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Sanctimonious Erroneous
Demanding empathy for a president that has none.
What are you writing today, my mother asks.
She and I talk or text in the morning and evening. She’s 91.
I tell her I am writing about misplaced empathy for Donald Trump.
It’s a tricky situation, I say to her. I don’t ever wish suffering on anyone. But he wants to take away people’s healthcare in the middle of a pandemic.
My mother is a most empathetic person. She’s always pointing out that Donald Trump didn’t get enough love as a child.
It is tricky, she replies. It’s both sad and criminal. It just goes to show you that you have to take good care of children.
She pauses.
I can’t think of those children at the border without starting to cry.
Isn’t that everything in a nutshell? So much suffering caused by one man.
She mentions that when she speaks to a friend about the president, the friend says,
Empathy is not something one has unless one has received it.
I imagine that is true. I also do not believe the people of this nation, and the world, should continue to pay with their lives for one person’s damaged soul.
