Thread by @sunnshiiny

When are people going to figure out it’s not about fairness or treating each side equally. Whatever roadblocks conservatives can install to halt progress is their goal. Cons play on the left’s preference for fairness and justice.

The right doesn’t have the same values.

https://twitter.com/JDCocchiarella/status/1482030257146408961

Cons are people who believe that hierarchy is good. They believe some people are better than others and deserve special treatment. Frequently they believe that special status belongs to their elites only.

So accusing them of hypocrisy and unfairness is futile.

It’s like calling the sky blue. You’re describing its natural state.

What the left must do imminently is resize the values they have are not universal. Many human beings do not believe in fairness, justice or equality. They believe in favouritism, money talks & hierarchy.

It’s kinda their main theme.

They don’t want people to gain equality because then they would have to compete for power and the best jobs. They believe they are entitled to power and wealth purely because of their birth status. White, male and Christian.

An old proverb warns “do not judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”

Most people do not truly comprehend what that proverb means. It’s about empathy. And the ability to understand how other people think and feel.

Most of the time people think empathy means sharing similar feelings.

But it doesn’t.

It means the ability to experience thoughts & emotions as others do. To experience life from another’s perspective.

This misconception gets white people confused about indigenous experiences.

I witness daily so many white people telling indigenous people they empathize with the genocide and mistreatment they’ve dealt with for generations. And I witness indigenous people incredulous when that statement is made.

There’s a reason indigenous people get so upset.

Unless you’ve experienced intergenerational trauma, how can you know how people who have experienced it feel and think? You can’t. You can sympathize. You can feel and think what you believe others experience, but you haven’t walked a mile in that indigenous person’s shoes.

Being a victim of genocide and intergenerational trauma is a profound experience, all encompassing and shapes your personality and worldview.

The emotions conjured in you when hearing the experiences of indigenous people are yours & based on your beliefs, values and attitude.

To be empathetic, you must understand the history and experiences of multiple indigenous people. Because it’s an entire community that has been attacked. You must be able to feel fear, rage, resentment & despair for not only yourself, but as a shared heritage of an entire people.

You need to feel the shame and humiliation of someone forced to watch their murdered brother be treated like a piece of garbage who deserved his fate when it’s discovered he died from a drug overdose. With so much of a drug in his body that it would have killed 20 men.

You’d need the capacity to look beyond your own shock, remorse, horror, rage and sadness. Empathy is about experiencing what the other person is feeling and thinking. It’s not about your feelings and thoughts.

I can tell you what that experience felt like. How it shaped my thoughts. How it changed the people around me and how they treated me. How the police officers indifference affected me. How my entire life I had defended and protected that man from infancy. He was my brother.

But I don’t expect empathy from white people. I do expect it from other indigenous people. Especially those my age or older. They know what the world was like growing up indigenous in the 1970’s and 1980’s. They’d know how difficult it was for indigenous boys and men.

Other indigenous people have walked miles in the same shoes. But I’ve never met a white person who has had similar experiences or comprehends the multitude of indignities, insults, violence, racism, bigotry, targeted attacks and injustice that plagued my brother & his dark skin.

I’ve never met a white person who understood how worried about my unborn child and his skin colour & how the world would receive him I was. I was 8.5 months pregnant when my brother died. I wasn’t worried about my husband. But my in laws and their circle of friends worried me.

That’s just a sampling of the emotions and thoughts that I experienced. It would take a volume of novel sized books to explain what I experienced when my brother died. And this is Twitter. So it isn’t the time or place.

My point is, you don’t empathize with my sorrow.

If anything you sympathize. And o appreciate the sympathy.

Some pity my experience. Which is another type of indignity to bear.

Some judge me and my family and their experience. Condescension. I’m used to it. It doesn’t really affect me anymore.

You want to empathize? Imagine how many times I have felt the condescension of others to be able to remain indifferent when it happens.

Of course it affects me. I just don’t react to it anymore. The impact is invisible. But like famous actors, I don’t pay attention to it.

Empathy requires one to forget about their own feelings and thoughts. It’s the ability to compartmentalize your experience and try viewing the world through another’s eyes.

Try thinking how the other person thinks. Try thinking the way conservatives do.

Imagine the fear of change and altering routine. Imagine the confusion that everything you believe is challenged by people who have no respect for social status, tradition, faith, continuity, self control, or your beliefs and values.

The conservative beliefs and values that have been acceptable for centuries are now deemed passé and abusive. Imagine being told your beliefs are unacceptable. Beliefs & values you’ve had your entire life are all of a sudden immoral.

Use empathy, not judgement or condescension.

It doesn’t matter if you believe the cons’ values are legitimate. They do.

Being able to empathize means understanding how they feel and think about the world. Not what you think about their beliefs and values.

The paradox of diversity is the acceptance of all diversity.

Even the beliefs & values that we abhor.

The left hasn’t done that. The left has condemned cons for their beliefs. Called them racist & bigots. Clearly indicated desire to remove them from power. Increase their taxes & vilify any faith or traditions that are important to many.

The hostility and animus we see on the right is greatly influenced by the lack of respect and regard we show towards cons.

If you were good at empathizing, you’d already know that.

Left values ≠ right values.

We dehumanize others to avoid empathy.

Stop using your values to dehumanize opposition.

If diversity and pluralism is our democratic end goal, no one’s values are wrong.

It means that applying your values to conservatives will end in conflict every time.

Learn the true meaning of empathy.

Hold cons accountable to their own values. They don’t care if they appear to be hypocrites. They don’t care if they seem patriarchal or hierarchical. That’s their schtick.

They do care about money loss and personal connection.

realize*