Let me explain the question:

If fox news and religious propaganda are exactly that, propaganda, then they are victims.

If, however, every person is free to listen to what they want and then rant against liberals, migrants, Muslims, Arabs, trans, gays, atheists, you name it, then they are just gullible.

I’d have more patience for a victim than a gullible person.

Everybody is free to believe what they want to believe. What I don’t get is why they have to stir things up and why they believe they are the only ones getting it and everyone else is dumb, woke, a communist or is going to hell. Why can’t they keep their opinions to themselves?

    • mojo_raisin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      Depending on your definitions (empathy, sympathy, and compassion are often confusingly defined and contradictory between dictionaries), you ARE empathizing by realizing they are mental children. You’re just not sympathizing and therefore deciding no longer to act with compassion, which makes plenty of sense to me.

      IMHO it’s good to empathize with the right (understand your attacker), but it’s also important have to understand that whatever the underlying reasons, these people, when activated into an idiot army they become a dangerous group.

      The definitions that make the most sense to me is

      Empathy - understanding the perspective of another, where there desires and fears come from. It takes intelligence to not just project one’s own personality on everyone else and understand that they are different.

      Sympathy - Feeling in sync with another (like when you speak of sympathetic guitar strings causing each other to vibrate). Like you see the bombing in Gaza and not just understand that they don’t want to be bombed (empathy), but imagining the pain of losing your child.

      Compassion - The positive treatment of another due to having sympathy for them