Disconnect

Superbly talented Florida Marlins' shortstop Hanley Ramirez has summed up the zeitgeist neatly. A day after totally dogging the retrieval of a ground ball that he had misplayed, being removed from the game by Marlins' manager Fredi Gonzalez, and being benched by Fredi for a couple days after, Ramirez shared his learnings from the whole experience: "He (Gonzalez) doesn't understand. He never played in the Major Leagues."
See, I'm now indebted to Hanley. I saw the highlights show review of the whole situation, and I thought I was seeing an immature, rich, catered-to young man having an unnecessary and unacceptable mistake brought to his attention. I just didn't understand that I was watching the persecution of the righteous by the ignorant. I remember sometime in 1997 watching Bobby Cox of the Braves pull Andruw Jones out of a game for nonchalanting a short fly ball into a game-losing triple. I thought Cox was helping Andruw grow up into a Major League player who could enjoy a productive 15 year career. Turns out, Cox was mistreating the poor baby. At least according to Hanley-Think.
But the truth is that Hanley Ramirez is in the shallow water when it comes to the "You just don't understand me, and can't possibly understand me, because you aren't fortunate enough to be me" way of looking at the world.
Pat Buchanan, considerably older than Mr. Ramirez, has announced that Elena Kagan is not acceptable for the Supreme Court because she is Jewish, and the rest of the court is made up of Catholics and Jews. The devoutly Catholic Mr. Buchanan is disturbed at his sudden discovery of the dearth of Protestants on the Court. Now, in my adult life, we've typically identified Court nominees by their abortion opinions. And your side doesn't want anyone from my side on it, and vice versa, because we, obviously, cannot communicate or understand one another about anything. I'd never been aware of the concern Pat Buchanan has for the spiritual descendents of Martin Luther and his colleagues, but good ol' Pat wants to make sure that we WASPish types have our representative on the Court.
Thanks, Pat, but I just don't feel that where somebody goes to church on their holy day, if they go at all, and if they observe any holy day at all, is the qualification I want to run to when considering Supreme Court nominees. Rather than understanding the theology of The United Methodist Church (Which is impossible, as we don't understand it ourselves; that's why we are perpetually studying and rewriting standards and policies and trying to turn ourselves into those "real" churches that have been around a whole lot longer than we have. Like Pat's. But I digress.), how about somebody that understands the law? Somebody who has given her/his life to the study of the law in America, how that law is to be applied, and what that old Constitution's about, anyway? Somebody like, oh, I don't know...a former Dean of the Harvard Law School?
As a citizen, I don't care where or if Elena Kagan goes to church, temple, mosque or whatever else is out there. I just want to know if she knows the law.
As for the rest, we used to have this thing called "Empathy."
Empathy was that human quality that let a more mature man, say, a Joe Torre, relate to a young bi-racial man, let's call him Derek Jeter, and help him get established as a Major League baseball player in the world's toughest media market.
Empathy was that human quality that let a judge like John Paul Stevens envision the circumstances of the young, the poor, the woman, and new immigrant, and anyone else that didn't match up molecule by molecule with a 90 year old man who has served on the Supreme Court since 1975.
Empathy was that quality that allowed Pope John XXIII to consider the plight of Catholics world-wide, still sitting in services every Sunday that were being conducted in Latin, which was understood by just about no one outside the clergy. His empathy led him to call for the Second Vatican Council, and start the process toward allowing people to actually understand the liturgy and homily they were faithfully attending.
Empathy was that quality that led Abraham Lincoln to look at the plight of the slave and know that the Peculiar Institution was wrong and had to end.
Empathy was what led Mother Teresa to care for the incurables.
It's what kept Nelson Mandela from treating the white South Africans during his Presidency the way black South Africans had been treated for generations when the white folks were running the show.
It's what caused my grandfather, a West Tennessee sharecropper trying to move out and up to his own farm, to cry upon the death of President Roosevelt, as aristocratic a President as this country shall ever know, because Granddaddy believed that Mr. Roosevelt was on his side.
Empathy is what enables us to see beyond ourselves and our own limited experience to know something of the lives and experiences of the other people who make up this world.
And Empathy is sorely lacking in our divided, angry, frustrated world. And that lack is revealed in every Hanley Ramirez, Pat Buchanan, Tea Party, terrorist, you and me, whenever we lack the will, the energy, the time or the desire to try to grasp the reality of anyone's life but our own.