William Hogarth: The Second Stage of Cruelty
Alternate Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty, Plate 2.
Series/Book Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty
1751

" … no business even attempting to lead others."

Cruelty becomes insidious once institutionalized. However benevolent an institution might have seemed when founded, it might always remain vulnerable to corruption. The corruption might first seem merely seductive, a not-quite guilty pleasure, diverting entertainment. It was probably championed then by someone who seemed unafraid of judgments, somehow above routine worldly cares, a millionaire, seeming unusually powerful. Few would have noticed how vulnerable he felt, for even he was probably not in touch with those depths. He stood securely in only two dimensions and, lacking depth, could have been easily toppled then by even a concerted casual wind. But he stood. He stood and didn't entirely embarrass himself, and he took the wrong message from this early success, which was actually more like an early absence of overt failure. He continued until his behavior became his identity, and it became merely expected. He attracted followers who, accustomed to mimicking, behaved the same. Soon enough, those performances no longer raised so many eyebrows. They still seemed uncouth but no longer obscene. Values had already eroded.

When institutions turn to cruelty, they render it efficient. It demands less and less of any individual and delivers increasingly more punishment than intended. Cruel institutions lose the ability to properly monitor their performance and so repeat actions without really satisfying their original intentions. In this way, the institutions corrupt themselves further and no longer need day-to-day direction to inflict ever-greater damage. Once they lose that crucial self-awareness, their behavior ceases to be a performance and might seem to be a more reflex response, inevitable. They merely do what they do. They might initially apologize, insisting that they're serving some greater good and hold no personal animosity toward you, but the rules are, after all, the rules. Who do you think you are to deserve an exception? By then, direction no longer matters. It becomes pure momentum. It might even be that nobody remembers how it used to be, only how it's been since Lord knows when. Reform will seem overwhelming in those rare instances when it might even be imagined. People adapt by putting their heads down and pushing forward, regardless of the unnecessary headwind's encumbrances.

The notion that it could always be worse seals the condition. As subtly terrible as The Second Stage of Cruelty might seem, the notion that it could be worse, and even much worse, helps sustain its status quo. Once corrupted, the primary purpose of any institution remains steadfastly the same: self-preservation. It will defend itself against all reformers, however dedicated and sanctioned. It will prove damnably difficult to improve. Most attempts to fix it will make it worse at first. The primary reason to quell cruelty before it leaves the first stage becomes obvious once its second stage settles in. It becomes nearly impervious to change. Marketers understand this terribly human tendency so they focus not on eliminating habits but redirecting them. They perceive human predictability as their greatest asset. Rather than attempt to dissuade, they persuade into some shift, and one of little apparent consequence. No need to change the schedule, just a label, hardly any change at all. They "improve" by addition or multiplication rather than subtraction or division. Curiously, though, continued addition divides attention as the number of conditions needing focus stresses the old attention span. One might become cruel solely through insignificant increments, in ways nobody ever really notices.

The purpose of our democracy was originally to guarantee our ability to pursue happiness, not to warranty anybody's ability to mete out punishments to even the most deserving citizens. Courts of law are unfortunate consequences and not the purpose of any government. We must be reluctant police and repentant jailers, for cruelties, even when intended, are never properly punished by cruel means. We seem to need to move beyond and contemplate whatever we might have learned, whether we personally dabbled or not. We remain mostly innocent parties. Our present President should be impeached because he, in his first week in office, proved to be impossibly cruel in practice. He whips his horse in public. He flies into the most humiliating rages without seeming to notice. He apparently only acts with impunity. He was supposed to be an improvement. He's become an endangerment instead. He endangers not only the peaceful transfer of powers, as he attempted four years before, but the peaceful operation of a largely beneficent system. He cruelly slanders our own best intentions and seeks to destroy rather than improve. We were, by design, never supposed to end up with a haughty President.

If leading proves not to be a humbling experience, we have the wrong leader. Those who believe they possess power possess only delusion. Those possessed by that particular delusion must not be President. If they happened to be so instilled, they must be impeached before too many innocents end up getting killed. He has shown he does not care. What might have before seemed to some an attractive indifference to consequences has become criminal. He cannot seem to care when caring covers about ninety-nine percent of his freaking job description. He seeks to destroy the inherent kindness self-government promotes. He slanders every citizen by insisting that our government belongs to some malevolent others. He surprised us all when he jumped directly toward The Second Stage of Cruelty before he'd even secured his place within the first stage. This should prove to have been a great gift, one I'm confident he was sublimely unaware of giving. Like all Second Stage of Cruelty institutions, he lacks the self-awareness even to govern himself. He and his regime have no business even attempting to lead others.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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