Empathy in America: An Obituary

[babylonsister]

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/12/20/empathy-america-obituary/

Empathy in America: An Obituary
December 20, 2017 / John Pavlovitz


Some days life hands you a gift.

Some days you get the answer to a question laid out in clear, bold type.

This morning, waking to the news that the GOP had bulldozed their tax bill through under the cover of night, during a week when many Americans are preparing for the Christmas holiday, I couldn’t quite place the sick feeling I had in my stomach. It was different than the one I’ve grown accustomed to this year.

It wasn’t merely the disgust watching a group of opportunistic political predators make a last, shameless cash grab before the approaching midterm election reckoning. This has been their pattern since January 20th, and the nausea it induces is nothing new.

It wasn’t the frustration from the continued coddling of the super wealthy and the exploiting of the most vulnerable; the poor, and the sick. This has become the status quo in this Presidency and sadly it’s barely noteworthy anymore.

No, it was something more than the normal exasperation the past twelve months has yielded, but I couldn’t quite name it.

Then this landed in my timeline:



And there it was in black and white: clarity and summation.

There in those 280 characters was the thing I couldn’t name but recognized when I saw it: what it looks like when empathy dies and jerks dance on its grave.

This is the sickness America is afflicted with and this is the source of my fresh grieving today.
This is what it looks like when any semblance of compassion for another hurting human being is replaced with a desperate begging for the applause of a faceless crowd.

more...

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2017/12/20/empathy-america-obituary/

[BigmanPigman]

1. R.I.P U.S.A.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I wrote $500 in checks today to organizations providing medicine, food,

and shelter to those without. But they were supporting the needy in Yemen and Syria.