And another thing.


Caine’s comment on my last post brought to mind something I wrote on a friend’s Facebook post yesterday:

Sadly, I used to have much more empathy and compassion for conservatives than I do now. When their political orientation comes down to “I got mine, f*ck you and f*ck them” – and yes, it really is that simple, narcissistic, infantile and un-nuanced – I no longer find myself able to give a single, solitary f*ck about them. I can *understand* them, and to a certain limited extent have basic empathy for them as I would any human being. But I can no longer honestly say that I don’t wish for them that they reap exactly what they have sown. And then some. I am not proud of this, BTW. But “be the better person” no longer cuts it for me as a survival mechanism (if it ever really did). Not when conservatives are *by nature* opposed to equality in principle, and indifferent (at best) to unnecessary suffering, except for their own.

And in case you were wondering, that also goes for the conservatives in the Democratic Party Squirrel People.

Comments

  1. Parse says

    “Be the better person” is a terribly-effective silencing tactic, because it spins the easiest course of action (not responding, going along to get along, etc) as the morally right one. But turning the other cheek only works if the other person would feel ashamed about their actions when they’re pointed out to them. The number of Trump supporters who reveled in being called ‘deplorables’ shows that’s no longer the case (if it ever was to begin with).

    Personally, I’ll start trying to feel empathy again for conservatives when they start showing that they’re capable of empathy for strangers. The social progress some Republicans make – on things like accepting gay marriage or treating opioid addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal one – all stems from them closely knowing somebody who is impacted by the policies they championed. It doesn’t count as empathy if the only reason they change their stance is because it was hurting themselves.

  2. says

    Parse:

    Personally, I’ll start trying to feel empathy again for conservatives when they start showing that they’re capable of empathy for strangers.

    My days of empathy towards conservatives of any stripe are over. I’ll be 59 in nine days, and my whole life, cons have never once shown the least desire to treat others as full human beings who should have full human rights. It’s always about dominion – dominion over people, dominion over religious belief, dominion over the planet. It’s all about control, controlling others, and over my lifetime, cons have gotten worse. Every single decade, worse, worse, worse. Fuck them all.

  3. says

    Parse:

    The social progress some Republicans make – on things like accepting gay marriage or treating opioid addiction as a medical issue, not a criminal one – all stems from them closely knowing somebody who is impacted by the policies they championed. It doesn’t count as empathy if the only reason they change their stance is because it was hurting themselves.

    It’s not just Republicans. Conservatives in the Democratic Party are a major, major problem. And they are in charge for exactly the reasons Caine points out above: the pathological drive to dominate and control.

    Caine:

    my whole life, cons have never once shown the least desire to treat others as full human beings who should have full human rights.

    And yet people are somehow expected to “compromise” and “work with” conservatives, who think they’re less than human, treat them with contempt and actively desire to keep them down. Yeah, no.