[Winstonm]

Here is my question for all - what can be done, if anything, about this type of person: Original story in Miami Herald

Quote

A 58-year-old Trump-loving anesthesiologist from Miami has been charged with a hate crime after verbally attacking an Hispanic man who asked her to socially distance inside a Publix grocery store in Hialeah, Florida, on Friday. According to the arrest warrant published by the Miami Herald, Jennifer Susan Wright started "mumbling bad words" after the victim asked her to keep her distance in the checkout line. As the man then loaded his groceries into his car, Wright reportedly vandalized the car and yelled, "We should have gotten rid of you when we could," according to the paper. She then allegedly said, "This is not going to be Biden's America, this is my America" and "we should have burned it all." The report goes on to say, "The defendant also proceeds to stab the victim's vehicle with her keys while saying he needed to go back to his country." She then punched him as he tried to call 911. Wright posted bail after her arrest.

I am prone to say this exemplifies all Trump supporters but many are too cowardly to admit it in public.

In fact, after 4 years of seeing exactly who Trump was, I believe every single one of the 70+ million who voted for Trump to be exactly like this woman physician. Just a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues. Sad.

This post has been edited by Winstonm: 2021-February-22, 09:14

[pilowsky]

Well, since you bring up the topic of altruism vis a vis (enlightened - I presume) self-interest, I would say that altruism, like Bridge, is a topic about which I have very little knowledge and therefore am prepared to venture an authoritative opinion.
I am deliberately (as I think Winstonm suggested) arguing for the idea of enlightened self-interest rather than altruism.
If you would like to learn about altruism as it relates to the practice of medicine - along with some history of the term, here is an excellent paper.
http://bit.ly/AltruismPilowsky

I'm unsure how the rules of copyright apply here, but if you want the whole thing and don't have access to a medical library, I can send you a reprint.


In that paper, you will discover that Auguste Comte coined the term ‘altruism’ In the mid 19th Century. Comte was a famous French philosopher who made significant contributions to both sociology and the philosophy of science.
Comte was so famous that JS MIll wrote a book about him: http://bit.ly/ComteByJSMill
Central to the idea of altruism, compared with enlightened self-interest, is that the act performed has some cost to the person providing the service, and that person gains nothing by delivering it.

As you can imagine, true acts of altruism are rare. There is almost always some sort of discernible secondary gain for the person delivering the service. This is particularly so with social animals such as (many) humans who may simply enjoy others’ gratitude. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom for many reasons. One of these is the ability to produce facial expressions. For some people, even a smile may be a sufficient reward for providing a service. For others, only money talks.
Altruism must be distinguished from ‘pro-social’ behaviour. A friend of mine Dr Peggy Mason once published an article on pro-social behaviour in rats. This work generated a great deal of interest. You can read it here:http://bit.ly/SocialRats

As an aside, I have no idea if Auguste Comte is related to Olivier, but Auguste was known to have a phenomenal memory and won prizes in Latin and mathematics. You’ll have to ask Olivier - I can’t find any definite information.
In general, I suspect that most human interactions involve more than a soupçon of ‘secondary gain’.

In the case of vaccinations, the gain is obvious. There is no point in partially eliminating a deadly virus. To make this clear on an individual level, many drugs may be more than 99% effective at treating an illness, but when someone has cancer, a treatment that only kills 99% of the malignant cells is not very helpful (except as palliation).

To cure the world of COVID19, and other things like climate change is a global emergency.
Trips to Mars are only helpful insofar as they generate new knowledge that can solve the real-world problems that we face.

[y66]

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

https://messaging-cu...896ed87b2d9c72a

‘Texas can be the future’

You can make a case that the U.S. state with the brightest long-term economic future is Texas.

It’s a more affordable place to live than much of the Northeast or West Coast and still has powerful ways to draw new residents, including a thriving cultural scene, a diverse population and top research universities. Its elementary schools and middle schools perform well above average in reading and math (and notably ahead of California’s), according to the Urban Institute.

These strengths have helped the population of Texas to surge by more than 15 percent, or about four million people, over the past decade. In the past few months, two high-profile technology companies — Oracle and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise — have announced they are moving their headquarters to the state, and Tesla may soon follow. As California was in the 20th century, Texas today looks like a state that can embody and shape the country’s future.

But Texas also has a big problem, as the world has just witnessed. A useful way to think of it is the fossil fuel problem.

‘This’ll happen again’

Even with its growing tech and health care industries, the Texas economy revolves around oil and gas. And those fossil fuels have created two threats to the state’s economic future.

The first is climate change, which is making Texas a less pleasant place to live. The number of 95-degree days has spiked, and severe hurricanes have become more common, including Harvey, which brutalized Houston and the Gulf Coast in 2017. Paradoxically, climate change may also be weakening the jet stream, making bouts of frigid weather more common.

On the national level, Texas politicians have played a central role in preventing action to slow climate change. On the local level, leaders have failed to prepare for the new era of extreme weather — including leaving the electricity grid vulnerable to last week’s cold spell, which in turn left millions of Texans without power and water.

Many residents feel abandoned. In Copperas Cove, a city in central Texas, Daniel Peterson told my colleague Jack Healy on Saturday that he was utterly exasperated with the officials who had failed to restore power six days after it went out. He is planning to install a wood-burning stove, because, as he said, “This’ll happen again.”

In Dallas, Tumaini Criss spent the weekend worried that she would not be able to afford a new home for her and her three sons after a leaky pipe caved in her ceiling and destroyed appliances and furniture. “I don’t know where that leaves me,” she said.

In San Antonio, Juan Flores, a 73-year-old Navy veteran, told my colleague Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio that he was frustrated by the lack of communication from local officials. When Giulia interviewed Flores, he had not showered in days (and graciously warned her to stand back while interviewing him, saying, “I stink”). To get enough water to flush his toilet, he had walked to a bar. To heat his apartment, he was boiling water on his stove.

The next energy industry

The second threat is related to climate change but different. It comes from the possibility that alternative energy sources like wind and solar power are becoming cheap enough to shrink Texas’ oil and gas industry.

“The cost advantage of solar and wind has become decisive, and promises to become vaster still,” Noah Smith, an economist and Texas native, wrote in his Substack newsletter. “I don’t want to see my home state become an economic backwater, shackled to the corpse of a dying fossil fuel age.”

Instead of investing adequately in new energy forms, though, many Texas politicians have tried to protect fossil fuels. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott went so far as to blame wind and solar energy — falsely — for causing the blackouts. The main culprit was the failure of natural gas, as these charts by my colleague Veronica Penney show.

As Smith explains, the best hope for Texas’ energy industry is probably to embrace wind and solar power, not to scapegoat them. The state, after all, gets plenty of wind and sun. “Texas can be the future, instead of fighting the future,” Smith wrote.

The future isn’t the past

The larger economic story here is a common one. Companies — and places — that have succeeded for decades with one technology rarely welcome change. Kodak didn’t encourage digital photography, and neither The New York Times nor The Wall Street Journal created Craigslist.

Texas’ political and business leaders have made a lot of successful moves in recent decades. They have avoided some of the political sclerosis that has held back parts of the Northeast and California, like zoning restrictions that benefit aging homeowners at the expense of young families.

But Texas’ leaders are sacrificing the future for the present in a different way. They have helped their fossil fuel companies maximize short-term profits at the expense of the state’s long-term well-being. They have resisted regulation and investments that could have made their power grid more resilient to severe weather (as this Times story documents), and have tried to wish away climate change even as it forces Texans to endure more miserable weather.

In those ways, Texas is offering a different — and more worrisome — glimpse into the future.

[y66]

Matt Yglesias said:

https://www.slowbori...p/student-loans

One-off forgiveness is not reform

I think there’s a good case to be made that there should be a zero-cost post-secondary education option in the United States.

Public universities were either free or else very cheap during the Baby Boom era. and I think the switch from public funding to subsidized debt has not worked well. Free college is an idea that lots of people connect with emotionally, intellectually, and ideologically. But I just can’t emphasize enough that debt forgiveness does nothing to reform the higher education system. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone argue that we need people to attend Harvard Business School for free at taxpayer expense.

Realistically, there probably isn’t a single correct solution for the different kinds of professional schools. You could imagine a bargain where medical education is made free, but medical compensation is more strictly regulated in line with international norms. On the lawyer front, I often hear the hypothesis that if young attorneys weren’t so burdened with debts they’d be more likely to go into public service fields. In reality, there are a lot of loan forgiveness programs for this. But more to the point, there aren’t actually tons of vacancies. If we want more public defenders, what we need to do is increase the budget for public defender offices so they can hire more attorneys and be less overworked (this seems like a good idea to me). It’s possible that a change to how legal education is financed is part of the solution.

But it starts with deciding what it is we’re trying to accomplish. Do we want more people getting random master’s degrees? I’m skeptical.

Whatever you make of these questions, it just goes back to the reality that while higher education policy is important, loan forgiveness is not higher education policy. It’s economic policy. So the question becomes: Is it good economic policy?

[Winstonm]

I don't know how you can divide education and economics. Better education leads to better workers which leads to higher pay and a stronger economy.

[shyams]

IMHO, there is no easy solution out of the student debt problem.

* Some of the arguments against carry weight --- e.g. what about people who decided not to go to college and instead work on upskilling themselves in non-college environments.
* The arguments in favour also have legitimacy --- if the most valuable resource for countries is their people, it is not fair to allow them to suffer under the yoke of a large debt which (for many) will take a lifetime to pay off.
* It is quite possible that the advent of student loans was what led to college education becoming so expensive in the first place. However, unfortunately, it does not follow that cutting off student loans will automatically solve the problem.

IMHO, a key "problem" with student loans is their pricing (i.e. interest rates on such loans). I believe most student loans are priced at 6%-9% p.a. with compounding interest. There are also legal provisions whereby a declaration of bankruptcy does not void any student loan debt(s); these are required to be paid back regardless.

If people are really on the hook permanently for their student debt, then perhaps the Federal Government should reprice all student loans downwards to (say) Fed Rate + 0.5%. If the Fed were to reprice all loans in a formulaic manner (e.g. pre-2015 rates remain unchanged, 2015-2017 at Fed + 2%, 2018-2019 at Fed + 1.5% and all subsequent periods at Fed + 0.5%), we could suddenly see a huge drop in loan outstandings even as not one dollar of principal is waived.

[kenberg]

I like every word in the Matt Iglesias article you cite.

I particularly like "But it starts with deciding what it is that we are trying to accomplish". This applies to the debt and to where we go from here.

There are many ways of looking at that question. Here is a social history approach:

My father was born in 1900 and finished eighth grade. That was more or less a normal education at the time. My mother, the educated one, had a year or so of high school.

I finished high school in 1956. Of course, there were (and still are) those who do not finish high school, but every young person I knew finished high school. Some went on to college, many did not. I think none of my playmates from my early years went on to college, but my choice of friends by the time I was 16 had changed and I can only think of two who did not go on to college. So, in 1956, high school was expected, college was a choice.

And now? We often see claims that a person "must" go to college in order to make a good living so everyone should be helped to go to college. And then, as Iglesias skeptically notes, get a Master's degree. I think individual preferences are often overlooked in the statistics that are cited. There are many professions that I would be absolutely lousy at no matter where I studied in preparation for them. I have no interest in law or in the stock market. So I think a person who likes working with their hands might well make a good living, and enjoy the job, if they become a plumber or an auto mechanic.

I am not quite saying that we must help people follow their dreams, some dreams are pretty loony, but I think we need to be cautious about going from "everyone should finish eighth grade" in my father's time to "everyone should finish high school" in my time to "everyone should go to college and then go on for a Master's".

I got a lot out of college and I very much support providing that opportunity. But take it easy on the rush to encourage everyone to go. A sixteen-year-old might well have some thoughts of their own about how they would like to make a living.

[Cyberyeti]

Winstonm, on 2021-February-22, 09:11, said:

I don't know how you can divide education and economics. Better education leads to better workers which leads to higher pay and a stronger economy.

Yes and no.

We've had a situation in the UK where too many people are going to university, meaning a massive dumbing down of courses in many places so that you have a better piece of paper but not necessarily a better education. I did a maths degree in my late 40s. The second year of that course was much less difficult than my final year school maths. When you get tutor comments like "that was a truly epic bit of integration, the easier way to do it was ..." for something that was routine at school, and when you have a meetup the tutors say that they can't set exam questions they set even 10 years ago because they'd be too hard, you can see it.

Also jobs that have never needed a degree now do, thus excluding less academic people who can perfectly easily do the job.

I don't know how you find the middle ground of making degrees available to less advantaged students, but affordable to the students and the country.

[y66]

Jess Bravin and Deanna Paul at WSJ said:

https://www.wsj.com/...d=djemalertNEWS

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court denied former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to keep New York prosecutors from seeing his tax returns and other financial records, issuing a one-sentence order Monday with no noted dissents.

Separately, the court rejected Mr. Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states he lost to President Biden in November’s election, as the justices appeared to be working on cleaning house of Trump-related litigation following the former president’s second Senate impeachment trial earlier this month.

A bipartisan Senate majority found Mr. Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection culminating in his supporters’ Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, but the 57-43 margin fell short of the two-thirds vote needed for conviction.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has been investigating potential insurance and bank fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers. Mr. Vance sent a grand-jury subpoena to Trump accountant Mazars USA in August 2019, but the then-president intervened to block it, arguing that his official status immunized him from criminal investigation during his term.

Last July, the Supreme Court ruled that the president had no inherent power to prevent a third party from turning over records to criminal investigators but could assert other arguments any citizen could raise against a subpoena, such as that it was overbroad or issued for an improper purpose.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers then made those arguments, but federal district and appeals courts ruled for the prosecutor, finding no evidence that Mr. Vance, a Democrat, was motivated by partisan objectives or that he sought materials beyond the scope of a complex financial investigation. Mr. Trump then asked the Supreme Court to halt enforcement of the subpoena while he appealed those legal findings; Monday’s decision denied that request.

“The work continues,” Mr. Vance said in a statement Monday. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment further.

[y66]

kenberg, on 2021-February-22, 10:00, said:

I like every word in the Matt Iglesias article you cite.

It occurred to me while reading Matt's post that you two might be on the same wavelength. One of the things I enjoy about his stuff is that he makes an honest effort to consider different points of view. He lives in DC so maybe within range of your brain waves.

[cherdano]

y66, on 2021-February-22, 11:22, said:

It occurred to me while reading Matt's post that you two might be on the same wavelength. One of the things I enjoy about his stuff is that he makes an honest effort to consider different points of view. He lives in DC so maybe within range of your brain waves.

I dare say, however, that Matt's Twitter persona has never reminded me of Ken's forum persona...

[kenberg]

wavelengths and personas aside, I enjoyed
https://www.theatlan...-man-2-i/39961/

It's not often that you find Plato, Archimedes, Kant, and Spiderman all mentioned in the same article.

[thepossum]

Cyberyeti, on 2021-February-22, 10:06, said:

I don't know how you find the middle ground of making degrees available to less advantaged students, but affordable to the students and the country.

I know some of the very top schools/universities/colleges etc have schemes to support students to access the best quality degrees and give access without
compromising their standards (hopefully)

Sadly dumbing down and reducing standards seems to have been a global phenomenon. As you say requiring top research degrees for low grade jobs devalues the degree and also pushes out many other candidates

It can also be politically very dangerous under certain circumstances - such as a global event such as Covid with all the fallout

EDIT I also read recently of an increasing trend towards outsourcing/centralising of delivery of pre-produced academic content. Who knows what that will do to schools, quality - if it becomes a winner takes all competitive online market. If you look at what happens in other markets I see risks. Not everyone will be able to afford (perhaps?) the top quality course, maybe one course will win because it is pop/cool without being any good - that kind of world. I understand boring stuff doesnt do well under any model but hopefully not compromising education too much for the entertainment and associated advertising dollar like everything else

[thepossum]

y66, on 2021-February-22, 11:22, said:

..... One of the things I enjoy about his stuff is that he makes an honest effort to consider different points of view. ....

I've just tracked down some interesting literature (Zmigrod etc) on models of extremism, authoritarianism, flexibility and rigidity.

Despite the way the world has been going recently with some on the authoritarian (oops so-called progressive liberal) left being so flexible to shut down all alternative points of view the literature suggests there are problems of rigidity and extremism on both sides - both historically and psychologically in the individual

As always there are (according to Zmigrod) conflicting models - one the right-rigidity model and the other the more general extreme-rigiditiy model

I'm adding this to my learnings (I swore never to use this word) from last year on issues of authoritarianism and whether the much debated authoritarian left exists or not

[pilowsky]

I don't think that authoritarianism can be frame as 'left' or 'right'.
Authoritarianism sits on a separate axis of political philosophy.

There is a tendency towards authoritarianism in all social organisations. There is even a term for it, "The iron law of Oligarchy".
It was first expounded by Robert Michels (http://www.csun.edu/...0supplement.pdf).

You can even see it at work in organisations as small as Bridge clubs.
One group of people with a particular mindset gain the levers of power (committee positions).
They then arrange matters in the organisation using timing and rule changes to make it very difficult for anyone but members of their 'team' to have a meaningful voice.

Is this good or bad? I think bad. Although, like many people, I believe that I am right about pretty much everything, I am also a confirmed atheist. I do not believe that it is "Gods will" that my opinion is always correct.
I believe in scepticism about everything.

Orwell would have framed it as 'four legs good, two legs bad'.

[Chas_P]

Winstonm, on 2021-February-21, 14:48, said:

Here is my question for all - what can be done, if anything, about this type of person: Original story in Miami Herald



I am prone to say this exemplifies all Trump supporters but many are too cowardly to admit it in public.

In fact, after 4 years of seeing exactly who Trump was, I believe every single one of the 70+ million who voted for Trump to be exactly like this woman physician. Just a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues. Sad.

We don't all see things the same way Winston. In my view the "hispanic man" was looking for a fight and he got one. That doesn't mean the "trump-loving anesthesiologist" was right in accommodating him. She could have easily walked away...and should have. But for you to say "I believe every single one of the 70+ million who voted for Trump to be exactly like this woman physician. Just a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues" makes you exactly that....a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues. I pity you. Truly I do. I wish you well.

[kenberg]

Chas_P, on 2021-February-22, 19:51, said:

We don't all see things the same way Winston. In my view the "hispanic man" was looking for a fight and he got one. That doesn't mean the "trump-loving anesthesiologist" was right in accommodating him. She could have easily walked away...and should have. But for you to say "I believe every single one of the 70+ million who voted for Trump to be exactly like this woman physician. Just a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues" makes you exactly that....a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues. I pity you. Truly I do. I wish you well.

I didn't respond to Winston's post partly because I didn't have anything to say but also because it's a story in a paper, I wasn't there, and so...

But if we just go by the story, it seems a customer asked another customer to keep the proper distance in a check-out line.

Where I shop, places are clearly marked as to where you should stand when you are in line at a check-out.
People around here are pretty congenial, but if I moved in closer than the marked spot, I can well imagine the customer in front of me would ask me to step back.
Or, if the person behind me moved in closer than the marked spot, I might well, depending on whether we are speaking f a couple of inches or speaking of a substantial amount, ask them to step back.
The store sets the spots, I and others comply.

Covid is a serious business, states set rules stating expectations of stores, stores set rules stating expectations of customers. I wasn't a witness at the event, but if the story is accurate it seems that one customer, the woman, was ignoring the rules and another customer, the man asked her to comply with the rules. I don't care that she is 58 or that she does, or does not, love Trump, but if she was clearly crowding in on a guy in line then telling her to move back seems to be both allowed and sensible. The rules were not complicated and not burdensome, and they had an important purpose regarding both individual and community health.

[pilowsky]

Quote

Chas_P
We don't all see things the same way Winston. In my view the "hispanic man" was looking for a fight and he got one. That doesn't mean the "trump-loving anesthesiologist" was right in accommodating him. She could have easily walked away...and should have. But for you to say "I believe every single one of the 70+ million who voted for Trump to be exactly like this woman physician. Just a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues" makes you exactly that....a sick, depraved, sad and desperate human being with self-anger issues. I pity you. Truly I do. I wish you well.

kenberg, on 2021-February-22, 20:46, said:

I didn't respond to Winston's post partly because I didn't have anything to say but also because it's a story in a paper, I wasn't there, and so...

But if we just go by the story, it seems a customer asked another customer to keep the proper distance in a check-out line.

Where I shop, places are clearly marked as to where you should stand when you are in line at a check-out.
People around here are pretty congenial, but if I moved in closer than the marked spot, I can well imagine the customer in front of me would ask me to step back.
Or, if the person behind me moved in closer than the marked spot, I might well, depending on whether we are speaking f a couple of inches or speaking of a substantial amount, ask them to step back.
The store sets the spots, I and others comply.

Covid is a serious business, states set rules stating expectations of stores, stores set rules stating expectations of customers. I wasn't a witness at the event, but if the story is accurate it seems that one customer, the woman, was ignoring the rules and another customer, the man asked her to comply with the rules. I don't care that she is 58 or that she does, or does not, love Trump, but if she was clearly crowding in on a guy in line then telling her to move back seems to be both allowed and sensible. The rules were not complicated and not burdensome, and they had an important purpose regarding both individual and community health.

It's true, we don't all see things the same way. "was looking for a fight and he got one." or "The rules were not complicated and not burdensome".
A.) Individualism versus B.) acting for a social good even if there is a mild cost.
I pick B. Can I have a merit badge?


A person is standing in line. In a shop. There is a deadly contagious disease raging. Someone else crowds in. They ask them to step back.


What sort of person finds the response, "OK, I'll step back" hard to understand?
I'm not like some other members of this Forum in that I don't like characterising people or opinion with unnecessary adjectives.
Instead, I just shake my head sadly and characterise their inability to understand a simple social syllogism as suggestive of a mild cognitive disorder - of the type that seems fairly common in Bridge clubs, and some sociopathies.


BTW, this inability to behave (or even think) in a manner that cleaves to the common good is clearly part of the political philosophy of around 50% of people that voted for Trump - based on the latest data suggesting that this number would leave the Republican party to join a 'Trump clump' on the stump.


Here's a simple test. If you think that Greg Gutfeld is funny and Tucker Carlson interesting, then you are a 'pod person'.

[awm]

pilowsky, on 2021-February-22, 22:57, said:

It's true, we don't all see things the same way. "[color=#1C2837]was looking for a fight and he got one." or " The rules were not complicated and not burdensome".
A.) Individualism versus B.) acting for a social good even if there is a mild cost.
I pick B. Can I have a merit badge?


A person is standing in line. In a shop. There is a deadly contagious disease raging. Someone else crowds in. They ask them to step back.


What sort of person finds the response, "OK, I'll step back" hard to understand?
I'm not like some other members of this Forum in that I don't like characterising people or opinion with unnecessary adjectives.
Instead, I just shake my head sadly and characterise their inability to understand a simple social syllogism as suggestive of a mild cognitive disorder - of the type that seems fairly common in Bridge clubs, and some sociopathies.


BTW, this inability to behave (or even think) in a manner that cleaves to the common good is clearly part of the political philosophy of around 50% of people that voted for Trump - based on the latest data suggesting that this number would leave the Republican party to join a 'Trump clump' on the stump.


[size=2]Here's a simple test. If you think that Greg Gutfeld is funny and Tucker Carlson interesting, then you are a 'pod person'.

I suspect that the political philosophy arises from the lack of empathy and not vice-versa. There seem to be a substantial number of people for whom even a mild inconvenience to help a stranger is unthinkable, and many of them will become offended at even a suggestion that they do such a thing. I'm not talking about donating significant amounts of time and money to help other people -- just simple things like observing social distancing at a store or giving someone directions on the street or tolerating someone's loud children at the park.

Most of these people have friends and family, and they are often kind and generous with members of those groups. Some of them may even volunteer for organizations they belong to (like a church or political party). But something is just missing in their psychology when it comes to "people they don't know" or "people who are not like them" and they will not stand up for these people's rights not to be shot by police or infected by a deadly disease or separated from their children at the border. Even suggesting that they ought to care about such things is met with anger and denial and hostility.

It's interesting sometimes to see the transition in these people when they realize someone they know and love is impacted by the policies. Dick Cheney was stridently anti-gay until his daughter came out and suddenly he supports same-sex marriage. A lot of folks who refuse to wear a mask or observe social distancing change their tune when a relative dies of Covid. Anyway there are a lot of these people, and they support Trump (in the US) for the most part because he often speaks for their positions (uncaring policies for those who are not "real Americans" and anger/hostility for the"libs" who suggest something is wrong with this).

[y66]

Kenberg's Spiderman2 post refers to Kant who urged us to "act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law" which he considered superior to the Golden Rule which exhorts us to ask how we ourselves would want to be treated. I suspect that the woman in winstonm's post does not subscribe to either of these moral philosophies.

re: empathy - I recently watched The Empath episode of Star Trek which my librarian mentioned in a conversation with Wendy Offil (author) last week. It's about the tension between self-preservation and empathy. Needless to say, if planet earth finds itself in a position similar to planets in the Minarian system someday, it is important that we not let the woman in winstonm's post represent us.