​Empathy and sympathy creates harmony

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Another public health crisis besides guns: lack of empathy

The Sisters of Charity have finally had enough of their Trumper boss, Roman Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. One of the most prominent congregations of nuns in the United States founded to celebrate the naming of the first American Catholic saint, it has been around since 1846, operating orphanages, nursing homes, hospitals and spent Civil War time nursing wounded veterans. Dolan had called Turning Point USA boss Charlie Kirk a “modern-day Saint Paul” and other moronic things while appearing on Fox Lies following the assassination of Kirk. That did it. After all, nuns have been trying to get into the Vatican’s pulpits for years because they represent the half of Homo sapiens who bear the worst pains.

On the congregation’s website, the nuns nailed Cardinal Dolan to the cross of testosterone, ignorance, and stupidity with these sharp nails: “What Cardinal Dolan may not have known is that many of Mr. Kirk’s words were marked by racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, by violent pro-gun advocacy, and by the promotion of Christian nationalism. These prejudicial words do not reflect the qualities of a saint. To compare Mr. Kirk to St. Paul risks confusing the true witness of the Gospel and giving undue sanction to words and actions that hurt the very people Jesus calls us to love.”

This is a remarkably cogent short list from nuns who understand what empathy is, what sympathy is, that homosexuals are not intrinsically disordered, that we are all equal, and that humanity is harmonized only when diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) was practiced by everybody. And what did the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website have to say about Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA programs and his death by assassination? Nothing. Is it because you don’t practice DEI and love your neighbor like nuns do? How can white nationalists, racists, anti-LBGTQUIA+, and anti-immigrant ICErs call themselves Christians when they don’t practice anything Jesus Christ preached in his curricula?

We are dying in a rotten banana country by executive dysfunction

I have been consistent for a decade about the leadership abilities of Donald Trump. I have thousands of pages of source materials that describe the character who is a malignant narcissist as diagnosed by psychiatrists and psychologists in “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Access a President,” a bookpublished in 2017. The book was “organized” by Dr. Bandy Lee of Yale University, who directs Yale’s “Duty to Warn” Conference.

The book is a 384-page indictment of a man who loves only himself and hates everybody else, even members of his own family. Besides having the characteristics of malignant narcissism described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) prepared and followed by psychiatrists, Donald John Trump is also a sexual predator, jerk, prick, and asshole as defined by experts and people who have had to associate with him in business and pleasure activities.

On top of these personal characteristics, he is a failure at executive function. Experts define executive dysfunction as “the ability to manage and organize tasks on a daily basis, which includes planning, prioritizing, and thinking about how long a task will take before you need to move on to the next thing, and includes the ability to break down larger tasks into smaller ones, being able to shift attention from one task to another, and maintaining working memory.”

That’s why he has filed bankruptcy six times. He is a failure at executive function in business and government.

Two failing executives who might have changed Quantico forever

I spent six months at Quantico in 1954-55, passing Marine Corps Officers Candidate School, often in classes in the room where Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth insulted 800 generals and admirals and desecrated a hallowed room used by thousands of Marine officers.

Experts in leadership have also noted that individuals with executive dysfunction may have difficulty initiating tasks for workers. They may miss or run up against deadlines, are late for appointments, have a pattern of losing things, overspending budgets, and have difficulties following through on promises. Usually, poor executive function is a symptom that flourishes with a genuine psychiatric condition — like malignant narcissism. It is also associated with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder).

We had two revealing examples of complete failures in executive function when an ignorant incompetent Hegseth and an ignorant coward Trump addressed generals and admirals at Quantico. Each of these woman-haters spent an hour shooting off their FOX LIES mouths insulting those who had spent time shooting their weapons at the enemy.

Hegseth had never been competent enough to command an Army combat unit. He had assignments shooting off his mouth in Army civil affairs units. One might have thought our Secretary of War might discuss with staff members how to win a war that is fought with drones and pilotless fighter planes at 200 miles and hypersonic missiles fired at 3,000 miles, instead shaving beards, grooming, the weight of fat generals, and the number of pushups a woman can do. He wanted to discard “the stupid rules of engagement” that restrain the military in combat such as the Geneva Conventions and the International Treaties defining war crimes.

Trump spends his time shooting off his mouth in Manhattan, Mar-a-Loco and Washington, hiding his five military deferments and bone spurs under the Oval Office desk made from the British Royal Navy ship Resolute. Scott Hennen wrote in The Forum that Charlie Kirk “will echo for generations,” that Donald J. Trump was the right man for the right time — someone uniquely equipped to defend the American idea.

My God, Scott. Trump just exposed himself to our military leaders as a complete nutcase who should not be able to buy a firearm in the United States. Listening to the rantings, challenges, and insane bullshit vomiting out of Trump, I thought of what my 2nd Marine Division General “Chesty” Puller, the most decorated Marine in history, would have done at that Quantico conference. I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to see him stand, yell “BULLSHIT!” and stomp out. He was never afraid to speak to power.

Neither Hegseth or Trump understand what duty is, what honor is, and could care less about county, the central mission of the three military academies. They are both unchristian”white nationalists trying to Make America White Forever (MAWF).

Empathy disfunction creates moral atrophy in Trumplican spines

Various medical studies prove that empathy in physicians decreases the length of time in recovery from disease or surgery and actually speeds up relief from pain. A study in the Journal of American Medical Association proves that a health care provider’s capacity for empathy has measurable benefits for patients. Patients who rate their physicians as more empathic feel less anxiety and are more likely to stick with their medical treatment plan. Patients feel more satisfied with doctors that demonstrate empathy. The study demonstrates that patients who describe their doctors as empathetic have lower cholesterol levels and better control of diabetes.

There is no question that empathy is the most important mental quality to possess in a democracy. That may be why we are evolving into a dictatorship because we have half of the country’s population with no empathy, or a tiny supply. The happiest people in the world live in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands. These countries have the least poor and homeless because they have learned to empathize and love each other. They are the real Christians who love their neighbors and don’t deport immigrants to countries consumed by hate. Empathy is the foundation of all Christian virtue.

Let’s pass a law that all politicians must pass the age suit test

The latest Harper’spublished an article by an expert in the empathy field with a medical background titled, “Bedside Manners; Can Empathy be Taught in Medicine?” Rachel Pearson is a professor of pediatrics and the medical humanities at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. She is a supporter of Global Empathy in Healthcare Network, a nonprofit organization which stated in the Leicester Empathy Declaration that all sites of medical training should “organize lessons in efficient evidence-based methods for practitioners to deliver consistently high levels of empathy.”

Medical empathy training has several components: affective empathy (which concentrates on how a doctor feels emotionally about a patient), cognitive empathy (which teaches understanding a patient’s situation), communication empathy (skills in treating patients) and listening for a patient’s understanding of pain and its effect on recovery. Empathy can be learned.

A fascinating addition has been added to empathy training in medical schools. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Age Lab has designed a restraining suit called AGNES (the Age Gain Now Empathy System) which teaches medical trainees how the elderly live in an old body. By the use of braces, gloves, collars, weighted vests and shoes with thick foam inserts the suit forces younger men and women to experience blurry vision, stiff joints, poor balance and fine-motor impairment. Congress should buy several “age suits” and require members of the Senate and House under 80 to wear the suits each year until they gain empathy for both young and elderly constituents.

Why are Trumplican cisgender people prejudiced against transgender people?

In order to build a happy, wealthy, strong country, the leaders have to make all people feel welcome and respected regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or gender identification. No doubt science and the characteristics of empathy create an atmosphere of togetherness and belonging that is absolutely necessary in a democratic country. If there are historic wrongs that must be made right, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) must be employed.

So, to cut to the quick, why did Donald Trump, the most ignorant, bigoted, cruel and uneducated president in our history, sign an executive order establishing the Divided States of America as a two-gender nation? Is he behind in the evolutionary development of Homo sapiens, so he is still a barbarian, a primitive who is cruel, brutal, uncivilized and has no empathy?

His supporters demonstrate the same characteristics. Masked and weaponized ICE separate children and parents, beat up men, women, and children, detain undocumented immigrants in shitholes and deport good workers to death-dealing prisons. Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says transgender people are domestic terrorists and are “driven to such evil and such hatred.”

There is no question that the LBGTQUIA+ community has been on earth for thousands of years. They make up between 5% and 9.3% of the 342 million people who live in the Divided States of America. Transgender people make up roughly 1% of the population, so we have 3.4 million transgender people in the country.

Charlie Kirk, one of the loudest anti-trans voices, called for Nuremberg trials for doctors providing gender-affirming care and urged men “to take care of trans people.” The Christian Bible says God checks us out in the womb. Does He miss a lot of details? Remember: the absence of empathy creates moral atrophy — and so does stupidity and ignorance of the science of gender.