The Anatomy of Culturally-Entrenched Cruelty | Three Pressure Points for Change

The Anatomy of Culturally-Entrenched Cruelty
~ Three Pressure Points for Change ~
. . .

A GOLD KEY RELEASE PIECE

This piece is bound to stir up emotions.
Liberally use the Gold Key Release Procedure linked at the end
to dispel those turbulent emotions.

Lawrence Gold

You may have noticed that these times are a bit crazy and that the craziness is a bit "in our faces".  I'll be talking about the underpinnings of that craziness, which is cruelty (a major disease of humanity), and the work needed to curb and transform it.  This is an advisory piece of writing, not an academic or merely theoretical one.

In the current administration of the United States government, in the behavior of large segments of the citizenry, and in world events at large, we have seen and have been seeing systemic cruelty in an extraordinarily visible way. It's a disease of humanity in which the perpetrators somehow believe they are right (or excused, or above the law), that they have the right and in which everyone else are hapless victims ("tough luck").

Recognizing what we are dealing with is the first step to handling it.

We have been seeing:

• racism
• sexism
• "religious" warfare
• sexual abuse by members of the clergy and people in "power positions"
• indiscriminate public attacks by "shooters"
• corporate greed, corporate politics, pay inequities, and environmental abuse
• police brutality, particularly on members of minority groups
• military attacks on civilians
• selling out by politicians of their Constitutional duty to their constituents (the people who elected them) in service to Big Money, political agendas, and political ambition

and equally

• self-righteous emotional abusiveness by those who supposedly stand for correction of these abuse patterns, but who indiscriminately make racist and sexist assumptions about their allies and sympathizers (you know who you are).

EFFORTS at SOCIAL JUSTICE

People who want social justice typically target an issue or two (e.g., racism and sexism) and agitate for change. Two things about that:

1. By concentrating on one or two issues, they miss the larger picture, the problem of which their favorite issues are symptoms, a problem that isn't political, but personal and cultural.
   
   They seek to "put out fires" instead of addressing the mindset that starts fires. There are just too many fires to efficiently go after them, individually.
   
   
2. Agitation (power over others), in itself, is insufficient. People also need power over themselves (intelligent discipline). I say more about that.

Passionate idealism is insufficient.  It's one thing to protest, blame, or "educate" and another thing to be effective.  Changes of behavior from legislation or policy are insufficient; what 's needed is a shift of mindset, which controls behavior from within.

To be effective, we need two things:

1. understanding (which is more than knowing facts or history, but an intuitive understanding of relationships)
2. focused and coordinated action at least equal in force to the forces keeping problems in place

This piece talks about the causes of cruelty in its many forms, exposes "pressure points" for change, and talks about how to apply pressure to those pressure points.

Some of it is not what you think.

SIGNS of the CRUEL MINDSET of the TIMES

Cruelty shows up in the behavior of the U.S. government:

• as the current immigration policy that separates helpless children from their parents
• as efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and to repeal the Affordable Care Act
• as tax cuts for the super wealthy
• as conflict of interest betrayal by politicians yielding to "pressure" by lobbyists (revolving door or otherwise), as by the gun lobby
• corruption of the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, and Department of Education
• as corruption of the legislative process by the use of "riders" -- sections introduced to pieces of legislation that have nothing to do with that particular particular piece of legislation -- introduced to the bill for that legislation to get them passed, when they wouldn't pass on their own
• as police repression of lawful protest demonstrations (as in Occupy Wall Street)
• as "racial profiling" that leads to unwarranted and unpunished police attacks, killings, and disproportionate jailings, of innocent members of minority groups
• as instances of injustice-by-omission: namely, pardoning individuals convicted of crimes who don't deserve to be pardoned, as light sentences for those who deserve heavier consequences, and as failure to prosecute (as in "too big to fail" Wall Street bankers)
• as military adventurism
• as pandering to the gun lobby
• as violations-with-impunity of laws and ethical standards by legislators
• as lies and distortions in political campaigns
• as voter suppression and gerrymandering
• as betrayal of the public political will by political parties with their own agenda

You are no doubt aware of other patterns of cruelty and injustice from your personal life and the news media.

These are not separate issues, but different forms of the same underlying problem.

Patriarchy

"Patriarchy" often gets blamed for the ills of the world.  There is cruelty for which members of Patriarchy deserve blame.  The real issue isn't gender, however; it's the cruelty of members of a gender -- and cruelty is different from gender-specific behavior.  After all, some women also indulge in casual cruelty -- toward men, toward each other, and for those in positions of power (e.g., politicians and bureaucrats and even clerks) toward "the 99%" underclasses.

So, to blame gender for cruelty is lazy and sloppy -- even cruel -- thinking. The abuses of Patriarchy are a symptom, not a first-cause.

From these words, I expect you are now feeling the mood of cruelty -- perhaps labelled, to yourself, as "righteous anger".  Good.  Now it's time to expose it.

The Anatomy Of Cruelty

Understanding the anatomy of cruelty, rather than just reacting to it by striking at its symptoms, is the basis of any effective strategy to address it -- and change it. Understanding reveals pressure points for change.

So now, I'm going to discuss the structure or anatomy of cruelty, its origins and "pressure points".

Understanding the Anatomy of Cruelty

Cruelty involves both feeling and action. Here are the stages by which cruelty develops, which are the pressure points for addressing it:

1. inspiration / a good idea:  taking initiative
   
   
2. being persistently thwarted:  sabotage by others and "the system"
   (desensitization:  suppression or denial of feeling)
   
   
3. self-betrayal:  resentful surrender, resignation and conformity to "the system":  seeking the power of the powerful
   
   
4. taking it out on others (consciously or unconsciously)
   
   

You can see that a developmental sequence is involved of "going over to The Dark Side". This sequence generates an internal pressure that fuels cruelty. People of insufficient integrity go along with that pressure, rationalizing that it's a sign that they're doing the right thing, excusing their actions as if morality (or personal integrity) were a popularity contest.

Any or all of these pressure points can be dealt with creatively to undermine the excuses for cruelty and cruel behavior patterns.

I'll go over the essentials.

THE ELEMENTS OF CRUELTY

DESENSITIZATION

"Desensitization" means the inability or unwillingness to feel. "Feel" doesn't mean just emotional feeling or compassion, but also the ability to perceive the bodily signals that where we are headed is abhorrent and also, the bodily signals of a direction that would feel wholesome.  Desensitization is a kind of "dumbing down" to avoid pain.  Words for this condition are, "apathy" and "resignation".

Desensitization goes with "fixed-mindedness" -- unwillingness or inability to consider to a meaningful depth anything other than what we already know and consider to be legitimate or true. A word for this condition is, "arrogance".

Desensitization may be caused

• by childhood abuse (physical or emotional)
• by childhood indoctrination and example by parents and peers
• by domestic violence
• by education in a religious context
• by military training
• by corporate culture
• by criminal influences
• by professional standards, such as medical training in which cruelty is found and commonly accepted (consider medical procedures, pharmaceuticals with adverse side-effects (and high prices), and the 30-hour, no-sleep shifts imposed upon interns entering the medical profession)
• by a hard life
• by being "spoiled" -- lack of constructive discipline and the low self-esteem that results from failure to accomplish anything worthwhile (by ones own standards)
• by sheer "cussedness" and refusing the discipline of too-permissive parents
• by an exploitative mass entertainment media featuring evil enemies, fighting, guns, explosions, gratuitous sexuality and an abundance of immature themes appealing to narcissistic, adolescent motivations

These are all situations that retard maturation and development and that foster desensitization.

Arrested Development
Cruelty is a sign of immaturity or distorted development.  We see casual cruelty by children who have yet to mature past selfishness -- mean speech, taking or breaking the toys of others, misbehavior.  Even children with some sensitivity may be corrupted by abusive fathers and mean mothers through unwarranted invalidation, ridicule, shaming, and physical violence -- and more abuse for reacting emotionally to being abused. Childhood emotional neglect also leads to failure to mature, emotionally.

A child in that condition may feel anger at the parents (or other bullies) but not dare to express it where it belongs, instead directing pent-up anger at themselves or at innocent others whom they do not fear.  Schoolyard and social media bullying are examples.

Adults may feel a similar pent-up anger at bullying bosses, pay inequities, office politics, and social injustice but have no safe outlet, instead being told or required, in effect, to "Suck it up!"

As people get resigned to things being that way, they may become hardened and resentful -- which they cease to notice, even as it distorts their character into a form many mistake for human nature -- that of the hardened racist, sexist, selfish, unethical, incompetent or unresponsive individual (whether in politics, in business, or in crime).

Hardened character shows up as hard-heartedness and power games, "hardball business practices", sexual exploitation or betrayal, and hard drinking (a significant problem, in Congress -- where abstinence during term-of-office would probably improve the judgment of members of Congress).

We become conditioned not to feel or to want to feel, with anger just below the surface just waiting to be misdirected at those whom we do not fear, when what we need to do is intelligently direct our will at those who deserve our anger (which means, overcome the intimidation we felt at the times when we were being abused). Easier said than done, I know -- but consider the alternative. There's help; see later in this piece.

Because religion is such a loaded subject, I'll say more about it.

Religious Training

The essential selling points of organized religion are a sense of belonging and promises of divine protection against, or being restored from, misfortune -- and the promises of, "later" -- which encourage people to desensitize themselves with religious rationalizations, such as, "God works in mysterious ways".

In Christianity, a primary symbol is The Cross. The Cross was an instrument of torture, death and public intimidation.

The Cross is considered sacred and so people are desensitized to the cruelty it symbolizes; they turn the cruelty of it into the evidence of holiness, "holy suffering", referred to as "The Passion of Christ".

They don't have a realistic sensitivity The Cross; they make an idealistic symbol of it -- righteously, in the official way. Some make an esoteric symbol of it; some even love it. (There is a gospel song called, "The Old Rugged Cross", which sentimentalizes it.)

Some people who have chronic anger may use religious history to justify self-righteous anger (prejudice) toward others (of other religions) or back-biting actions and gossip against members of their own. These "religious sourpusses" tend to speak of "fear of God", rather than, "love of God."

Members of religious heirarchies (i.e., priests, bishops, nuns, etc.) have sometimes been cruel in the name of religious discipline and been abusers (or status seekers) in secret, desensitized to the effects of their actions upon others -- or perhaps secretly enjoying satisfaction in the suffering of others the cruel way some enjoy gossip.

Humanity saw much "Christian" cruelty in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the Nazi movement (populated by those who considered themselves Christian), and in common anti-Semitism.

I emphasize that this desensitization and cruelty exactly conflicts with the teachings, intention, and example of Jesus.

In Judaism, particularly in the Old Testament, stories abound of the cruelties inflicted upon others, whether upon the Hebrews by persecution or by punishment-by-God, or by the Hebrews upon each other or upon other peoples by war or by massacre.

Study of the Scriptures fosters a kind of casualness about those events through mental familiarity because those who study the scriptures (particularly those who have been desensitized) cannot replicate (imagine) within themselves the actual suffering caused by the actions recounted.  Recounting of those actions tends to make them matters more of intellect, abstract idealism, of faith and or of reason, than of feeling–experience. More desensitization.

You may easily find examples in members of other religions, including Islam and even Buddhism, more a sign of these individuals' personal faults than of the religions, themselves. ("People make philosophy out of their state of adaptation." ~~ Adi Da Samraj)

The doctrine of "Manifest Destiny" that led to the conquest of the American west and the abuses and subjugation of the American Indians was justified by passages from the Bible that desensitized people to their effects on the Indians.

In more secular times, the motives of science and commerce have largely replaced the moral teaches of religion, so that moral constraints are lacking.

Science and Technology

Science places doubt upon the subjective experience (emotions and beliefs) of the individual (and even to the sensibilities of animals).

Examples:

• experimentation upon animals and vivisection ("cutting of the living"), as if their feelings were of no consequence or perhaps they have no feelings (notice your reaction in this moment)
• development of increasingly deadly instruments of war (drones, atomic weapons)
• use of environmentally destructive and carcinogenic chemicals in agriculture (e.g., products manufactured by Monsanto and Bayer that cause cancer and decimate insect populations)
• inadequately tested genetically engineered and artificial foods

How sensitive can a scientist (or student of science) be who engages in those practices, when he or she makes research funding or academic achievement or employment the primary criterion of what constitutes acceptable action?

Desensitization.

Commerce: Big Business

The secular cult of commerce places legality over morality or ethics.  The question, "Should it be done?" is often secondary to profitability-motivated, "Can it be done?" Considerations about profit potential often prevail.

Hostile takeovers, stripping employees of their pensions, "revolving door" lobbying, despoiling our environment and outright lying to protect profits are commonplace forms of cruelty excused by legality (or the lack of legal constraints and presence of legal "loopholes").

These behaviors are abuses of Capitalism.

Less obviously, social media addiction, smart-phone obsessive habituation, and environmental degradation also constitute cruelties of commerce because Big Business actively makes them worse.

Even the term for making big profits is cruel:  "making a killing" -- also, in business, expressions like, "killing it", "crushing it", and "steal this [fill in the blank]" for the sake of business profitability.

Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Alcohol and drug abuse suppress or distract from feeling.

Alcohol suppresses the prefrontal lobes of the brain, which provide the discerning intelligence of humans  and self-regulation of behavior. Alcohol also stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain – making acting stupid a pleasure.

Narcotics ("narcos", meaning "related to stupor or a stuporous state") suppress (actually, overwhelm) feeling by simulating (artificially mimicking) the lift produced by the body's self-generated endorphins (pleasure-chemicals of the brain ordinarily produced by successes of one sort or another). Narcotics provide a lift when life-conditions don't cause it.

Thus, we see an epidemic of alcohol and opioid abuse in American society.

Desensitization. You get the idea.

Desire for Pleasure

Wanting to feel less defines pain, wanting to feel more defines pleasure.  Everyone wants to avoid pain and feel pleasure (though sometimes it's reversed --  perverted).

One primal pain is hunger, experienced as appetite. Indulging ones appetite brings relief from hunger pangs (pains), then the pleasure of eating, then satisfaction. What we call satisfaction is the feeling that continuing to eat is less pleasurable than stopping.

However, desensitized people need a more intense feeling to know when to stop eating -- the feeling of fullness or of being stuffed. Desensitized people need more intense stimulation to feel anything.

Hence, the epidemic of obesity and of sexual and other addictions, extreme sports, violent entertainment (including video games), loud music, pornography, over-consumption, social media addiction, the craving for power, economic inflation and unbridled greed.

When we have learned to suppress feeling, the closest safe feeling to pleasure is, relief. Cruelty brings a kind of temporary relief from pent-up anger through "acting out" -- indulging the anger and sending the desire for relief down the pecking order -- bringing the kind of distorted satisfaction gotten by ones original abusers. There's a word for it: "schadenfreude", which means, "taking pleasure in the suffering of others".

So, on one hand, we have desensitization and on the other hand we want pleasure. The result is overindulgence in appetites, exploitation of situations and, in power situations, acts or policies that negatively affect others.

CRUELTY as The Denial of COMFORT or THE thrwarting of Pleasure

Apart from abusers' desire to deny pleasure to others, the denial of pleasure shows up in "institutionalized guilt".

Guilt about pleasure is perpetuated in Christianity as the doctrine of "Original Sin", but it appears as guilt even about healthy appetites.

The denial of pleasure is a kind of penance for Original Sin and The Seven Deadly Sins (even when not warranted). Hence, the term, "guilty pleasures".  I have seen a more extreme form of penance in the practice of self-flagellation (self-whipping of the mortal, sinful body) among Catholics in Mexico during the Easter season.

Among the clergy, the pressures of high standards of religious belief and behavior, of clerical duties, of the "only human", gossipy, sometimes back-biting monastic culture, and of religiously institutionalized rules of sexuality, combined with opportunities to relieve the pressure through secret sexuality make sexual abuse a temptation often enough indulged to appear as scandals in the news.

At Home

Childhood emotional neglect ("CEN") teaches a child that his or her feelings don't matter, that he or she is alone and retards emotional maturation.

A general atmosphere of emotional volatility at home teaches a child that resorting to the parents for comfort is dangerous.

A child may hide (suppress) visible pleasure or enthusiasm to avoid being a visible target for abuse from emotionally unbalanced parents.

A child may even exaggerate his or her suffering in reaction to abuse to make abusive parents feel guilty -- and as a self-oppressing adult become "a downer", if not cruel, to others.

All of these scenarios, by the way, occur more frequently in families with unwanted children.

The conflict between comfort (or pleasure) and guilt (or shame) shows up as self-oppression and the oppression of others.

And the pressure builds.

Desire for Empowerment

The desire for empowerment is another healthy impulse made unhealthy by desensitization. The desire for empowerment sometimes becomes the distorted lust for power.

A kind of pleasure comes with empowerment -- the pleasure of doing what we want and getting what we want -- as natural a pleasure as eating.

Politics, cruel policies, unsound laws and miscarriages of justice that serve the interests of entrenched authorities or power-figures amount to institutionalized sabotage ("oppression").  When combined with the threat of consequences for persisting, such as disapproval or worse, institutionalized sabotage lead to self-sabotage of those affected to avoid those consequences, to resignation, and to pent-up frustration.

It leads to resentment toward others who are succeeding (envy) and to the cruelty of sabotaging them as one has been sabotaged, oneself.

The cruelty shows up as a hard-hearted nature and the impulse to undermine (or not cooperate with) others.  The pent-up anger shows up as self-serving dishonesty and, "If I can't have it, no one else can, either" -- the logic of murder-suicides.

NETWORKS of Corruption and Cruelty

Networks of desensitized cruel individuals develop composed of mutually-validating, mutually-excusing conformist individuals (e.g., think tanks, corporations, news organizations, banking institutions (such as The Federal Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund), social movements, political parties, and international business consortia).

When cruel others made things harder than necessary, for us, and we learned to submit to it for our safety, we also may have accumulated the slow-burning anger of frustration -- along with the tendency to regard abuse of power as an acceptable way to power (because our abusers got away with it) -- and sabotage others to maintain the upper hand to compensate for our frustration.

All of that occurs when we become desensitized to our feelings and, in fear of our abusers, sell out to them and cease to distinguish wholesomeness from abuse, right from wrong. We may say that "the lines are blurred"; it is we who are blurred.

In the mood of secret anger and resentment, we may, with intelligence blurred, adopt the hard-hearted ways of our oppressors against others. This is how some people advance themselves in a power heirarchy (e.g., corporation or political organization) .

SUMMARY

We have been intimidated and suckered in by the sickness, stupidity and cowardice of cruel people with power.

I've outlined some of the forces behind desensitized cruelty. Cruelty to others starts with the memory of cruelty to oneself. That's how one learns (and fails to outgrow) it.

I've described many forms of cruelty, but the underpinnings are all the same:

• naturally wanting to feel pleasure and avoid pain
• sabotage and resignation
• adopting the ways of abusers with phony self-righteousness
• unhandled anger, intimidation and dishonesty perpetuating the entire mess

Cruel people get "whupped" into their cruelty by authorities, power-figures of their lives, social conditions -- and insufficient integrity to come back from the abuses and effects of abuse. They "go over to The Dark Side", which, to them feels safer than confronting the cruelty of others.  The people who fail to hold them accountable are just as much at fault. They are conformists.

A Way Out?

The first thing I may have to do is to address the use of "nonviolent protest".

Non-violent protest, on the moral "high ground", must be employed strategically in concert with other tactics; otherwise, non-violent protest is a cliche of limited value when confronting cruelty, corruption, deceit and violence of one sort or another. It gets laughed at by those in power and doesn't protect protestors from police violence, as we saw at Standing Rock.

While relatively healthy people may be won over by respectful communication and appeal to reason, cruel people are so desensitized and too dense to be influenced by nonviolent demonstrations, alone.  Such people must be "whupped" (or forcefully and persistently opposed) to get their attention and respect by a multi-pronged, organized "coalition" (coalescence of multiple groups in coordinated action -- political, social, economic, and personal).

People resist change. They tenaciously hold on to "what they know" -- in part because their self-image is at stake, in part because they feel their lives are at stake, and in large part because change is inconvenient and taxing, to us.

That's why such people must sometimes be "whupped" back into shape by skilled and careful "counter-whuppers" at least as powerful as those who originally "whupped" them into their distorted shape.

What to Do?

People are already using many familiar tactics:

·       public demonstrations

·       reporting by the news media

·       political commentary

·       speeches

·       private communications

·       on-line social media exposure

·       legal action

·       public confrontations

·       lawsuits

We've seen the effectiveness of these tactics. It's slow going, isn't it?  The ways of cruelty are well-entrenched in the power connections of the world.  How are we to counter them without extraordinary means at the individual level and coordinated action at the collective level?

I'm going to present "extraordinary means", shortly.

What people generally aren't doing are these two steps.

• PREPARATION by SELF-CLEAN-UP: The very first step is to uncover and disarm the ways we have, ourselves, been traumatized by cruelty. You don't want to be oppressed? Clean up the effects in you of oppression. The trauma won't go away, if you don't -- even if circumstances change.
  
  It's about more than anger; it's about how defeat and rationalized resignation change what we do and how we do it.
  
  Trauma is crippling. Cleaning it up isn't just a nicety. It's liberation, claiming your freedom.  Clean-up is required for integrity; integrity is power.  Clean-up is intelligent preparation, as I will explain, further.
  
  
• PREPARATION of EMPOWERMENT: The next step is to make ourselves capable of confronting abusers.
  
  Confrontation and creativity take integrity.  Lack of integrity shows up as shakiness, inability to confront, ineffectuality: disempowerment.
  
  You want to be effective?  Remove "the stopper". Uncover and disarm the fear or anxiety that surfaces as soon as we confront abusers -- which we felt when we were originally abused.
  
  That disarming of fear is called, "empowerment". You do it on an incident-by-incident basis, not as a once-and-for-all achievement. It develops.
  
  (There is no such thing as empowerment by others. Empowerment by others is better called, "permission" or "encouragement" or "authorization.")

These steps, personal clean-up and empowerment -- untraceable and safe, for you -- are the most important steps.  They open the way for recognition of opportunities, ingenuity, and the energy needed to take action.

You don't hear much about personal clean-up because people generally prefer to act upon others (you know -- the ones who are at fault), rather than upon themselves -- and because they haven't experienced something that works well enough to be exciting. 

The very notion of, "empowerment", is already a disempowered notion tainted by mediocrity.  The common idea of empowerment is something like pushing down harder on the accelerator pedal of your car.  What's needed is to take your foot off the brake! and to steer better -- not commonly understood or taught.  We already know the result.

So, people consider changing our way of operating difficult, at best.

However, something new is available for people with initiative:  rapidly effective "personal clean-up and empowerment procedures".  "Rapidly effective" is unusual and because it is unusual, it may seem unrealistic, untrue. Seeming unrealistic isn't the fault of the procedures, but of people stuck in a state of resignation, thinking they know "what's what". 

There's no way to know but to test those procedures in yourself.

I offer two procedures, freely, for the public good. These are anti-stress, self-empowerment procedures you do for and by yourself (or with a partner or mentor).  They awaken and rally imagination, intention, memory, and attention -- the four basic faculties or powers of intelligence.

The names of these procedures are

• The Gold Key Release
• The Trauma Dissolution Procedure

There are others that get at deeply seated, subconscious conditioning in different ways.

It's a matter of using them.  BUT -- ya gotta wanna.

Your first test of The Gold Key Release may be on the irate state (or funk) in which you may find yourself from reading this piece.  Recover your composure. Get your natural empowerment and clarity of mind back.  This is a wake-up call.  Get started, here.

Now, some tactics that depend on preparation by these procedures for effective use.  These are ways of applying pressure to pressure points.

1. Refuse and, if necessary, rebuke abuse (and incompetence) where you experience them, in life -- and insist upon corrections.  Insist on integrity.  Even insist on excellence.  (Of course, you must embody it to insist upon it.)
   
   Choose your battles wisely to make best use of your time and energy.

2. Speak truth to power.
   
   Cruel people are authoritarians who disavow responsibility for their cruelty, or even disavow that it is cruelty. Their excuse is the examples set by their superiors and their superiors' approval of similar behavior. Call it out.
   
   IMPORTANT POINT: Speaking equally involves listening. Don't just persuade or rebuke. Listen to how what you're saying is "landing" in the listener and adjust your approach creatively; listen to the responses spoken by your listener to the point of hearing (curb your impulse to interrupt).  Listen to all they have to say.  Listen for useful "pressure points".
   
   
3. Confront cruelty as high up the chain of command as we can and in a coordinated, unified way, with others.
   
   A preliminary step is to undermine the authority figures of cruel individuals -- to "whup" them whose "whupping" generated more cruel individuals. Do it publicly or privately.
   
   One form of such "whupping" is legal action. Another is ostracism (refusal to interact, as in boycotting).  Another is public verbal confrontation.  Another is humiliation: make cruel people and others in their "network of power connections" a laughing stock. There are others.
   
   Because cruel people are aligned with their cruel oppressors (or people like them), you may expect to hear much protest as we confront their authority figures. As the balance tips, some will give in.

We've seen the beginnings of a turnaround with some Republicans in Congress who have retired, rather than continue to be part of a predatory party of saboteurs of (both) America and world-civilization.

Remember that these are people who have abandoned their feeling-integrity for the safety of mutual approval and the (expected) approval of their superiors and enablers (e.g., lobbyists and political party figures).

These are but starting points for the correction.

Know what you're dealing with.  Go beyond remembering how bad things have been and using those memories to stir yourself (and others) up, as if your responsibility ends, there. Use your imagination to apply pressure to pressure points.  Clean yourself up and prepare yourself.  These are the most important steps to defeating and redirecting cruelty in a wholesome direction. 

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