Charity & Empathy

Silverfiddle Rant!

Charity and empathy have been drained from national dialog, as have candor, goodwill, and attempting to understand an opponent's point of view in the most favorable light possible.  Anti-Trumpers, mostly on the left, made an attempt to understand Trump voters after his victory, but the project was soon abandoned when it was clear there was no hay (or money) to be made helping Americans understand one another.

Now comes Bret Stephens of the New York Times with a sincere apology to Trump voters.  He is still adamantly anti-Trump, but he apologizes for smearing and insulting those who voted for El Donaldo.

I belonged to a social class that my friend Peggy Noonan called “the protected.” My family lived in a safe and pleasant neighborhood. Our kids went to an excellent public school. I was well paid, fully insured, insulated against life’s harsh edges.

Trump’s appeal, according to Noonan, was largely to people she called “the unprotected.” Their neighborhoods weren’t so safe and pleasant. Their schools weren’t so excellent. Their livelihoods weren’t so secure. Their experience of America was often one of cultural and economic decline, sometimes felt in the most personal of ways.

It was an experience compounded by the insult of being treated as losers and racists —clinging, in Obama’s notorious 2008 phrase, to “guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.” No wonder they were angry.

He also blames progressives for abandoning persuasion and instead high-handedly cramming their (however noble) culture wars down our throats:

It’s one thing for social mores to evolve over time, aided by respect for differences of opinion. It’s another for them to be abruptly imposed by one side on another, with little democratic input but a great deal of moral bullying.

Please go read the entire essay.  We can all learn from articles like this, if we allow ourselves some self-reflection, and perhaps try to take a more charitable view of those we disagree with.