Empathy's Swan Song? ... GOP Style

In a recent post, I explored conservative statements that seemed to reinforce the notion that empathy is a dying animal in America today. As the Wall Street protests continue and spread across the country, the response from GOP Presidential candidates has been telling. First and most prominently is Herman Cain, the millionaire founder of Godfather's Pizza (who clearly had little empathy for the people forced to eat his crappy food). He argued that the protesters were "anti-American" and engaged in, you guessed it, "class warfare." As to the first point, it is clearly anti-American to protest anything Republicans or the wealthy do, though he did suggest protesting the policies of the President (who the GOP led House have blocked from doing much of anything). The second point continues the tiresome trend in American political discourse of calling any attempt to address growing inequality in the country as "class warfare." Rather than attacking the absurdity of the claim, maybe it is time to just admit that we need some good old class warfare in the U.S. Cain also claimed that those protesters are simply "jealous" and should shut up and get jobs. Where those jobs are is a wholly different issue.

Fellow also-ran Newt Gingrich also got involved in the fray claiming that our "bad education system" spreading "really dumb ideas" is to blame. Hmm, I'd be more apt to believe it is behind the eight year Bush debacle except that he went to the most elite institutions in the country. 

A final argument from Cain is potentially the most revealing. He claimed that his parents never played the "victim card," and that may very well be true. But that is the essential strategy of the Republican party since the 90s (if not earlier), as I pointed out in another post. Of course, not all victims are equal. Rich and middle-class white victims are clearly in the right while poor and minority victims are just sore losers.