Coincidentally, I published a story this morning that illustrates your point here. I wrote about an immigrant who was brought to the United States by his parents as a baby. I wrote about how the United States carceral system has treated him like an animal, with appalling cruelty, including over-the-top, demeaning physical cruelty and abject dehumanization.

All the cruelty happened at the behest of a carceral system in Detroit that's run by elected Democrats, not Republicans. Certainly not Trump supporters.

And now?

Trump and his supporters are nurturing those seeds and growing them into something even more cruel.

But the cruelty was always inherent in our system.