This is off the rails

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Where has all the empathy gone? This week, a vile New York Times article came out about President Joe Biden and his son Beau Biden. It was from the New York times, and I will never link to it. This is one article best not read.

This horrible article analyzed the loss of the President’s son and questioned whether he is grieving the loss properly. I kid you not. The article mentions many things, including that Biden sometimes makes people uncomfortable by bringing this loss up at inopportune moments. Really?

My article is about empathy. I have witnessed — as have you — a decline in compassion, to put it mildly. When I was a child, I saw cruelty all around me. I always questioned it. It was common in children, but it wasn’t supposed to happen with adults. Adults were the mature and wise ones. They made everything OK because they put others before themselves.

Not anymore. We live in almost dystopian times where cruelty, malice, and indifference seem to be encouraged and pushed relentlessly. Police who were beaten on January 6th are mocked mercilessly. Gold Star fathers are taunted. Educated individuals are laughed at for being “elitist.” Empathy is laughed at and scorned mercilessly. And grieving fathers are questioned for their grief.

It was never supposed to be this way. But with the former guy’s Presidency, it was like Pandora’s Box.

The former guy was just a symptom. He was a symptom of a box filled with bubbling rage. decaying dreams that never came to fruition, subtle fury always kept in check until the orange creature ascended to the throne.

And then the box was opened. Like Pandora and her curiosity, some Americans wanted to see what would happen. And then we became this.

Not everybody is like this—quite the contrary. But we now live in a world where grief — and loss — are laughed at by some—we live in a world where some consider vulnerability to be a sin.

This American picture is one we must change and all the more reason to unleash our fury in positive ways as we flood the polls and vote out the dreaded disease that was unleashed and bring back empathy to our great nation.