I could very much see how, by not being able to understand certain situations, someone might assume that cruelty was the point, but it dismisses the reasons a person or group might attempt something. Cruelty is rarely the point.

The only way we can stop abuses is by doing away with simplistic “chant”-like phrasing and finding the real issues behind things.

To use your example, policing. It’s a complex one, but I can assure you that in no police training ever tells the trainees to be massive dicks and injure every minority they see. The point can be power. The point can be maintaining the letter of the law, and at their sole discretion. The point can be self-preservation out of fear for themselves. We can’t know all of them, and they change in the moment depending on the situation.

If cruelty was the point, then we could just appoint non-cruel people to be officers and the problem is solved, but that isn’t the case. We have to address the underlying issues which are different for every officer. That’s why it’s complex. We can start with systemic corrections such as de-escalation policies being the default, choosing different response teams for different issues, removal of lethal weapons, and harsher punishments for missteps. Those have been found to be effective. But simply hand-waving away things as “cruelty is the point” doesn’t help fix the situation, it dismisses it. We must come at bad situations with ways to stop them, not simply be angry at them.