n retrospect, by glancing at all the rants that have been posted here over the years, many of our readers would come to the conclusion that the old days-- before the Great Recession-- were just purely awful, and for the most part, that would be a fair assessment. It has always been bad. There was never the 'good old days.' Life was an endless parade of turmoil and crises, at home and beyond.

While we do not have a single nostalgic bone in our bodies, we would now have to concede that we did not anticipate the sheer depths of what we would be going through right now-- in the States, in the UK, in western Europe, and in the developed world in general. Merely four years ago, which feels like a quaint and innocent time of the distant past of another planet. Some amongst us may even feel that perhaps George W wasn't so bad after all, considering what's happening to us now. We're not talking about Covid and ever-larger bush fires. In the seemingly apocolyptic, post-Brexit, Trump-led, late-stage capitalist world, we wake up to increasingly intensifying new horrors every single morning that easily surpass whatever horrific nightmares we could have muster ourselves the night before. We face insurmountable polarisation among the populace in the midst of incipient fascism. The centre cannot hold, for it has now disappeared.

While we've always been inveterate leftists since before puberty, we also reckon that we may also be somewhat conservative at least temperamentally, in the sense that we generally prefer gradual changes in life and career. Think the traditional definition of that term. We don't like shock treatment. We would proceed cautiously, with plenty of research and planning beforehand, backed by facts, science, and data, if applicable. Yes, this attitude may lead to a sort of inertia where nothing exciting ever happens in our lives. On the other hand, we also believe that gradual adjustments on the social, political, and economic front may not always be appropriate, as people are hurting, suffering, or dying right now, and that dire circumstances demand immediate and drastic courses of action. This does not mean that we should not try to understand what are the underlying currents and causes of rising totalitarianism that threaten democracy while keeping the underclass and the oppressed of the planet from staying afloat to survive, let alone to thrive. As sane, well-read citizens of the world, we should perhaps consider taking a pause to gather our bearings, and try to find some of the root causes that beset our current Western societies. Liberal democracy is at stake in the developed world. We must find ways to save it.

It may sound like a cliché, but it may be helpful for all of us to try to get a sense of the big picture first, in order to propose and implement smarter or more effective policies in the long run. You know, that whole bit about thinking globally, and acting locally? Smart evolution is probably a tastier (and more effective) cup of tea than bitter revolutionary medicine.

o who's causing all our troubles? Yes, we all know that capitalism is fucked-up, but more specifically, why does it seem like all the right-wingers the world over are so moustache-twirlingly evil? While it may seem overly naive, we reckon that the world is a mess primarily due to these mean, mean-spirited people with intent to harm. They embrace the fascist tendencies, such as might is right, and the propensity to use violence and intimidation, and the glorification of firearms, at least here in North America. The mean people hate liberals because... they're nice? How many tenured professors fetishise guns, ammo, and camo have we ever run across lately? People often correctly blame their extremism and bigotry on the Murdoch media empire's reign of disinformation, or on American talk radio, or podcasting geared toward incels, or on Twitter and Facebook, or on social media algorithms in general. However, aren't most of these factors mere symptoms of a society that suffers some sort of deeper ailment? The media companies are merely reflecting and feeding these unhealthy desires.

So why are right-wingers so mean? We think that pathology has to do with a failure of imagination, which often leads to lack of compassion. You need to have the ability to feel the pain experienced by someone else, besides you or the people close to you-- strangers, perhaps someone of a different ethnicity or religion, or economic circumstance. To some degree, empathy requires a degree of imagination, which is ultimately the aptitude to visualise something that is currently not present at the moment. This type of visualisation can take the form of creative output. Overwhelmingly across history and different societies, artists and people in the creative fields are leftists, because their jobs actively require visualisation. This is imagination-- making up something in their minds, and then conveying or building it via a medium, whether it be writing, dramaturgy, painting, sculpting, gastronomy, designing, music, acting, filming, comedy, scholarship, scientific hypothesis, architecture, etc.; the ability to make up stories and art requires creativity. It requires one to ask questions, and act on concepts that are not entirely clear at the present moment. No wonder right-wingers love to ban books-- they force readers to expand minds and ask questions. When people don't read, they vote Republicans-- check out their spelling and grammar on their signs at rallies.

Illiterate and under-educated bullies rarely make compelling art. They lack imagination and creativity, and that's why they're fewer of them in the aforementioned creative fields, or to a lesser extent, in academia, or in independent bookstores, or in libraries, or in art galleries. Remember that Republican presidential candidates always have difficulty finding good songs whose writers wouldn't object to their use in their campaigns? Because they don't exist! When you lack imagination, you also have difficulty putting oneself in another's shoes. Bullies and narcissists cannot think beyond themselves. Since self-identified conservatives seem to have profound difficulty envisioning tragedy ever happening to them, they cannot effectively empathise -- that may be the basis of most of the problems in our society. To some extent, this form of myopia also seems to be reflected in corporate boardrooms, amongst CEOs, and in business management schools across North America, where quarterly results drive everything. They cannot process anything farther out, nor basically think or plan in the long-term, so they act accordingly. Is it any wonder that business school graduates traditionally tend to vote more Republican, AfD, or Reform than their peers from the universities or other institutional pillars deemed liberal?

Myopic right-wingers naturally become selfish people lacking in compassion. After all, their leaders worship at the altar of Ayn Rand, the atavistic proponent of the cult of selfishness. In their world view, if bad things happen to people, they obviously deserve it! They are all just a bunch of beta cuck soy boys and snowflakes unable to cope with reality. That's why we as a society shouldn't ever enact laws that coddle and protect fellow humans from unforeseen circumstances. These safety net measures are 'socialist' schemes that sanction weakness, and definitely detrimental to quarterly bottom lines.

This world view illustrates the inability to see ahead, because that requires a degree of imagination. These people hold on to these attitudes until, of course, something bad or tragic actually happens to them. They cannot imagine that anything can go wrong to them... until it actually does. They don't have the foresight to consider that food, water, air, and drugs may be ever be unsafe. That industrial and vehicular pollutants can be ever be harmful to their bodies, because they're not experiencing cancer on that very day. They do not have the ability to understand that passenger travel safety regulations and maintenance programmes have value. And when they collapse or disappear due to government budget cuts, they wind up in the hospital or the morgue. They don't believe that climate change-- such as the increasing strength and occurance of hurricanes-- can ruin their lives... until it does. Only then would they consider taking governmental measures-- once thought to be oppressive shackles to freedom-- to prevent or mitigate against these unexpected (to them) outcomes. Consider all these 'socialist' schemes that they’ve been fighting tooth and nail against for decades: social security, universal healthcare, Medicare, childcare, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, deposit insurance, community education and recreation programmes, housing subsidies for the poor, work training programmes, protection for the environment, rules to maintain clear air and water, and on and on and on. They fight against them because they can't see beyond their noses.

To wit, why should they ever care about what happens to poor people, or people who have pre-existing medical conditions, who have been abused by big private American insurers or the big pharmaceutical companies? These kinds of stories must be fake… 'they’re fake news!' ... until, of course, it actually happens to them and to their own families. To right-wingers, if it didn't happen to them, it doesn't exist. If the legislation doesn't benefit them personally right now, they'll oppose it.

Another example would be global warming. How do you expect them to believe in climate change, when it's freezing and snowing outside today? These people don't read science journals or adhere to what's left of traditional media. They consume Fox News, podcasts, and other forms of media, free from peer reviews and fact checking. Their lack of imagination precludes any ability to fathom any form of long-term thinking, or see the big picture. They can only understand the here and now.

ake civil rights and voting rights. Or protection from discrimination against people of colour, against refugees, or members of the LGBTQ communities: why would we ever need the government to get involved? Aren't they just lifestyle choices? What about religious freedom? Why should we sanction these behaviours, let alone protect these people?

Because for the most part, right-wingers never experience real oppression, for they are often the oppressors. Their rights have never really been violated. One cannot help but ask, how dare they compare making cakes for gay weddings to religious oppression! They often don't know what real oppression is. That's why they're always fighting against civil rights legislation. The lack of empathy is a failure of imagination, as they do have the faculty to picture being in other peoples shoes. Oppression doesn't exist for them, nor can they visualise it, so 'it must be fake news!’

Take the recent rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Right-wingers don't support it, simply because they don't experience police brutality. They don't get abused by cops, mostly because they are the cops. It really helps that they are bigots-- who wouldn't love to beat up or kill people who look different from you? From personal experience, I knew guys (for I had dated at least two) who originally joined the police force so they could beat up black or brown people. Many right-wingers cannot envision the pain and oppression experienced by others, and therefore they do not believe them to exist. They do not understand, nor care to educate themselves about, the systematic and structural racism that leads to a creation of a permanent underclass that leads to high crime rates among people of colour. This is why laws in America are the way they are, as they are for the most part enacted by people who lack the ability to visualise, understand, and thereby empathise. These laws are made by people who are not only bigots, but also lacking in imagination. They cannot see beyond what's in it for them.

Take the instance of rampant gerrymandering of voting districts by state Republican lawmakers with the intent of diluting the power of Democrats and people of colour in state or Congressional electoral races. Not only has this issue been battled many times in the courts-- with the latter often correctly determining that boundaries have indeed been malicious drawn-- but the GOP lawmakers themselves have admitted to flagrant gerrymandering time and again, since that has their MO for decades. Fair play and good faith are completely alien concepts to them. They even have the audacity to address to journalists the notion why the Democrats won't do it themselves when they’re in power. Ultimately, this is whole the point, isn't it? We on the left do not do this, because we naturally have a sense of fair play. We're better than that. And we hope others would play fairly as well. We're able to visualise ourselves in others' shoes, and determine that this is not how we would like to be treated. Therefore, we should not be doing this to other people, when the shoe's on the other foot. Back in the days of the George W Bush administration and its 'war on terror,' we on the left fought for respecting and adhering the Geneva convention, and against the use of torture on foreign prisoners, because we want our soldiers, if they should ever be captured in the future, to be treated fairly and humanely. That is how the world should work, and that is how normal, civilised society operates. But somehow, time and again, right-wingers have this pathological inability to foresee what would happen when tables are turned. This is a concept that they're utterly unable to comprehend, and the world is worse off because of it.

What about the ongoing hostile intransigence from right-wingers to wear masks during the pandemic? They always point out that they don't work in terms of protecting oneself from getting Covid, and that's why they don't want to waer them. But wearing masks is not about protecting oneself! It has always been about protecting others from infection, for the greater good and health of the community. And that's why it's so hard for them to get around to the concept-- it's about caring for other people. They have to somehow consider about the well-being of people in their communities-- not about themselves. This is a big ask for them. They have to overcome selfishness. That's why it's so hard for them. Science shouldn't be politicised, but somehow these people made it so.

Needless to day, the inability to empathise compromises the sense of fair play. Right-wing legislators play dirty and act disingenuously. Remember when President Obama tried to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on 16th March 2016, six months before the presidential election? The Republican Senate prevented even hearings from being convened for his confirmation, arguing that it's too close to the general election. On the other hand, in year 2020, the Republican Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Court on 26 October 2020, mere eight days before the presidential election. The hypocrisy of Republican Senators like Mitch McConell and Lindsey Graham goes everything against common decency. We wonder whether this a form of myopia that we've been discussing, or simply sui generis evil form of cynicism?

o how do we get them to change their tune? To get them to see beyond their own myopic bubbles, and maybe expand their minds? How do we appeal to their compromised sense of fair play? Alas, these questions remain rhetorical. Naturally, the destructive tides may ebb, if perhaps more of their children and friends come out as gay or trans. Or if more of their own friends and families get booted out by private health insurers or government safety nets. Or when they get sick or die from unsafe foods and drugs, or get cancer or too many fingers from toxic contamination of their environments. Again, these people simply would not care about these causes or maintaining regulations, unless these circumstances actually happen upon them. We don't think we can simply reform society by teaching more tolerance and compassion in schools. Or that kids should learn to protect their planet and the environment. Or that fossil fuels are killing our world. That type of 'woke' curriculum gets plenty of pusback already. And we all know just how difficult it is to convince kids to learn anything from their teachers. It's just too obvious. We've been there before ourselves. These days they have more trust in podcasters and influencers. Right now, bullying, bigotry, and narcissism may even seem to pay off-- look at the current occupant in the White House. Instead of teaching kids what's right or wrong, perhaps we can encourage and cultivate more creativity in schools at an early age, so they wouldn't grow up to become anti-science bigots? Maybe promote art to children, so they will not grow up to be their parents? We don't know what the answers are. If we find them, we'll certainly let you know here.

11 November 2020