Thread by @JuliusGoat

Oh man, is this thing some victim-blaming trash. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

I'd like to have all the writers of these nonsense pieces explain to me why their admonishment is for liberal empathy to be 1st directed to people harming other people while they are still actively harming those people, rather than calls to 1st empathize with those being harmed.

These pieces always always always treat the real people who are really being harmed as an abstraction, and always always always treat the hurt feelings felt by those doing the harming, merely for having the effects of their actions pointed out to them, as an absolving factor.

If you need to be told a flattering lie about how the harm you're doing isn't harm before you'll stop doing the harm, then:

• You know what you're doing
• You'll do it anyway
• You have no plans to stop

But still you'd love it if people would stop opposing you.

If I am stabbing you, there can't be any peace between me and you.

That's not a statement about you. It's a statement about me. Specifically, it's a statement about what I am doing to you

Someone telling me I'm not bad for stabbing you won't change that.

If my father is stabbing my brother, my first empathy has to go to my brother. My father and I are in contention until he stops stabbing my brother.

Or else I am participating in my brother's stabbing.

Republican policy is *designed* for harm and inquality. That is the purpose of it, and what it does.

Many fine people have managed to convince themselves that their motives and intentions are pure.

They'd like the rest of us to ratify that delusion. They hate when we won't.

The answer is never to participate in the delusion.

I'm not going to tell the stabber he's not stabbing, or that it's fine that he's stabbing because the person he's stabbing is also violent, doing all that struggling and bleeding all over the carpet.

Empathy for the stabber *is* important, but to prioritize it to the first thing just means you're participating in assault.

The stabber needs to stop stabbing.

We need to to tend to the victim.

Assign consequence for the assault.

Then we see about empathy for the stabber.

This isn't abstract posturing; it's political necessity. The Democrats are dealing with factions and in-fighting right now precisely because many liberals, themselves comfortably save from harmful effects of GOP policy, have historically been willing to compromise on justice.

The idea that liberals, who have so often been happy to leave marginalized people behind to 'triangulate,' actually need to do that MORE?

No. We need to stand for something. We need to deserve trust.

No more pretty lies.

It's a mugging. It's a stabbing. It's not OK.

The other angle is that we need to appeal to conservatives' "better angels."

This is very true.

But you don't appeal to "better angels" by pretending the harm someone is doing isn't harm. You do it by actually calling them to something better.

You don't start an intervention by telling the person that their behavior is not a problem, and everything's fine.

Sometimes emapthy involves protection and shielding.

Sometimes it has to be tough love.

And we're giving each to the wrong people.

Since forever, the order of the day has been protection and shielding for those pursuing harmful policy, and tough love for those suffering under those policies.

This article suggests that our recent efforts to reverse that trend are misguided.

Hard pass from me.

Man, going through it again and there really isn't a single sentence that isn't wrong all the way through. It should be dissected and studied.

It's like an enabler's checklist, or an abuser's wishlist.

It's a blueprint for a divided and diluted opposition to fascism, with factions justifiably mistrustful of one another.

It's a blueprint for 4 more years of Trump.