Republicans lack empathy
and I don't mean empathy simply in the sense of being able to feel someone else's pain, although they clearly can't do that, either. I mean in a broader sense, that they can't imagine why other people react to stimuli, without considering how they themselves in the same situation would react.
I've been thinking about this in terms of the enormous brou-ha-ha about kneeling for the national anthem, which the right has successfully portrayed as disrespect for our country, and for veterans in particular.
If that were truly what the kneeling was about, why on earth would professional football players want to show disrespect for our country and veterans? Professional football players are among the wealthiest athletes in the world; they revel in bodies the rest of us can only dream about, they have celebrity usually of the most positive kind--why on earth wouldn't they be among the biggest boosters of the USA?
If you were a professional football player, would you show disrespect for your country?
That's where the RW falls down. It seemingly doesn't occur to them to wonder why, if no sane person in the situation professional football players find themselves in, would behave in this way--surely they would concede that if *they* were professional football players, *they* wouldn't do this--why do they assume this ridiculous non-fact? I'd like someone to ask a prominent RWer if he--because it's mostly he's here--as a PFP would want to show disrespect for our country. If the answer is no, of course not, then ask him why he thinks anybody else would be so different from him?
It's a convenient way to ignore the explanations, given clearly and often and so simply a child can understand, that the protest isn't a show of disrespect; it's a protest against injustice that ought to be joined in by every right-thinking person of whatever skin tone. But even if the RW chooses to ignore the truth, why do they have to go so far the other way and demonize the protests and protesters? Why do they embrace this insane suggestion that PFPs disrepect the USA?
And the inescapable answer, as it unfortunately always seems to be these days, is rooted in the fact that the injustice being protested is injustice against people of color. If anybody has any better explanation for this insanity, I wish they'd let me know because I am desperate for some good news about relations among people of differing skin tones.
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