Human Nature

[Thumpalumpacus]

I just want to pull this apart a little. Why do you think human nature is good when we see so many examples throughout history of humans fucking one another over? I get your point that "hurt people hurt people"  -- damaged people do damage, sure. But we also see plenty of instances of the collision of cultures where neither has had opportunity to do harm to either, yet they still go at it hammer and tongs. Just 'cause, apparently.

Who hurt the antisemites who eventually cooked up the ovens? They decided to slaughter European Jewry on the basis of ... what? What about the extermination of native Americans? Were the Europeans "hurt" by anything more than a barrier to expansion? Did aborigines in Austrailia do something wrong to earn a couple of centuries of being shitted on?

I think "hurt feelings" is a facile explanation that doesn't touch upon many older and less-political divides. Tribalism, expansionism, and a bad case of "I want what he's got" seems to be in play too.

We don't always hurt the people who hurt us, when we set about hurting people.  It's the donald and his broligarchy fucking middle america.  Has been for years.  They're gonna take it out on mexicans while cheering for their abusers, though.  

Broadly speaking, the white grievance narrative works not just because there's some number of compulsive racists in the us, but because it really does suck to be a working class american right now.  Because it really does suck to try an raise a family on one, or two, or even three paychecks.  Because a 1200sq foot home with 3 feet of clearance around it can cost half a million dollars and there's no guarantee that home is even where half a million dollars worth of job is at, or will be.  Because the price of everything just keeps going up as our wages stagnate even though we're printing obscene wealth for a handful of other people who aren't worried about their mortgage, but being the first to a trillion....and, frankly, are fucking stone cold weirdos to a man.

So is it hurt feelings, as you wrote earlier, or is it economic woe, as you implicate here?

I stand by what I wrote, that "hurt feelings" is a facile explanation, and frankly it seems you're agreeing. I think there's also an in-group/out-group dynamic in play, which politicians use for their own purposes.

Ascribing this to "hurt feelings" is facile. You're right that being on the the other side of the economic eight-ball surely engenders resentment. But that fails to explain a lot of human shittery. It is at best an incomplete explanation of why we are so often so shitty to one another.