Prickly City by Scott Stantis for September 28, 2023

Republicans killed it.

I gained empathy through the years.

That funeral was in the early 2000s. Empathy was killed by Continuous Campaigning, followed by Fox “news” and the right wing media structure.

Good come back Carmen . . . . .

Empathy and irony in one cartoon !! Good work Scott.

You won’t be able to buy groceries? Too bad. Artificially creating a recession is more important.

Not dead on the democrats side of the world.

I disagree. Most people, on some level, have individual empathy. The individual act of kindness still exists (at least in my experience). It’s when they consider larger numbers, groups, those “others” that empathy often becomes scarce.

“You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see empathy, Kevin. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip empathy over on its back, Kevin. Empathy lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that, Kevin?”

(If you wish, “Kevin” may be the Lone Bunny of the Apocalypse, but feel free to substitute another of your choice.)

The Republican Party is a thing of the past. What we have today is a loose group of likeminded unethical, un-empathetic, greedy and self centered individuals to whom compromise is an anathema. They don’t serve their constituents or their “party.“ For them, being a representative or a senator means doing only what serves them best.

Empathy still exists. It just that you aren’t allowed to express empathy with anybody outside your tribe without being accused cultural appropriation.

Empathy still exists. It just that it’s hard to do, when you have serious disagreement with someone. It’s a skill that must be developed.

Anyone who advocates a marginal income tax rate of anything close to 100% is unable to empathize at an analytical level.

Anyone who cannot understand someone who strongly disagrees with them about abortion is unable to empathize at an emotional level.

Understanding is not the same as agreeing.

If you do not understand why someone has an opinion or a conclusion you find irrational or abhorrent, you will have no hope of changing their mind.

But you will continue to dehumanize them, to your detriment, too.