As a neurologist, I care for some of society’s most vulnerable individuals – children with severe disabilities who are often mocked, rejected or misunderstood. My career is rooted in supporting people with physical and cognitive differences, educating about empathy and respect for human diversity, and applying the principles of science and medicine to improve the lives of those who face challenges of one kind or another.
In that light, President Donald Trump’s public admonition to a female reporter in November — “Shut up, you pig” — was heartbreaking and continues to resonate weeks later. For some, it was an unpleasant, if misogynistic, shaming insult. For me, the remark instantly evoked Piggy, the vulnerable and marginalized character in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and revealed something far more troubling: a stage of domination, denigration and subjugation of those deemed less worthy.
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The phrase’s rapid spread across media platforms underscored a deeper danger — one that has become more troubling as public displays of intimidation and condemnation grow. It is not just the cruelty of the words, but the authority of the speaker and the joy of many in his audience that makes them so corrosive.
“Shut up piggy” is not a joke. It’s an illustration of how bullying has become normalized and an affront to the people I care about and the values that guide my work.
Others have drawn parallels between “lord of the flies” and our political moment. In 2020, The New York Times published Jennifer Finney Boylan’s essay “The President of the Flies”, in which she described feeling thrown into “a cruel and hostile place… where people with disabilities were mocked, immigrants… were insulted, and taking women by their private parts was… A-OK”.
Boylan compared the “Flies” boys’ descent into the wild to a society in which democratic norms erode, expertise is rejected, and cruelty is sanctioned. Her metaphor captured deep moral decay and warned of the danger of unchecked power divorced from reason, science, and common truth.
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Yet even as Boylan wrote, darker chapters remain: the attack on the US Capitol; abolishing asylum protections; and the normalization of aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that deprive people of color of due process in the first place. What began as bragging about the seizure of women’s bodies metastasized into a broader posture of possession—an expanding sense of what can be seized without consequence: democratic institutions, marginalized populations beyond our borders, and—most recently—territories and entire nations framed as objects to be claimed. Golding captured this descent in Lord of the Flies, where casual cruelty gradually hardens into a loss of restraint and desire for control.
These events raise a troubling question: What has become of a society that greets such claims of entitlement with indifference—or even approval? When targets are distant, vulnerable, or politically inconvenient, outrage seems to dissipate. Increasingly, the United States feels less like a democratic exemplar than a cautionary tale about how quickly ethical benchmarks can be lost.
In Golding’s novel, Piggy is intelligent, physically frail and socially marginalized. He is mocked—and ultimately killed—for the qualities that make him indispensable. When his glasses, the symbol of knowledge and reason, are shattered, civilization collapses into the wild.
The parallels today are hard to ignore. Scientific expertise is ridiculed. Anti-vaccine rhetoric is ramping up. Universities are presented as threats. Books are banned, history sanitized and the facts themselves suspect. Like Piggy’s broken glasses, our collective means of enlightenment are destroyed.
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As a physician, I see the consequences of this erosion. Public health experts are being harassed. Families don’t trust life-saving medical advice. Vulnerable children absorb a cultural message that intellect and difference make them despicable. What makes this moment especially dangerous is not just who initiates the cruelty, but who echoes it.
In “lord of the flies“, it’s not Jack, the overt villain, who says ‘Shut up, Piggy,’ but Ralph, the boy aligned with order and conscience. This is the moral turpitude Boylan warned of: the moment when the self-righteous begin to engage in degradation. That’s what made the fallout of this remark so disturbing. The piggy spread widely among Trump supporters and leaders, but also Trump memes have spread widely among Trump supporters and leaders.The very behaviors we teach children to avoid—mockery, humiliation, ridicule—have become entertainment, modeled by adults in positions of authority.
This casual embrace of cruelty—and willingness to look the other way as acts of intimidation, coercion, and lawlessness pile up—reveals something deeper. “Hush, Piglet” shows that bullying is acceptable, vulnerability is shameful, intellect is unwelcome, and force—not dialogue—is the currency of public life. It’s not a passing insult, but a wake-up call, reverberating against the barriers I’ve spent my career trying to overcome.
In Golding’s novel, the Beast is an imaginary external threat, but it is Simon who tells the most unsettling truth before he too is killed: “Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it’s just us.”
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This is the real warning.
The greatest danger is not a single leader, but a collective moral drift—a human capacity for dehumanization when norms collapse. Leaders do not invent this darkness; unlocks it.
We are not innocent bystanders. History shows where dehumanization leads – not through lone tyrants, but through ordinary people acclimating to the erosion of decency. Like Golding’s boys, we have shown ourselves willing to normalize cruelty, savor humiliation, and allow the expansion of power to go unchallenged. We cannot claim innocence, but as professionals, parents, educators, and voters, we can resist the further disintegration of our civic soul.
As we begin a new year, the question remains, more urgent now than ever:
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Who will save us if not ourselves?
Jennifer Lederman Friedman, MD, is a physician in San Diego and clinical professor in the departments of neuroscience and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. She has dedicated her career to supporting people with severe neurological and developmental conditions and promoting public understanding of disability. Outside of medicine, she co-created and directs the Understanding Differences Program, a California Golden Bell Award-winning curriculum that encourages compassion and teaches students to approach differences with curiosity, empathy, and respect.
Jennifer Friedman’s statements reflect her individual views and not the views of the University of California, the Regents of the University of California or UC San Diego, its officers, agents or employees.
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