I disagree! Empathy is about feeling what another person is feeling. And what I’m saying is I don’t think it’s that they’re not feeling what the person hurt by the system is feeling, I think it’s that they assume the system is working as is necessary, and the other person’s pain is justified or explained by something, even if they don’t know what. Their pain is a consequence, in the way that a person standing up under a shelf and bonking their head is a consequence of their actions.

So it’s not that they don’t understand that it’s bad until it happens to them, it’s that only when it happens to them do they feel like maybe this consequence isn’t justified by anything. And I think that’s why sometimes the leopard-face-eating doesn’t even shake them out of it. They’ll be like “look, I know you’re deporting people because they’re bad and they came here illegally and they’re criminals, and that’s great, but you deported my wife and kids. There must be some mistake”

And it’s not cognitive dissonance for them. They believe the bad people should go. They believe that all the people who have gone so far deserved it. But just now there was a terrible mix-up, because they know their wife isn’t a bad person. And once this mix-up is remedied, the system can continue in its useful purpose.