re: #41 wheat-dogghazi

I think many of them are stuck in a juvenile concrete thinking mode, and have limited abstract thinking skills. In other words, they can’t relate to something unless they experience it personally.

It would make for an interesting reality show to take a handful of these heartless top-percenters, take away their wallets and bankcards, and drop them somewhere to fend for themselves for a few days. They might sing a different tune after doing day labor just to buy themselves a room to sleep in for the night.

I think it’d take a lot more than a few days, it’s too cliche - to pat - simplistic Trading Places shit. You’d need them to actually believe the circumstances of their lives had irrevocably changed, forever, to even have a hope of reaching through.

I mean, the woman in the article already had cancer, and a double mastectomy. She thought she’d beaten it, and that shit was behind her. It’s only when the cancer came back that she gained a hint of humanity on the issue and stopped thinking of mandating that health plans cover chemotherapy as some kind of a fucking “handout.”

I don’t know what it is, where the conditioning comes from, whether it’s something in the way they’re raised or what. But the empathy deficit often seems to extend down to the very core of the conservative personality, like a pathological rot.