As I grow in age, multiple things have become clearer to me, but the lens that has focused more than any other has been how important it is to have compassion. It’s not important to be compassionate because you earn a special place in some otherworldly kingdom, or because people will think you’re great. It’s important to the people your compassion helps, and of those, look in a mirror and take a look at who it helps the most.
I’m reminded of this because of something i heard the other night. My intellectual homie, Bill Maher, had Cornell West as a guest on Real Time last Friday. And Professor West, a man who respects the positive use of emotion by employing smart thinking, made the following remark. In reference to the current administration’s handling of the Iraq war he said, “Expertise without caring is sounding brass and a tinkling symbol/cymbal . . . it’s empty.”
If we can put aside the argument that this administration applies neither expertise nor compassion effectively, when was the last time we saw our government act with compassion? Do we have to go as far back as the Carter administration? As I mentioned in a previous post, we like our leaders to be strong, forceful and . . . well . . . stereotypically male. The problem with that approach, as we’ve learned over and over, is that it ignores a basic tenet to living a healthy and happy path.
Quite simply, when can we expect and demand that our government exhibit all the same characteristics that we look for out of the healthiest and happiest of us all? As long as our government caters to the most “bitter” of Americans, we’ll suffer the indignity our “best and the brightest” inflict on the world but more importantly, ourselves.