
“Treat street lunatics like protected wildlife….”
That’s true, but that’s not all. In the progressive mind the greatest sin is being MEAN. They will do anything to avoid being seen as the dreaded “mean.” They will inflict endless pain and suffering on others, in fact, to avoid this perception of meanness. Partially it is because they want to avoid making difficult decisions of any kind. But it is more than that. They believe the first-order effect of being (supposedly) mean, of treating anyone at all harshly, matters more than anything else that occurs after.
Thus, being “mean” to some schizo stabby hobo by tossing him in the hoosegow before he slaughters an infinitely-more-valuable Iryna Zarutska is to progressives the worse transgression than Iryna bleeding out utterly alone on a bus. To them, what happens to the productive and priceless Irynas of the world do not matter at all in comparison to the fact that we’d have to be “mean” to Decarlos Brown.
Yes, what they believe is perverse and destructive to society. It makes no sense. But I think we must think like them — and even empathize with them a bit — to combat their depredations against sense and civilization. Their fear of being perceived as harsh or cruel is the result of feeling weak. Because they are in fact weak and pitiful. They want to support the supposed underdog because they feel like that dog. Correct or not, that is how they perceive themselves. They feel more in common with Decarlos Brown than a productive and ambitious young woman like Iryna because their contributions to civil society are essentially nothing and most of their jobs are meaningless. In fact, most of their lives lack any meaning at all.
I know, again, it makes no sense. But when you actually feel empathy (rather than sympathy) that’s often what happens.
They don’t want to be “mean” to Decarlos Brown because they resemble him (to themselves) more than they do Iryna. And that terrifies them.