but empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. However, the Republicans lack BOTH. Sympathy is being able to understand the feelings of others, and be affected by them and share them, at least to some extent. Empathy is being able to see another person's point of view. For example, you can have a murderer in a novel, and the novelist does a successful job of getting you the reader to see how the murderer's mind works as he's planning and carrying out the murder. However, the novelist is much less likely to make you feel the same feelings as the murderer as he commits the murder (pleasure, for example). I would suggest that a lot of Republicans have been beaten as children, and taught in that way to identify with their oppressors (kiss the rod, you know). So actually, their feelings are strong, but they are very hierarchical--heightened fear leads to heightened aggression leads to success at dominating, and then demonstrating the dominance by inflicting pain. I empathize with those feelings, but by JESUS, I don't sympathize with them.

is that young people are polled to be less racist than older people. Also a good thing, white people are becoming a minority. The bad thing is that they may only go down fighting. Fact is, slavery and Native American genocide are our two original sins, and they may well destroy us after all. They have not been expiated yet, and people like Joe Wilson want to make sure that they aren't, and furthermore, that they are not seen as sins. But they ARE sins.

portrayed the KKK as a good thing, or at least a necessary thing, so frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about Gone With the Wind.

until I saw him in Burn After Reading. He was SO sinister that he actually put me completely off. That's what I call acting integrity. After that movie, I would not have wanted to pass him on the street.

The US judicial system is getting more and more like the one the The Trial. One they've got you, all they do is play with your head until they kill you or release you.

a miscarriage happens because the embryo is not viable. So what do the pro-lifers want? Let's say God set up miscarriages to correct mistakes that people might make. Thank you, God for this miscarriage.

And they will grow up knowing who they want to be. Your job as a parent is to accept their choices unconditionally. Unless they want to torture the pets.

when they are just starting out doing it. Kindergarten? Please get back to us in twelve years. Thanks. By then we willb e able to decide whether you are doing a better job than Squire Shandy.

If Obama gives in on the public option to the one Republican who deighned to wag her finger at him on health care, yes, the deal is broken, the deal between this political contributer and the Democrats. I will become completely indifferent to the fate of this administration.

was the point of this whole last twenty-five years, right? Offshoring all the jobs, leveraging all the companies (like Simmons mattress), pouring money into various financial bubbles? Siphoning our tax dollars upward? Glorifying the rich and glamourous? There used to be something called the working class. For a while they had unions and a bit of political clout. For a while they had self-respect. For their pains they got called "communists," and reviled. Then destroyed. Read "THe SHock Doctrine." What has happened isn't a secret. But it is too late to change it. Sorry.

Except that most parents practice being parents by being parents. I would have been a way better parent if I'd waited until I was in my fifties to produce children, and had actually learned some things about children, dogs, and horses. But I wasn't, so I made mistakes, some of which still make me squirm to think about. So this is what I did. When I happened to model impatience, yelling, or spanking, I thereupon modelled remorse and apology and explanation and revealing my inner life. In this way I believe that I showed my children how to make errors and then correct them and go on to something else. I never did like those cold ones who never raised their voices or showed emotion. What does the kid learn from that? That he is crazy to have the feelings he has and that Mom is always perfect.

that MMM and NealPaul are actually parents. My experience is that nonparents are extremely judgemental until they have themselves to forgive.

MMM has written nearly a thousand letters about how much he hates women. So do ignore him.

I'm telling you, leave the kid alone, and let him find his way. He will be fine. Or fine enough.

people, and then torment them and make them torment others, some of them will turn on their own.

about the rise of evangelism in the military, and the view of many soldiers that the US army is an arm of the religious right. If thast is true, then no doubt Hasan's anxieties were exacerbated by the religious fervor of many of his fellow soldiers. If the soldiers and the brass are using the army to advance a Christian agenda, then these sort of things are going to happen.