Lack of Empathy Is Not the Problem

[moonshaz]

Progressives want education, health care, and housing for everyone. And we’re the close-minded ones?

By Katha PollittIf I have to read one more article blaming liberal condescension toward the red states and the white working class for the election of Trump, I’m moving to Paris, France. These pieces started coming out even before the election and

Comments

[blackjedii]

Hmm. Needs "opinion piece"

If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy. We want everyone to have health care, for example, even those Tea Partiers who in the debate over the Affordable Care Act loudly asserted that people who can’t afford treatment should just die.
Except Nancy Pelosi, the current highest leftist in government declared that an actual functional health care system (ie Medicare for all) is a pipe dream and shouldn't be included in the party platform until she was largely pushed into it. Tom Perez, current DNC chairman, was equally 'meh' about the idea.

We want everyone to be decently paid for their labor, no matter how low they wear their pants-somehow the party that claims to be the voice of working people has no problem with paying them so little they’re eligible for food stamps, which that same party wants to take away. Except Hillary Clinton was a proud supporter of TPP which while it was excellent wrt China economic containment, was going to undercut even MORE American jobs. Oh

[moonshaz]

"Opinion piece" is there among the tags, has been all along. 😊

I guess I have a mre nuanced view--or what I think of as a more nuanced view--on a lot of these issues.

First of all, I don't actually know exactly what Nancy Pelosi said, and I would love to know the exact quote. Did she say she thought Medicare for all is a bad idea, or just that she thinks it's not doable? If the latter, did she mean it's not doable right now or not ever? Does she feels it's not doable because it wouldn't work or just that getting it past the Republicans in congress would be impossible? To me, those are important nuances. Either way, I'm sorry to hear that she's evidently so skeptical about something that I think is a great idea, but I don't necessarily see that skepticism as evidence that she doesn't want us to have a workable health care system. Again, I haven't read the original quote, so I don't know exactly what all she did say, and for all I know, it could have been worse that I think it was. But based on what I do know, that's how I'm seeing it

[lovedforaday]

You'll forgive me if I still feel deeply alienated from "the Left" who currently want to talk the talk with righteous fury

couldn't tell if you were talking about the One True Left or ~neoliberals~

[blackjedii]

idk i expect there are far too many versions of "the Left' who expect us all to act and speak as a collective i never got my initiation package

But the constant outrage and umbrage in place of policy has gotten me super-exhausted. Doesn't help that we have primaries in Virginia on Tuesday so we're literally seeing WE'LL KICK OUT IMMIGRANTS!! WE WON'T KILL BABIES! TRUMP! and it is only going to get worse

[adelheide]

Honestly, the only people on the Left that have been holier-than-thou are pundits and the same kind of self-righteous assholes that populate Facebook and Twitter. And I haven't even heard that much from them.

I think it's Conservatives that invent these things to rile up their base. "The Left calls you all rednecks! The Left thinks you are stupid! The Left looks down on you!" They never actually speak to someone or read something from the Left. They just take what they are given as face value. Which has always been a problem on the Right. Not enough critical thinking and examination, just taking everything they are told is gospel.

Now, to be honest, I have stated that I do hold people who voted for Trump in low regard. Not because they are rednecks or the white working class. Because even if they aren't racist, xenophobic, stupid, or sexual predators, they voted for someone who was. Their vote said, "That behavior is perfectly acceptable." That behavior is never acceptable and anyone who would vote for that doesn't

[moonshaz]

I agree with every word of this, especially the part about holding Trump voters in low regard. I include my own siter and bil in that, and (especially) their oldest son, who is a hateful, misogynistic, alt right, fake news spewing pos who I am embarrassed to share dna with. His parents are not well-educated, they watch too much Fox news, and they eat up sll the crap Sonny Boy spoon feeds to them. But he should know better. He has no excuses like lack of education (he graduated from law school, for pete's sale); he's just scum. 🤐

[icetypejim]

The thing the last two years showed me is that a lot of these "empathetic" progressives and liberals will drop all pretense and become full-on poor-bashing, racist, misogynists if you refuse to line up with their platform. People could literally say "this candidate supported the bombing of a region my family lives in so I can't support her in good conscience" or "the party supports a platform that arms terrorist regimes" and they'd be ready to call you an ignorant traitor. Any leftist woman who didn't line up to unconditionally support Clinton was said to be doing it to impress men or because they were brainwashed. Black voters who were unenthusiastic needed to understand all that the party had done for them [citation needed].

Liberal empathy has some obvious and severe limits and when you dare to challenge them they become indistinguishable from their conservative counterparts (which explains why they consistently suck at putting up a real fight against them).

[arisma]

Absolutely agreed. The handwaving of valid concerns in favor of pure hubris goes from the top to the bottom.

[ladycyndra]

Yes exactly!