Just going by your previous commentary.
Track records matter.
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Yeah, the other topic was from when I was mining the absolute depths of depression, though strangely enough I did not realize that at the time. Funny how that works. āHigh functioningā, I guess youād say.
The blog post I cited is centered around the concept of emotional labor somehow being āfree.ā Which it isnāt, and never has been. The asymmetry of communication on the internet, where any average person can āinteractā with a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand people in a few hours makes this cost disparity far more visibleā¦ if not exactly obvious. Humans simply werenāt built to do this, and if they try to do it, they kindaā¦ hurt themselves. So you have to be somewhat protective of your compassion energy, itās not this infinite well to draw on.
(Toy Story 4 is still a great movie though, and does get to the point I was trying to make in that other topic. If you havenāt seen Soulā¦ whoo boy that one hits hard as well. Haha fun movies about toys! 
)
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If I had to describe my actual emotions about their loss the word would be: ambivalent.
I feel sorry for her in the sense that I can empathize with losing some one.
But I can also empathize with some one being fed up with this whole situation to such a degree that they just feel contempt.
Beyond that itās not like sheās some one close to me and thereās a real tendency online I see to expect others to perform an almost deeply narcissistic level of pious sympathy. Itās just not a realistic expectation and all it ends up doing is encouraging people to lie or engage in massive amounts of denial.
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Just to be clear, the start of this thread was projecting schafenfreude/hate/malice onto indifference. Thereās a massive gap between not expending thought on someone and actively enjoying them being harmed. Just like it isnāt mocking to say that the wife of a politician probably shares political positions with them and made the same performative acts like not wearing masks as a part of a political strategy. Thereās nothing mean being said in anything I just said and yet thatās the so called desire for harm done here.
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Can we stop this, please. Not all of us are Trump supporters down here.
Iām really sick of people sneering at me for where I live.
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Which makes it āperfectly acceptableā to try to disseminate your own misery unto other people, nay, a whole forum, evenā¦ when we donāt even have the ability to ignore you, even if we wanted to.
Noted.
Indeed, letās not lose sight of that fact; that this entire conversation is only happening because someone took it upon themselves to project their own skewed perceptions/preconceived notions about āliberalsā are, and how they are āsupposed toā behave - signifying their own supposed moral superiority.
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As I said, I didnāt even realize I was depressed. Nor is there any requirement that anyone reply to (or even read) a particular topic.
As far as this topic goes, so we can actually be on topic, I tend to agree with
and
Thereās a base level of functional humanity that everyone expects and should get as a fellow human being. But beyond that, as far as āextraā goes, it really depends, because there is a cost. None of us are infinite wells of compassion.
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Emotional labour and its transactional and supply/bandwidth elements (which I believe yourāre discussing) arenāt the problem in and of themselves. Most humans ā and from a political and societal viewpoint most liberals and progressives ā get along fine in this regard.
But when emotional labour is demanded of one unconditionally, without compensation (as in the case of a lot of women and minorities who are in caring professions) or without realistic chance or history of reciprocation (e.g. from conservatives who mockingly reject empathy), and when one is further scolded when one doesnāt offer it in sufficient quantity in that context, it becomes a vehicle for abuse.
When that vehicle is then used by someone to score cheap political points and/or signal their own supposed virtue, the legitimate ethical discussion to be had on the subject of how much compassion is owed to someone who is the partial or full author of their own (sometimes fatal or life-altering) misfortune goes out the window.
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Preach it! hear, here!
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What part of āIā did you miss here?
Iām free to view the choices I make in how I treat others as I wish. I get that you have differing opinions and seem to be a far, far more cynical man than I am, but please do not tell me how to approach something I see as one of my core values. I am going to repeat. āI donāt view compassion as an exertion of energy, noā
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Iām sorry. Iāll clarify. The family I was referring to are in a 79-83% voting Trump county and have Trump yard signs and bumper stickers. By no means is everyone from that area, in fact not even everyone from my family from that area, a Trumper. But those people are.
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Thank you. Given that my deep south state just flipped, itās really irritating to keep hearing how the south is merely full of trumpers. Even states that went for Trump arenāt all solid red.
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from t.s. eliotā
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.ā
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
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If anything the Covid situation is similar to drinking and driving.
Itās the frustrating cliche of the drunk driver that kills a busload of orphans but comes through without a scratch themselves. On top of that, with Covid there are no legal consequences, and the asshole laughs and claims he had nothing to do with their deaths, since the dangers of drunk driving are fake news propaganda.
Some people who arenāt being compassionate probably want those who embrace such dangerous practices to be punished. Others probably want the collective Scrooge to face the horror, feel his mortality, and change. Most of us are probably a combination of both.
If I were to meet the family of a deceased denier, I hope I would be kind. Until I do, itās empty supposition, the equivalent of āthoughts and prayers.ā I tend to think it would be an individual experience based upon the family in question. I donāt know these people.
What I can say is that I truly wish the consequences of being an asshole would fall solely on the asshole. When it does, who can blame people for believing it is just? Itās sad for the people they leave behind, sure, but at least the deceased has stopped crashing into buses.
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Thatās a really good analogy. I posted this from a NYT article on the continuing coronavirus thread a little while ago:
Refusing to wear a mask is todayās equivalent of drunken driving. The odds of killing someone are low, but collectively this year the refusal to wear masks will kill far more Americans than driving under the influence.
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And I think it puts the whole question of compassion in a better perspective, how tangential it is. Kudos to the folks who see the demise of serial killers, drunk drivers, nazis, etc., etc., and think to themselves āHow awful for their families.ā
I think, however, it is a completely normal response to think āthank heavens they arenāt still out there killing innocent peopleā, and I am not going to feel the least bit bad about it.
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Yeah sure, but āliberalsā have been (falsely) accused here of āhatingā such family members, specifically the wife of a murderous Covid denier. Big difference, no?
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Is anyone else as disturbed as I am by the heightened importance in this kind of discourse over what liberals say and how they perform liberalism over ā¦ like anything else?
It doesnāt matter what you do it only matters what you say. Gross.
I find that mindset gross. And shallow. Thatās one of the most effective criticisms of liberalism Iāve seen from the left actually. People get very good at saying the right things. Since nothing else matters the status quo goes on. What a farce that is, eh?
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Yes. The right has been actively āotheringā their political opposition for a while now and itās reached an extreme degree by now. Weāve already seen some take this seriously enough to try and go after Democrats (that guy that planted what turned out to be fake or incompetently made bombs a while back). Someone left a pigs head at Pelosiās house just this week.
Or maybe itās tragedyā¦ Iām not sure.
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I see it as a gross and scary extension of the beliefs expressed by supporters of the current administration. Multiple reporters have gone to rallies and showed members of the crowd videos of conservative leaders first saying one thing, and later saying something that is the complete opposite. Supporters cheer both times.
So we see deniers screaming about the hoax while in the hospital, but never questioning the actions of their leader when he received medical treatment. 
My concern is for the workers who donāt get a choice and have to deal with them. Hopefully, liberals will continue to push back hard against the nonsense that what we do doesnāt matter. Itās not only a trap, but also a manifestation of style over substance thatās dominated too many aspects of society. Many of the events in 2020 were the result, and my hope is to see a lot less of that in the future.
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