4.3 Drowning people are dangerous
There’s a guy, let’s call him Austin, who decides to swim across the lake, starting on the far side. Now he’s 50 yards from shore, but he’s exhausted. He’s not going to make it.
So you dive in and swim out to save him, and hooray for you, but how do you approach him?
You saw a training video on YouTube for lifeguards. It said to swim around behind the person in trouble and get him a cross–chest carry so you can tow him to safety.
And why do you come up from behind? Because drowning people can panic and grab onto you with a death grip and…
Take both of you down.
This happens, this kind of tragedy, all too often. Good intentions are not enough. If you’re going to put yourself at risk to save someone, it matters that you know what you’re doing.
Now let’s transition to the world of politics and talk about…
The danger of taking pity on someone who’s drowning in their own life.
I’ll start with he–who–I–would–rather–not–name, Trump. When I step back from how hateful he is and think him as Donald John who once was a little boy, and wonder what it must be like to be him now, it makes me shudder…
He’s such a pitiful person.
He’s desperate for attention. But he’s got the attention of the whole world and still that’s not enough. Truth is, there can never be enough because attention is not the same thing as love and love is what he’s starved for.
The way I see it, getting big doses of attention doesn’t calm him, not even a little bit. To the contrary, it seems the more attention he gets the more desperate he gets because sucking attention is not working for him.
He’s getting the maximum attention, and if that’s not working then what will? There’s despair. And from that despair comes desperation.
So he flails and tantrums, and begs and demands, and all I can think is what a pitiful person he is.
But…
Does that mean I should pity him?
The temptation is greater now that he’s in massive legal trouble, trouble of his own making. And he keeps talking and digging himself deeper into trouble. He keeps making public confessions and making the job of the prosecutors easy.
This guy is wrecking himself. He’s compulsively self–destructive. He can’t help himself, but, again, does that mean I should pity him?
And I wonder how many people with big hearts, with tender hearts, consciously or unconsciously, take pity on him. And I wonder if that’s one of the reasons he gets a pass on so much of his bad behavior, like…
Oh, that’s just Trump being Trump and he can’t help himself, so what can you do?
Trump is drowning emotionally and personally. And I wonder how many compassionate people get triggered by that and want to save him. And how many people who oppose him, hold themselves in check a little bit, or maybe a lot, because…
It feels bad to attack a pitiful person who’s drowning and can’t help himself.
Pity, so says the dictionary, is…
Sympathetic sorrow.
And I notice that I feel sorrow for Trump and I want better for him just as a person, but I don’t want to add the sympathetic part. Because I hate the damage he’s done to our country, and I hate the evil he’s unleashed in tens of millions of my fellow citizens.
So then what?
The way I look at it, I can feel sad for Trump, but first things first, and what comes first is the fact that…
He’s a drowning person and drowning people are dangerous.
So…
Pity is not a good first response.
Trump’s got hold of this country with a death grip and if we don’t fight for ourselves, and fight hard, he and his millions of MAGA minions will take us all down together.
We need to…
Pay attention to the dangerous part.
Instead of…
Taking pity on him because of the drowning part.
Which means we need to defend ourselves against him and the danger he is, without holding ourselves in check because he’s so pitiful.
We need to play a fierce game of offense, doing everything we can to stop the damage he’s done and continues to do, and the incredibly worse damage he’ll do if he gets back into the presidency.
It’s quite possible to feel sorrow for Trump the person, the guy who had a terrible childhood and is now an internal wreck…
While opposing his actions 100%.
There are two sorrows I feel for Trump…
First, I feel sorrow for the damage done to him that made him who he is.
Second, I feel sorrow for the damage he does in the world. For how evil he’s become. In my best moments, I don’t wish that on anyone, not even someone who’s done as much harm as Trump.
And that second sorrow is what matters most, far and away the most.
I like the phrase sympathetic sorrow. But I’ve come to dislike pity. Maybe this is just me, but there’s something about that word that rubs me the wrong way.
I don’t want to pity people, not even people drowning in their own lives. I might feel sorrow for them, but what I most want to do is help them feel for themselves and then fight for themselves. And do that in a way that’s good for them and for everybody else.
Trump’s MAGA followers live on hate. They’re filled with hate, they spew hate, they do hateful things.
And they hate so many people. They hate absolutely everybody who’s not like them. That’s most of the people in this country. That’s most of the people in the world.
They even hate people who are like them but do not toe the party line of MAGA.
And every time they target someone with their hate, they have to be scared, at least unconsciously, that if they do one wrong thing, if they say one wrong word, the MAGAs will turn on them and hate them and try to destroy them.
What a terrible way to live. If I had a genie lamp I’d be happy to use one of my three wishes on Trump and his MAGAs. My wish would be that they trade their desperate hate in for real love, nurturing love, love that can reach across divisions and make the world a much, much better place.
And then I wouldn’t have to feel sorrow for them or take pity on them. Or be scared of them.
