ABSTRACT
In August 2016, Donald Trump lowered the bar even further than he has in the past when he called Mexicans who illegally entered the country rapists and drug dealers, stated he wanted to ban Muslims from coming into the United States, etc. These inflammatory, if not dangerous, comments are part of a wider movement in American politics to empty political discourse of any meaningful substance, turning it mostly into a form of rhetorical theater of hate, bigotry, humiliation, and shame designed to mimic a larger culture of stupidity, insecurity, and spectacle. Civic attachments in the Unites States are disappearing in the age of precarity, isolation, and shame. Neoliberalism defines itself through a culture of cruelty by disdaining any form of compassion, legitimizing the discourse of rabid individualism, and insisting that everything is for sale, including human dignity. A more theoretical language produced by Marx talked about alienation as a separation from the fruits of one's labor.
