curated: we are the frogs slowly boiling in a soup of hatred and lack of compassion

Reader Danielm80 pointed out this important essay, which reader Bluejay suggests needs its own post… and I agree. It might seem at first to be out of the wheelhouse of a film-criticism site, even one at which the critic — that is, yours truly — often discusses film in the larger cultural and political context. But it isn’t. Not least because I have been floored by the utter lack of empathy, compassion, and simple, basic human kindness and decency that I have been seeing the comments here lately. The shit that I have been putting up with for years as a critic who is feminist and progressive has gotten much worse, because our society has gotten so much meaner and coarser in recent years.

So: Mike Jones at Quora responded to this question:

I urge you to read his entire response, which is thoughtful and incisive. But here’s a taste. He begins by saying, “Honestly? This.” And by this he means:

And then he goes on:

From there, he offers a brief history of the camps and the very slow ramping up that was required to go from, “Oh, these places aren’t so bad, certainly not anywhere anyone was intended to die in” to the intentional death factories they eventually became. It took time for people to adjust to each incremental step along the way. It was a slow eroding of human dignity… on the part of those who implemented the Holocaust.

Jones then discusses some of the slow dehumanization that those working at the current US border camps are doing to themselves in order to survive their own crimes, as well as the excuses for the existence of the camps in the first place. But

Please do read the whole thing… and think about what Jones has written.