Empathy Seems To Be The Hardest Word...For The GOP!

This sign at a Tea Party rally is exactly why I believe empathy is sorely lacking on the rightTo sort of borrow from a Sir Elton John song, “Empathy seems to be the hardest word”…For the GOP!

If forced to use one word to sum up what is likely the biggest difference between the right and left, I’d have to choose EMPATHY.

 Speaking of empathy, I gained some interesting perspective from the season finale of the Showtime series “The Big C” starring Laura Linney. It’s a great show, following the life of a woman trying to win a battle with stage 4 melanoma, a terminal prognosis. During this second season she was encouraged by a clinical trial that shrunk her tumors. The season culminated with her soul-mate cancer friend (a gay male) dying in front of her eyes after dropping out of the same clinical trial she was in because it wasn’t helping. He was training to run a 26 mile marathon but his death obviously prevented that. She was inspired by his death to run the marathon in his place despite brutally cold weather forecast and little training time. The marathon was grueling and as she was grinding it out over a period of hours, her husband was dealing with the financial nightmare that goes along with cancer treatment and heartless health insurance companies. Having lost his high paying job months prior due to downsizing, he found himself having to accept a Best Buy type store job where he was pulled into a stealing scam and a young colleague got him hooked on cocaine. While she ran the marathon, he snorted some cocaine and got the bright idea of storming down to crash the insurance company’s office party. Once there he found the health insurance rep he’d been having the phone war with (she approved an expensive procedure and then after the fact denied payment) and confronted her as the staff looked on, horrified by his heartbreaking story. 

I won’t spoil the ending (for those who haven’t already watched the show) but the significance is that this show perfectly illustrated something that is so very wrong with our country. Thousands of people each year deal with a scenario similar to the one I described above and it all boils down to a lack of empathy. How much money does one have to pay in health insurance premiums before they’ve acquired empathy?  There is no “empathy” option when shopping for health insurance. This brings me back to the difference between left and right as it relates to empathy. We only need look back to the recent GOP debates to see just how sorely lacking empathy is in the psyche of the Republicans/ Teabaggers. It’s quite appalling how little regard they have for their fellow man and the plight of anyone outside their own little bubble. It’s no wonder current Republicans hold Ayne Rand in such high regard. She was the queen of “me”, a perfect fit for the mentality of many nowadays. Her mantra involved caring only about oneself and as for community? It’s a four letter word. Ironically, Ayn Rand also abhorred religion which makes for quite a game of mental twister among the religious zealots who want to jump on the Ayn Rand bandwagon. Since the concept of community was not acceptable to Rand, the thought of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security were disgusting. In fact, she was kind of a year-round Ebenezer Scrooge with a vagina. BAH HUMBUG! Ironically she was diagnosed with cancer and in a serious act of hypocrisy took full advantage of both Social Security and Medicare. It makes perfect sense that the queen of “me” is also the queen of hypocrisy and the idol of many Republicans.

Can you think of a word that sums of the differences between the political right and left any better than “empathy”? If so, please write me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and tell me what it is. I’d be happy to write about it!

It's sad, so sad

It's a sad, sad situation.

And it's getting more and more absurd.

It's sad, so sad

Why can't we talk it over?

Oh it seems to me

That EMPATHY seems to be the hardest word.

My Thoughts Exactly!

--Truthteller