Robert Wright writes that the lack of cognitive empathy is one of the major drivers that leads Americans to support one disastrous war after another. He distinguishes cognitive empathy from the more familiar emotional empathy and says that some so-called ‘think tanks’ in the US and major media like the New York Times are undermining whatever minimal cognitive empathetic impulses people might have and are thus making wars more likely
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I have written many times before about one of the greatest atrocities of the Vietnam war, a war that was itself a monstrous atrocity at every level. The My Lai massacre was notable because the appalling facts eventually came out (although more than a year after the event) and were undeniable and yet president Nixon excused the actions of the murderous soldiers and the officers who ordered the attack in which the people in a hamlet were ordered into a ditch and then were ruthlessly gunned down.
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The so-called Nuremberg defense, that one’s war crimes can be excused if one were following orders, was advanced during the trial of Nazis after World War II and was rejected. But as Jon Schwarz writes, the US is now advancing that same argument in defense of the people in the government who not only authorized and presided over ghastly torture practices that are undoubtedly war crimes, they showed every indication of having enjoyed doing so.
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There has been a news story out of Austin, Texas that has received remarkably little mainstream news coverage. Parcel bombs have exploded at various residences killing two people.

Sean Philips had just woken up and was sitting on his couch when he heard the blast that would take his neighbor’s life.

The explosion, police now say, came from a package that Anthony Stephan House encountered on his front porch in north Austin on the morning of March 2.

Police say it was the first of three mysterious package bombings in 10 days in Texas’ capital — explosions that have killed two people, including House, injured two others and left city residents on edge and highly suspicious of packages delivered to their homes.
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This package, and two more that exploded at other Austin residences 10 days later, were placed in front of houses, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. All were average-sized delivery boxes, and they weren’t delivered by the US Postal Service or delivery services such as UPS or FedEx, police said.

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Lost in the news about the Tillerson firing and that Democrats seem to have won the seat long held by Republicans in the special election in Pennsylvania is that the latest to be exposed as a lying grifter in this administration is the oh-so-pious Ben Carson. Carson had said that he was shocked to learn that an expensive dining set had been ordered for his office at a time when his department was cutting funding for projects aimed at alleviating the conditions of the homeless. He said that this had been done without his knowledge and that once he learned of it, he had requested that it be cancelled.
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