
It’s not even personal. That’s what stings most.
The laughter isn’t coming from monsters.
It’s coming from people who’ve been hollowed out—trained into reflexes so precise they mistake them for principles.
And I don’t feel superior to them. I just feel distance. Grief, maybe.
Because it means I can’t reach them.
Not with truth. Not with compassion.
Not when the bell has already been rung and the saliva of hate is already pooling.
What we’re up against isn’t ignorance.
It’s automation.
And automation doesn’t flinch when a child cries.
It doesn’t wince at suffering.
It just runs its program.