Ancient spectators who celebrated conquering gladiators in the arena elevated despised slaves into celebratory worship…for as long as the hero was a winner.  Other wretches in the holding cells were merely fodder for the entertainments with lions.  We look at these gory cinematic scenes today and maybe ponder how human beings, then, could sink to such depravity. 

Barbarity  thrives when the victims are not recognized as human…something else, people deserving of their miserable fate.  In “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, apprehended individuals are housed in packed cages, rounded up because they are “murderers, rapists, the worst of the worst”-- a heinous distortion from our Serial Liar, who must know that the mix of inmates includes many undocumented workers whose sin was trying to find a better life, others with no criminal convictions or arrests for petty crimes, and people living legally in the U.S.  Most are united by the colors of their skin.

Conditions at the site would not be tolerated in regulated U.S. jails and prisons:  packed cells, unsanitary conditions, untreated medical issues, spoiled food, mosquito infestations, 24-hour lighting, what many call “psychological torture.”  Maybe inmates are expected to turn on each other.

Trump jokes about the prison in the swamps of the Everglades and prisoners who try to escape:  “Snakes are fast but alligators — we’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. ... Don’t run in a straight line, run like this.” The National Republican Congressional Committee is raising money by selling T-shirts with the image of a smiling alligator and this message: “ICE WITH A BITE.”

Turns out we aren’t so different from those howlers in the Roman Colosseum, unless our response is to vomit and demand that our corrupt leadership be eliminated not by lions but by votes.