Structural Kindness vs. Structural Cruelty
A Credible Vision for Democracy
History shows fascism defeated, but what’s left always falls short, imo, indicating the time to act with a credible vision is now—defeat in Germany left a nation divided, in Italy weak governments and corruption, in Spain and Portugal decades of silence and fragile transitions, all proving that waiting only deepens the cost.
While Bernie Sanders is fantastic in taking his message on the road, as a far left hero, he’s just not considered a credible alternative. Problem with Sanders is he imagines a ‘revolution,’ but Americans are just too comfortable to choose war—most aren’t willing to embrace something that feels like war, even metaphorical. That mismatch between rhetoric and reality leaves a vacuum at the very moment action is most needed. Especially when Americans tend toward apathy about voting when they feel a lack of connection to what matters in their lives.
What will resonate is not a call to fight, but a vision that feels plausible, tangible, and protective—a direct alternative to TrumpAdmin’s structural cruelty and Project 2025’s dystopia. That’s where structural kindness enters as both counterweight and counter-myth: built on the plausibility for real change.
Power of structural kindness is in being woven into the very structure of representative government, augmenting our founding principles—equal rights, personal autonomy, fairness, and dignity—as design—not simply returning to old norms, which neither motivate nor effect change.
The contrast becomes clear when you look at how our systems are designed and used—whether they serve cruelty or kindness.
Structural cruelty treats people as expendable inputs, measuring worth only in profit or obedience, with policies designed to extract and punish.
Structural kindness treats people as inherently valuable, building systems that safeguard dignity, fairness, and viability regardless of wealth or power. In cruelty, tariffs become a weapon that hurts the many for the pride of the few; in kindness, economic levers become a tool to balance opportunity, protect livelihoods, and strengthen shared stability.
The same structures—security services, trade policy, law—can either embody cruelty or kindness depending on whether they serve personal power or collective dignity.
Tariffs under Trump reflect a worldview of the wealthy, where people aren’t treated with dignity, but only as sources of extraction—their worth reduced to what profit can be taken. If you can’t keep up, if your living is squeezed, that’s treated as a personal failure, not as evidence of a rigged system. In that logic, people become disposable—valued only for how much money can be wrung out of them.
It’s up to voters to choose. Democrats need only to hold this aim fully and legislate in accordingly, for trust in our government—designed for their wellbeing—to take hold.
Read more here:
https://progressive4kindness.blogspot.com/2025/08/structural-kindnessan-imperative-for.html
© Leslie Bianchi
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