Only empathy can save us now

How can we be sympathetic to those who want to do us harm?

It’s a question we ask ourselves in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. I attempted to answer this question in a TikTok video about the importance of empathy. But it is a subject that needs to be discussed in paragraphs, not sentences. (And without euphemisms and strange spellings to avoid displeasing an algorithm.) So, I’m talking more about why we should show empathy, even in the face of cruelty and hatred.

I’ll start with a recap of what I talked about in the video. Empathy is the core of who we are as humans. We are social animals. That’s why we developed language, communities, and civilizations. This would only be possible because of empathy. If we didn’t care about each other, society would instantly collapse. Countries where populations don’t have empathy for each other devolve into violence, which is accompanied by corruption and poverty.

This is the danger the United States is in today. If Democrats and Republicans both see each other as un-American, evil, and less than human, our country can turn into the same violent hellscape as Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other war-torn places around the world. Neither side would win in a red vs blue bloodbath. We would all suffer.