General News Thread

[Neir]

If you don't get it already you'll never get it because at this point it's a matter of having empathy or not, and nobody can explain empathy to someone that doesn't feel it.

No, I definitely feel empathy, that's not the problem. Rather, it's the fact the people (not saying it's an exclusively American phenomenon, but I live here so I see more examples) seem to have very selective empathy. Even going beyond being riled up into a mob or us v them mentality. I get that there are people who will prioritize the lives of their countrymen over the lives of foreigners.

I don't get it, as you say, because I don't think a building full of Americans is more special than a building full of Syrians. Or, to be more specific to my original question, a building full of black churchgoers. As examples. Same thing for all the ultra white people at the country music festival. Or kids at school. Or any of the myriad multi-murder events our country has, but seems fine with accepting as long as someone says 'thoughts and prayers'.

A more boiled down version of my question is: why is it only a problem worth addressing in earnest if the perpetrator wasn't born here? Or looks different?

There's a lot more parts to that question but i'll leave it there for the moment while I do other stuff.

[asterism42]

I thought Pearl Harbour did that.

I think it's the subconscious feeling that Hawaii doesn't really count as the US. S'in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Whereas Manhattan is, for all intents and purposes, on the US mainland.

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Also there's a sixty year gap between the two incidents. Most young, or even middle aged people had no memory of Pearl Harbour.

[Neir]

I think it's the subconscious feeling that Hawaii doesn't really count as the US. S'in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Whereas Manhattan is, for all intents and purposes, on the US mainland.

a lot of people don't even know puerto ricans are americans

i forgot where that article was where people hit by harvey and got support said puerto ricans hit by maria shouldn't get any because they should 'fix their own country'

a hilariously biased article, but still disturbing

[SeiKeo]

Hawaii absolutely counted at the time, this is revisionism.

[asterism42]

I never said it didn't count. I said that there was possibly a subconscious feeling that it's not proper America.

It's full of brown people who speak a different language! Dey arn't murican

[RoydGolden]

I don't know about you, but I find mass shootings like the one that happened in Charleston just as terrifying as terrorist attacks. It's the idea that any space- even one as harmless and safe as a food court, music concert or church- could suddenly erupt into indiscriminate violence that's terrifying, not where the perpetrator happens to have been born.

Obviously there's a degree of selfishness involved here (people tend to be more afraid of crimes they imagine could happen to them) but that strikes me as perfectly natural and not really what I'd call "hypocrisy".

[SeiKeo]

I never said it didn't count. I said that there was possibly a subconscious feeling that it's not proper America.

It's full of brown people who speak a different language! Dey arn't murican

And this is just as much imagining original sin. Is there any example of a 'possible subconscious feeling' you'd put forward?

[asterism42]

There's the business with Maria a few months ago. I know that's Puerto Rico instead of Hawaii, but it's a similar sentiment.

[Neir]

And this is just as much imagining original sin. Is there any example of a 'possible subconscious feeling' you'd put forward?

are you arguing that people can't be unconscious racists???

[SeiKeo]

There's the business with Maria a few months ago. I know that's Puerto Rico instead of Hawaii, but it's a similar sentiment.

Correlation between as different incidents as you could possibly come up with to try and help the demonstrably wrong point that 'Pearl Harbor didn't damage American senses of supremacy because it didn't count,' what's the point?

[asterism42]

There's also the other point I made about the sixty year gap between Pearl Harbour and 9/11.

[SeiKeo]

Precisely, so who knows what the utility was in linking the two.

[Marmadillo]

A more boiled down version of my question is: why is it only a problem worth addressing in earnest if the perpetrator wasn't born here? Or looks different?

Because empathy is based on how easy you can put yourself into the other person's shoes, and even the most generous souls have ingroups and outgroups. Otherwise you're Jesus.
And of course the other thing is how the person in question is exposed to the information. "Terror attack in Iraq, 100 dead" won't garner much empathy because it's just a headline mentioning a statistic. If otoh you see a crying parent hugging the dead body of their child, no matter how brown they are, it's an entirely different thing.

[aldeayeah]

I thought Pearl Harbour did that.

It did, but that wound was cauterized by the atom bomb explosions.

[asterism42]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/inves...=.321797f48744

[Spinach]

"Democracy dies in darkness"

"But pls subscribe to read :--D"

[Neir]

Because empathy is based on how easy you can put yourself into the other person's shoes, and even the most generous souls have ingroups and outgroups. Otherwise you're Jesus.
And of course the other thing is how the person in question is exposed to the information. "Terror attack in Iraq, 100 dead" won't garner much empathy because it's just a headline mentioning a statistic. If otoh you see a crying parent hugging the dead body of their child, no matter how brown they are, it's an entirely different thing.

except with the internet those images are pretty readily available

[RoydGolden]

except with the internet those images are pretty readily available

It's not about how objectively bad the attack is, but how much the people reading about it feel it can happen to them. Hundreds of Syrians dying is obviously tragic and horrible, but if I'm not living in Syria it's not something I have to worry about personally. You can call this selfishness or hypocrisy if you want, but I think it's a perfectly natural human response to be more afraid of things that have a greater probability of hurting you or people you know.

Not to say the fear of terrorist attacks still isn't widely overblown, but addressing that would be another issue entirely.

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I mean, push Neir's logic to its furthest possible extreme and you could just as well ask why somebody would be afraid of having a gun pointed to their head when objectively they know that millions of other people are threatened by guns worldwide. "People tend to put their own lives first" may not be the most admirable trait, but it's a pretty basic and understandable aspect of human psychology, and one that instinctive emotions like fear only exacerbate.

The fact that you say you can't understand it strikes me as in itself pretty incomprehensible.

[Neir]

No, see, that’s the point I’m making. People can and DO get killed in this country all the time, and yet people don’t seem to pay attention. Please reread the original post.

[RoydGolden]

No, see, that’s the point I’m making. People can and DO get killed in this country all the time, and yet people don’t seem to pay attention. Please reread the original post.

I understood that, but at some point along the line you seem to have changed the subject to attacks in foreign countries like Syria.

I still feel a quite similar argument applies though. Even when reading about people getting killed in their own country, I imagine most people have ways of reassuring themselves that the crime wouldn't have happened to them. They wouldn't have walked down that alley, done those drugs, met the wrong type of person, et cetera. As flimsy as these rationalizations may be, making them allows us to go about our daily lives without worrying about getting killed.

The thing about terrorist attacks is that they are almost by nature indiscriminate, targeting society at large rather then any specific person. There's no amount of rationalization that I could use to convince myself I'm not the kind of person who'd fall victim to a terrorist attack, because terrorist attacks just aren't aimed at particular people. That, along with the fact that terrorist attacks tend to take place in public spaces, means that nobody and nowhere is theoretically safe. The nature of terrorist attacks breaks through the bubble we normally use to reassure ourselves we- ordinary, unsuspecting, law-abiding folks- are safe from harm, and that's exactly what makes them terrifying.