While I’m sure cruelty is the point for many politicians and their voters, those politicians serve entirely at the neoliberals discretion, on the condition their abuse never gets in the way of profits.

On the right, that means pandering to fascists, fundamentalists, reactionaries and idiots.

They’re free to inflict whatever abuse they want on the public on the condition it never gets in the way of the insatiable greed and entitlement of the 1%. The moment it does, they’ll be out on their ass.

Unfortunately, this is also true on the left. But rather than abusers, they pander to progressives.

Progressives can talk all the environmentalism and social reforms they want, but they do so on the condition that it never makes any significant difference on the profits of the wealthy.

So they’re allowed to do things like “use tax dollars to pay off the insurance companies”, but they’re not permitted to introduce legislation that would completely undermine an extremely predatory industry.

The moment someone has the power to do anything more than talk about it, you quickly find this neoliberalism has incredible unity. Media companies, politicians, industry groups and pundits from both sides will all hold hands as they stomp the threat into the dirt.

Best of all, they don’t need any grand conspiracy to do so. They communicate entirely with economic dogwhistles.

They’re fully aware that things like deregulation and trickle down never work – they count on it to get rich. But the moment anyone in a position of power speaks out against those ideas, they know it’s their signal to throw everything they can at stopping them.