There But For the Grace of God

by digby

So Dan “Scumbag” Burton broke with his party and voted for the Democratic bill calling for the government to be able to negotiate drug prices for people on Medicare. Very compassionate of him.

He did this because his wife died of breast cancer a few years ago after a long illness and he was personally exposed to the way the medical system works for average people when he would sit with his wife at the cancer center and listen to what the cancer patients said. Because his family was going through a medical crisis he understood why it was so stressful for people to be unable to afford prescriptions under such circumstances.

This is a big problem with Republicans. They reflexively object to any government program until they are confronted personally with a situation that requires such intervention. They have no empathy for people in the abstract, always assuming that whomever is saying they are in need is a whining malcontent who could be just as healthy and self-sufficient as they are if they truly tried.

Until something happens to them or someone they love, that is, at which point they are converted.

Burton isn’t the only one. There are always a smattering of Republicans who don’t follow the party line on a particular issue like stem cell research or mental health coverage. When you look beneath the surface it’s always because they personally know someone, usually a family member, who would benefit from the program. (You can often see this in national emergencies where they suddenly clamor for federal help after disdaining the same requests by people in other parts of the country and constantly voting against such measures on a programmatic level.)

I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on “poor character” because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed.

Empathy is not some altruistic concept. In fact, it’s quite selfish and designed to make humans better able to survive. It allows a person to walk in another’s shoes so that they might have an inkling of what it would be like if that person’s experience became their own. It is necessary to understand how to head off problems that you might someday have to confront and it is certainly necessary to fully understand other necessary concepts such as justice, fairness and love.

I’m not drawing any conclusions from this, but it’s interesting. It seems that when they test psychopaths, they find that they can’t understand abstract concepts. I’m just saying.

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