HUMAN

 

What does it mean to be “human”? To have all the characteristics associated with being of the next level of primate, or to succumb to the natural instincts of such, as when it is remarked that one’s failures is only being “human”? Of course accusing one of being “human” can also mean having positive "thoughtful" characteristics other than the merely “instinctual.” If we expand the term to that of “humane,” it means “showing compassion and benevolence.” Democrats, for example are accused of being too “human” in that regard (which their voters pretend to be) while many Republicans seem to be the opposite, preferring indifference and malevolence (which they actively stoke in their voters).

Empathy is also a “human” characteristic that is in short supply in this country; the 60s and 70s are a distant memory—few want to jump on board the “Peace Train” or the “Love Train” anymore (unless they want to get arrested on college campuses--so much for "leftist" freedom of speech rights), judging from the music” people listen to these days. A 2011 report in Scientific American tells us that

Humans are unlikely to win the animal kingdom’s prize for fastest, strongest or largest, but we are world champions at understanding one another. This interpersonal prowess is fueled, at least in part, by empathy: our tendency to care about and share other people’s emotional experiences. Empathy is a cornerstone of human behavior and has long been considered innate. A forthcoming study, however, challenges this assumption by demonstrating that empathy levels have been declining over the past 30 years.

The research, led by Sara H. Konrath of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and published online in August in Personality and Social Psychology Review, found that college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. To make matters worse, during this same period students’ self-reported narcissism has reached new heights, according to research by Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University.

In the age of Donald Trump and Taylor Swift, we can only say that things have gotten even worse since then. According to the Interpersonal Reactivity Index; “75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.” We are told that “empathy” was once regarded as an “innate” human trait upon birth; but that is being held in doubt now, with “social context” being a greater determination if one feels “empathy” for other human beings or not. There has been

…the increase in social isolation, which has coincided with the drop in empathy. In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups—ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. Several studies hint that this type of isolation can take a toll on people’s attitudes toward others. Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated, as compared with integrated, individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them, and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others’ trust to cheat them in laboratory games.

Geez, and you wonder why people hate “Mexicans” so much; some people can’t even stand to look at them, let alone interact with them or have them living in their neighborhood.

In a more recent article on the subject in The Atlantic, Xochitl Gonzalez writes

I won’t run through every app that has changed this, but suffice it to say, no one needs to go to an office to chitchat anymore when you can just Zoom all day long. Someone can pick up and drop off our laundry or our takeout or our books or our new clothing purchases without us ever even seeing the person doing it, let alone speaking to them. We can stream our workouts and movies. One- and two-night stands seem quaint or even tedious compared with being able to sext someone after nothing more than a swipe to the right. I have friendships that solely exist now on social media, voices I hear only when I call and the voicemail kicks in. (Someone recently described the act of making a phone call to me as “aggressive.”) Dozens upon dozens of human touch points have been erased from each and every day of our lives.

Gonzalez at 47 has never married and has no children, so I can see how she might miss the “empathy” of those alleged “friends.” Me, I have spent a lifetime being one of those “others” and an “observer” of the words and actions of those  people whose stereotypes and paranoia is their principle source of judgment, and I can tell the difference between “humane” and “inhumane” and where “empathy” falls between the cracks.

She does, however, correctly point out the seeming indifference to mass shootings literally days after they occur, and “elected officials wishing ill health or death on their political enemies. How emotionally healthy are we, as a people, when, in moments of profound and painful tragedy, we feel compelled to insert our political opinions or policy positions? Can we not, just for a moment, feel for the victims?” Yeah, that's you Fox News and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

CNN bemoans the short memory of voters who are suddenly “nostalgic” about the Trump administration, ignoring its foreign policy, labor rights and environmental failures, the initial pandemic policy and its aftermath—the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression that was that final year, and quite frankly its destructive impact on simple human decency; not for no reason has the New York Times call Trump’s last year a “national nightmare” no thanks to his short-sightedness and acceptance of absurd conspiracy theories about what was happening or COVID even being “real.”   

Maybe office workers are “nostalgic” for the times when they could “play work” at home. That Trump is taking credit for the impressive economic rebound since then is typical of his lies and voters’ willingness to believe those lies.

Joe Biden is a “humane” and “empathetic” individual, or at least wants to be. Yet despite the fact that economy has rebounded impressively since 2020 (no thanks to Trump or the Republicans), inflation and gas prices are falling while the stock market is at record levels, and U.S. credibility overseas has rebounded, some people think Biden’s presidency has been a “failure.” I admit that I am one of those who wish he had just ridden off into the sunset after 2024 and let a younger, more “electable” alternative to Trump stand in for him, but the fact is that Biden is a better president than that moral, ethical and criminal faker could ever be.

What did Biden do for the American people? The American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill, The Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, and he restored American leadership abroad by opposing the fascist tendencies of Vladimir Putin. 

What did Trump do? Tax cuts for the rich. Oh, wait he had to do something for you, right? I mean besides keeping your dark hearts well-fed with lies, conspiracies, misinformation and a general lack of empathy for anyone save himself. Well, OK, he only belatedly supported a Democratic Congress’ push for pandemic relief after his disastrous response to it. 

And before that, making “pals” with Russia and North Korea—and making the latter even more dangerous to that part of world by not “follow through” on his promises of “friendship.” Trump’s vacating the Iran nuclear deal only served to destroy the credibility of the “moderates” in Iran. Plain idiocy and “America First” short-sightedness defined the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Trump seemed more at home with dictators than with our allies.

And of course there was the Trump administration’s immigration and border policies—which we know that in 2018 was so “bad” that the likes of Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee used it as her principle cudgel to beat on the heads of voters who might be “on the fence” about voting for a racist like herself (of course she will be re-elected this year for the same reason).

Why do so many voters see Biden in negative terms? We can’t all be that blind, can we? It is because so many lack simple human decency and empathy in themselves to see it in his policies? It is certainly behind the sudden movement against DEI policies, which we should see now as a desire to return to a segregated and discriminatory past.

People without simple human decency “judge” by what they think they “see” and by what they have been told because they don’t know any better or want to, and don’t bother talking to the people they have been told to hate without even bothering to understand and inquire about the simply question  of “why.” They have been told one thing, and choose to be misinformed, unlike readers of the Los Angeles Times and the Cato Institute:

I guess not many people saw Clint Eastwood's film The Mule, I mean who would suspect a white grandpa? 

Why do many people think Biden’s presidency has been a “disaster” when it definitely has not been one compared to the previous one, which people are foolishly “nostalgic” for? Republicans in House want to deny him “victories,” such as the Senate border bill or re-authorizing refunds for student debt relief, especially those ripped-off by phony unaccredited “colleges” run by those with “conservative” political and social propaganda agendas.

The Biden administration has also overseen a more impressive than expected number of employed persons that has allowed more productivity to remain in the country rather than “importing” it to help other countries’ economies, as Trump’s “America First” policy “inadvertently” accomplished. 

And guess what? Whether you want to hear it or not, Biden’s “failed” immigration policy has a great deal to do with it, since as noted before, those millions of “other” unaccounted workers filling those excess jobs are—you “guessed it”—undocumented workers. That’s the idiocy of our racist immigration policy that makes legal entry so difficult for Hispanics but favors Asians taking mostly higher-paying office jobs from “dumb” white Americans.

Those Hispanic immigrant workers who do dangerous jobs, like the six on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore who were killed while doing early morning pot-hole filling, were just some of the thousands—well, millions—who do such work, no questions asked about their “legal” status as long as they agree to do that work. 

Do you feel “empathy” for them—or would you say they wouldn’t have been killed if they were not here, as that woman in Shenandoah, PA said about that immigrant who was kicked in the head to death by white “kids” who were merely members of the high school football team, a murder initially covered-up by the local police chief?

So again, why has the “human” administration of Biden been seen in “negative” terms by a majority of voters? Because far-right Republicans and media have been screaming all day and night (that’s you, you Nazi Laura Ingraham) about immigration and the border “crisis” that has been fueled by almost a century’s worth of short-sighted and racist immigration policies targeting specifically those from countries in Latin America. 

Few want to accept the fact that if there is a “crisis,” it is one that Republicans who thrive on governmental chaos want there to be every election cycle. If the Democrats controlled the House, we would have the harshest immigration bill yet (the so-called Senate “bipartisan” bill), and one that would pay for this:

 

 

And of course if people in this country were actually “human” they might actually be interested to know why migrants are coming to this country in such numbers, and maybe even convince Congress to hold hearing not about “trafficking” but why the 99 percent of migrants are just simple people trying to escape violence in the countries, much of it fueled by the actions of the U.S. If you want to “stop it,” why not actually take the time to learn the root causes of it, and maybe by addressing those reasons it the “crisis” might abate.

But no, the border “crisis” is just another symptom of this country’s general lack of humanity, empathy, compassion and benevolence (outside of “sanctuary cities”). Bigoted ignorance is no excuse for it, but many people, it’s all they can “muster.” But that shouldn’t be “surprising,” as this country is becoming increasingly tired of “dealing” with the homeless crisis and its failure to support affordable housing. As Forbes tells us, while “Texas law criminalizes people for trying to survive when there are no other options available—it does nothing to address homelessness. But Texas is not alone in adopting such measures.”

We don’t even give a damn about the “legals,” for God’s sake or not.