Empathy, empathy, they’ve all got no empathy

I was thinking about Two-Tier Free-Gear Starmer-Stalin and the perceived inconsistency and disproportionality of policing and sentencing. Here’s one example: 31months for a nasty Tweet (or two) by the wife of a Tory Councillor, which was her first rap. By some accounts, she’s still distressed by the death of her new-born a few years ago; the recent murders of the three Southport angels might have been a trigger for her. 

Then there was 32 months, which turned out to be a death sentence, for a grandad in poor health, for shouting provocatively. Both pled guilty, which normally means a less harsh sentence. Not in these cases, apparently. Meanwhile, paedophiles are spared jail, and murderers and rapists are released early to make room in jails for people who say nasty things in a nasty way. Further, Calamity Cooper and Mad Mahmood vowed to make misogyny a terror offence, yet failed to condemn the murder of a British woman by a man of fighting age who, reportedly, landed on British soil illegally. I could go on and on and on. Too many injustices? Let’s have a think.

When a radical Imam incites violence, locking him up seems a reasonable thing to do, so why not the Tory Councillor’s wife or the 61-year-old grandad, to whom I refer above? If someone becomes violent because someone else whips up hatred and incites said violence, aren’t the perp and the puppet master equally culpable and deserving of the same sentence under the law?

For me, it boils down to causation or correlation, and reasonable doubt. If A knifes B, A causes B’s injuries and/or demise and, barring any mitigating circumstances such as self-defence, that’s a slam-dunk GBH or murder conviction for A. If C tells D to harm E, C causes E harm and is as responsible as D for the crime. If F fires off to anyone who’ll listen that they want harm to befall H and, at some point in the near future, G harms H, should F share the blame as well as G? There are three possibilities here: G responds to F’s incitement; or G responds to someone else’s incitement; or G doesn’t need any incitement to harm H. In other words, very crudely calculated, F only has a 1-in-3 chance of being responsible for H’s harm. That to me is reasonable doubt of causality, and it’s more likely to be correlation. However, the more authority F has and the more often and eloquently they demand that infidels be slaughtered, the more guilty they're likely to be. Doesn't sound like the Tory wife to me.

Moving this forward, in the case of the Tory wife, can it be proved that any one of those people who read her Tweets went on to break the law as a direct result of her vulgarity? And in the case of Peter Lynch RIP, if he hadn’t been at the disturbance, would that disturbance have taken place anyway, to the same extent? Did Mr Lynch cause or make a situation worse?

Some would argue – and I know because I’ve heard them – that if we don’t come down hard on inflammatory speech and posturing, the chances are that more people will incite violence or use hurty words, which will increase the chances of others hearing them and taking violent action. In some respects, I would support a tough approach, but only if everyone is treated equally. Yeah well, as we have seen, you can threaten British and legally domiciled, law-abiding Jews week after week with impunity, but if you threaten some other sections of society you’re labelled a far-right fascist, and the book is thrown at you.

Another situation: a violent gangland leader can shoot rivals in crowded places, use his car as a weapon to attempt murder, and have his behaviour kept quiet for as long as possible, but the copper who saves the day by permanently removing this evil wotsit from the streets is named and now has a price on his head. He has been handed a life sentence of looking over his shoulder and worrying about his loved ones. Yet the gangster’s allies are emboldened by insidious Labour MPs like Diane Abbott and Kim Johnson siding with the criminal fraternity against the police and jury. Emboldened means having the confidence to continue, and indeed to escalate, their abhorrent criminal activities. What I’m saying is, incitement of violence comes in many forms – Tweets, shouts and stupidity/bigotry/political opportunism – and must be punished equally, which means throwing Abbott and Johnson in jail for over 30 months.

Let me now turn to Tommy Robinson (or whatever his name is), who’s just been jailed for 18 months for contempt of court. I don’t follow the man or know much about what it is he’s supposed to have done or why, so I’m not going to comment on his guilt or otherwise, or the length of the sentence. Except to wonder if what he did was any worse than crimes committed by the likes of Huw Edwards, Nicola Sturgeon, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and striking medics, who are all free as birds … vultures maybe, but still birds.

And it can’t have escaped your notice that, according to some reports that haven’t been denied, over 250,000 people attended Robinson’s rally at the weekend. That’s an awful lot of people. Two possibilities – the marchers have a point or they’re mistaken. Either way, they have a voice, and it is the authorities’ duty to listen to all voices and do something about their concerns, even if it’s to carry on as is but communicate better, or put in place mitigating measures. But to dismiss their collective voice, call them far-right fascists and incarcerate the vulnerable isn’t getting us anywhere and will only swell their ranks.

What I also get from the coverage of the march was, it was mostly good humoured. Ok it wasn’t nice to call Starmer a rhymes-with-anchor, but these marchers say it how they see it, and they’re not blind. (Whereas, if you believe the myth, Starmer probably is.) The most disgusting footage of the day was from the counter-gathering of something allied to what I call ‘Hate not Hope’. An ugly woman was encouraging her ugly son to call the 250,000 marchers ‘mother rhymes-with-puckers’. This, remember, is the bunch who advocate inclusivity, unity, tolerance and kindness. Ha! A self-imposed life sentence of hypocrisy.

To me, what epitomises the difference between those of us who are imperfect, and those with delusions of moral superiority, is the fall-out from the Tory wife's Tweets. Her husband defended his wife in public, emphasising her otherwise good character. To no avail. She’s gone to jail. His world has crashed around him in a humiliating and public manner. He must be traumatised. But what does his Labour MP do, another bloke, a Northamptonshire neighbour, a fellow politician? Does he take the Tory down the pub? Write him a supportive and sympathetic letter? Talk intelligently and insightfully, or even neutrally, to the media? Not on your Nelly. He calls for the doting, loyal, traumatized Councillor to resign.

How very unkind. But he’s still morally superior to the 'racists', right? Not necessarily. It boils down to the difference between judging and being judgmental. People who are judgmental look down on others and believe their own outlook on life and behaviour are unequivocally superior. To judge without being judgmental requires empathy, which is the ability and indeed the genuine desire to understand how other people feel and why. Without empathy, as Charles Harper-Webb (no relation) wrote for Psychology Today, we are unable to enact the very foundation of Judeo-Christian morality: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. Therefore, logically, if you’re judgmental, like the Northamptonshire Labour MP, you lack empathy and therefore Judeo-Christian morality. Instead of being morally superior, as he believes he is, he actually lacks the ability to intentionally make moral decisions.

So, given the choice of going to the pub with the Labour MP or the Tory Councillor’s wife, Peter Lynch or even (what the heck) Tommy Robinson, I’d go with the latter three. Not because I believe they’re morally superior to the Labour MP, but because they’d be less likely to sit in moral judgement on me. I am in truth my own harshest critic, and the last thing I need is for everyone else to pile in when I’m trying to relax with a bevvy. Those with empathy would know that.