THE WAY THINGS ARE

The word empathy means the ability to see the other person’s perspective. Netflix’s Zero Day with Robert Di Nero features tech havoc from within, stoked by dissatisfaction at the political status quo, but is that all? Isn’t most designed disruption aimed at power grabs?

Americans are ballsy at screening government figures, the CIA, the FBI, acting as foul and ruthless as any external enemy in films like The Purge in which corrupt elite rulers allow murder and mayhem as a constructed anger/frustration outlet, actually aimed at wiping out unwanted lower levels of society, with some black ops help from mercenaries they employ to kill more.

The anti-Biden-win riots on Capitol Hill were the reverse of that coin; American citizens violently turning on own-power elite they opposed. Politicians appear to settle into a life where status embeds a sense of unassailable authority, and genuine empathy visibly recedes.

I was struck by two articles in the Sunday Mail on February 23, one by Rebekah Gregoriades about a man and his fight for obvious-disability benefits, and the other by Les Manison saying the EU pays more attention to fiscal targets than it does to ascertaining progress in improving the potential well-being of the citizens of EU countries. He also wrote that Nato chief Mark Rutte stated that for European governments to raise their defence expenditure, while at the same time meeting fiscal targets, they should reduce payments for social protection.

The first was the shameful case of governmental, stress-inducing, cent-saving from necessary benefits while its highly-paid officials receive bonus bounties as well as salaries, perks and multiple pensions, some before normal retirement age. I would ask Rutte to his face, or to the faces of our own minsters, why not lead by example when austerity measures must be imposed.

Why don’t the universally highest paid, enjoying generous salaries, perks and pensions face cuts, why is it always the least wealthy that bear the burden? Why not publicly ask those who have gained millions from cheap labour in their countries to give back voluntarily?

Empathy seems to evaporate once authority is luxuriously upgraded from the needy they supposedly serve, apparently lacking understanding, or caring about the effects of their decisions, while they stroll from warm cars to warm offices and warm homes. What they and their families don’t experience, their hearts don’t grieve over.

President JF Kennedy’s line stands: ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. A country’s defence capability is essential, but Rutte’s lack of empathy, in a life of presumed comfort and financial security, as to how such slashes will severely affect the poor and vulnerable, also seems apparent in some European leaders.

Keir Starmer’s pre-Washington, Trump card was to cut Overseas Aid to add to his defence spending. Why not ask the UK’s mega rich, some circumstantially business-benefitting from high prices when the poor struggle because of them, to give towards their country’s defence. It isn’t the youth of the elite that mostly becomes war fodder, but the children of the disposable lower (purge) classes.

I would ask Rutte, Starmer, who want for nothing, to go through a month as bottom feeders to realise the consequences the word cut always inflicts most on those with the least; they don’t feel the hits. The greatest monument to any politician isn’t in metal, stone or marble. It’s a legacy left to a satisfied, care-given-to-all nation that history will mark.

Phone feeds bulge with items on psych self-evaluation. It takes no puzzle or skill to ask yourself, am I a selfish taker or a giver? Have I become so self-interested? Do I not care who suffers as long as I have for me and mine?

If I feel no empathy for poverty-stricken children of the world or have no conscience worried by permitted injustices where heft aids blatant theft, tough! The societies of our restless species constantly evolve, and we’re on the move again with changed political perspectives that always cause serious upheavals for political complacency.