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On the night of May 21, someone shot two young Israeli Embassy employees walking out of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., after an event. Police said the suspect shouted, "Free, free Palestine," after he was arrested. In a New York Times post about the attack, one commenter suggested giving the shooter a medal. Another replied, "Just two? Sad."

Recently, after it was announced that former President Joe Biden was suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer, journalist Taylor Lorenz posted sentiments that included hoping that Biden "rots in hell." Another prominent writer said she wished he would have a "very painful demise."

An article in The Atlantic titled "My 6-Year-Old Son Died. Then the Anti-Vaxxers Found Out." details the experience of a man whose boy died after an accident probably due to cerebral swelling. In many harassing comments to the dad, jeering anti-vaxxers posted "LOL" and emailed him that he'd killed his son by getting him a COVID-19 vaccine, which they thought was responsible for the child's death.

After Luigi Mangione was charged with murder in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a father of two, cheers and congratulations swarmed social media and people wore T-shirts that said, "Free Luigi." Mangione's defense fund has raised more than $1 million for his legal expenses.

Multiple reports have emerged of ICE detaining and deporting children -- some illegally -- including one case the ACLU publicized in which "a U.S. citizen child suffering from a rare form of metastatic cancer was deported without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians -- despite ICE being notified in advance of the child's urgent medical needs." On Twitter, people with American flags in their bios posted things like "so what?" and "Sorry, but I'm done with anchor babies."

In each of these cases, what strikes me isn't as much the initial events -- distressing as they are -- but the reactions from the public to them. The utter absence of empathy, the cruel and dismissive ways that Americans reacted, is the real tragedy.

Terrible things happen. They always have. But in the wake of those terrible things, our empathy for the suffering of others grounds us. It reminds us that life is precious, that children are innocent and that murder is wrong.

"There but for the grace of God go I," we might say.

Lately, however, I've noticed a turn in our collective thinking. Before expressing pity, or empathy, or sorrow at a loss, we pause and reflect on a strange topic: the victim's politics.

Before we feel empathy, we stop to ask ourselves whether the person was a Democrat or a Republican. Did they support the war in Gaza? Are they pro-vaccine? Did they vote for President Donald Trump?

The answers to those questions, bizarrely, inform the degree of empathy we will allow ourselves to feel for their suffering. It's amazing the degree to which we can control our ability to be cruel to those with whom we disagree.

For, after all, our political beliefs don't require that we harden our hearts.

It is possible to believe, fervently, both that the war in Gaza is unconscionable and that the murder of two young people simply for being connected to Israel is wrong. There is nothing incompatible about thinking that health insurers can be rapacious and destructive while also believing that shooting a man in the middle of a busy street is an unjust protest.

We do not have to abandon our empathy, yet we willingly do so every day.

It's easier, perhaps, to view the world through such an uncomplicated lens. If you died, you deserved it. If you are in pain, it is earned.

The messy alternative, that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, is harder to hold in one's heart. Because if it's true, then there is nothing that can protect us from suffering these tragedies ourselves.

If children can just ... die one day, without a clear reason, for no avoidable cause, then it can happen to our kids, too. If a man can abruptly discover that a disease growing inside of him will soon take away his ability to see his grandkids, talk to his wife and live, then we're also at risk. If a person can be condemned to death, without a trial, by a jury of one, then no one can shield us from similar judgment.

How terrifying.

It's understandable that we want to push such complexities away, understandable that it relieves anguish to view victims as simply evil, deserving of any imaginable form of torture. When we justify these tragedies, though, we pay the price for that relief. Empathy is a muscle that atrophies from lack of use.

It's often said that anthropologist Margaret Mead defined the start of civilization as the first healed broken femur bone. When we started to care for people who couldn't do anything for us in return, we became more than just animals. We became humans.

I hope that we are not going backward, reversing back through civilization to a time when we might walk upon a man on the ground, suffering from a broken leg bone and before extending our hand to help, ask him this:

"Well, who did you vote for, buddy?"

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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