They love him for his cruelty. Not in spite of it.

Alicia Machado crowned Miss Universe

Cruelty is the act he does best. It’s the quality that made him famous – a TV show that revolved around the moment when he fired and humiliated a different person each week. He enjoyed “firing” all those people and America enjoyed watching him do it.

Bullying a Gold Star family, bullying a woman who gained weight, bullying Mexicans, Muslims, refugees, and disabled people – these are classic expressions of racism, classism, and sexism, but the underlying quality uniting them all is personal cruelty.

His jokes, such as they are, are always made at the expense of others. His eyes light up when he thinks of a novel insult, or gets to revive an old one.

The serial adulterer crowed from the stage about how he was planning to say something “extremely rough” to his opponent, obviously something about her husband’s adultery. But he stopped himself! He couldn’t bring himself to do it!

One act of cruelty avoided for perhaps five minutes until he got off the stage and started congratulating himself for his forbearance. “Out of respect for Chelsea!” he crowed. Thus committing the very act of cruelty that he was bragging about not committing.

If elected, he will be the first openly, instinctively cruel man to be President of the United States.

The people who support him are cruel, too. They enjoy his cruelty as entertainment and look forward to his cruelty as policy. They support a man who built a career out of cruelty. These people are not nice, kind, or good people, no matter what they think of themselves. They’re just like him -- they should be ashamed of themselves.

But we all know that’s just not going to happen.