Donald Trump's presidency makes clear that the elements of totalitarianism are still with us in the 21st century and have crystalized into new forms.

These include the accumulation of power in the hands of the financial elite, the crushing of dissent, the frenzied appeals to national greatness, the reckless expansion of military power, the appeal to law and order, the cult of the saviour, and the demonization of individuals on the basis of their race, country of origin, and religious beliefs, among other practices.

But totalitarianism also has another underside that amounts to the merging of an ideology of hardness and a culture of cruelty.

In a culture of cruelty, policies are produced that treat the most vulnerable with contempt, relegating them to zones of social abandonment, and forcing them to inhabit a society increasingly indifferent to their misfortunes, deprivations and human suffering.

Under the Trump administration, the repressive state and market apparatuses that exercised cruel power and produced a culture of cruelty in the 19th century have returned with a vengeance, producing new levels of aggression, hardship and extreme violence.

A culture of cruelty has become the mood of our times - a spectre of insensitivity and lack of compassion that hovers over the ruins of democracy.

Under Trump's administration, the culture of cruelty has taken on a sharper edge as it has moved to the centre of political power, adopting an unapologetic embrace of nativism, xenophobia and white nationalist ideology, as well as an in-your-face form of racist demagoguery.

Focusing on a culture of cruelty as one register of authoritarianism allows us to more deeply understand how bodies and minds are violated and human lives destroyed.

For instance, Trump's 2017 budgetary proposals, much of which written by the hyper-conservative Heritage Foundation, will create a degree of imposed hardship and misery that defies any sense of human decency and moral responsibility.

This is a demolition budget that will inflict unprecedented cruelty, misery and destitution on millions of citizens and residents.

Moreover, Trump's populist rhetoric collapses under the weight of his efforts to make life even worse for the rural poor who will have $2.6-billion cut from infrastructure investments largely used for water and sewage improvements as well as federal funds used to provide assistance so they can heat their homes.

Trump's mode of governance is no longer modelled on "The Apprentice." It now takes its cues from "The Walking Dead."

Poor students will be budgeted out of access to higher education as a result of a $3.9 billion cut from the federal Pell grant program, which provides tuition assistance for low-income students entering college.

Federal funds for public schools will be redistributed to privately run charter schools, while vouchers will be available for religious schools.

Medical research will suffer and people will die because of the proposed $6 billion cut to The National Institutes of Health.

Trump has also called for the elimination of The National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Institute of Museum and Library Service - making clear that his contempt for education, science, and the arts is part of an aggressive project to eliminate those institutions and public spheres that extend the capacity of people to be imaginative, think critically and be well-informed.

Yet, simultaneously, Trump does nothing to lessen or eliminate the corporate control of mainstream media, insuring that it functions largely as a propaganda machine for the financial elite and major corporations.

The $54 billion removed from the budgets of 19 agencies designed to help the poor, students, public education, academic research and the arts will be used to increase the military budget by $54 billion and build a useless and expensive wall along the Mexican border.

Militarization, security and fear become the toxic rationales and legitimating registers for draining money from programs that benefit the public good, providing much needed aid in the form of loans, federal aid and basic resources.

The winners will be the Departments of Defence, Homeland Security, the private prison industry, and the institutions and personnel needed to expand the police state.

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What Trump has provided in this budget proposal is a blueprint for eliminating the remnants of the welfare state while transforming American society into a "war-obsessed, survival-of-the fittest dystopia."

The moral obscenity and reactionary politics that inform Trump's budget are tantamount to a declaration of war against the basic ideals of justice and compassion central to a democracy.