How do describe cruelty?

Peters started with childhood memories of little cruelties committed by children “just because they could”.

He continued by envisioning the many cruelties committed in history.  The primordial image of “the wolf” raises its head here.  Who is afraid of the big bad Wolf?  And weirdly, biological observations of wolf behavior occasionally confirm the intuition of the folklore.  Talking to them is useless.

Peters moved on to specific cases of torture.

In all his examples, individuals act as instruments of a Political Power while inflicting cruelty.

Peters pointed out that the cruel person has two faces: The face of the one who tortures others and the face of the regular family person, living an upstanding life, who is just like you and me.  He called it “doubling”.

“Doubling” may be defined as “the wolf putting on sheep’s clothing”.  The person in sheep’s clothing talks a shifty technical vocabulary that masks the wolf’s predatory procedures.

In the same way, dictators “hold elections” in order to “appear legitimate”.  The whole charade is bogus.  The words are changed in order to advance the Powerful.

Once every word has been “redefined” by the “Powers That Be”, cruelty becomes the social norm.

The same ploy is evident in people diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  These people can act with exceptional cruelty.  At the same time, they can manipulate words in order to seem perfectly normal.  They will not play by the rules.  Instead, they create the rules as they go along.  They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Beware of the Apparently Normal Person who manipulates Words for the Advancement of the Powers that Be.