Regarding the temporal-ideological and genuinely empathetic gap of the left

 When Nazism from 80 years ago is more important than the suffering of millions of contemporaries subjected to the oppressive totalitarianism of "communist" regimes.

You're lucky! You weren't born in North Korea or Cuba. You don't live in either of those countries, although you probably live in Brazil, just like me. In this country, which, while far from being Switzerland, is at least not absolutely worse than those other two countries mentioned (until this year, 2026).

You don't live totally subjugated to a totalitarian government. Err, I mean, not yet... Although it seems we are heading towards a future more similar to the Cuban and North Korean present...

You don't live without being able to travel or leave your country with government authorization; afraid to say something "wrong" and be punished with forced labor or even death (although you can already be punished by the state if you commit certain "thoughtcrimes"); Without any autonomy, even minimal, over your own lives; in poverty, forced into constant rationing of food, energy, water... While the political elite of their country live in much better conditions... You don't live entirely within a lie maintained by perverse government officials: abandoned, treated literally like cattle on a farm, your spirit and body slaughtered daily until those days become years, decades..., and seeing your best years slip through your fingers, until you grow old without ever knowing what it is to have abundant food and the freedom to express yourselves, to dress, to come and go...

That's why I feel true compassion for these people who cannot enjoy what I have or can, which is still little, but minimally sufficient. I feel sorry for every North Korean and Cuban who would like, at least, to have the right to leave their countries and try to improve their lives outside of them. But not even that. They live in an existential limbo, in a kind of hell on Earth... And even if there are no extermination camps or official statistics of genocides perpetrated by their governments, it is not difficult, for anyone who still maintains some level of logical-rational reasoning, to associate them with other governments or social systems that, throughout history, have also caused great human suffering, such as Nazism. If I could be bolder and suggest that Cuba and North Korea are like two concentration camps of considerable physical dimensions, after all, their inhabitants are directly subjected to totalitarian social systems, not unlike what happened to prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. The biggest difference is that there is not, explicitly speaking, a routine of (immediate and explicit) mass murders. But it is not an exaggeration to conclude that they suffer so much in life that as if this constant pain accelerates the natural obsolescence of their organisms, leading to the premature death of many of them, especially the most vulnerable. While capitalist societies can also exhibit variably high levels of suffering, especially in third-world countries, which contrast sharply with the more humanized version of capitalism, social democracy...

But then, we have a likely majority of leftists silent about the suffering of inhabitants of countries like Cuba and North Korea, precisely those who claim to fight against social injustice and oppression; who advocate for solidarity, freedom, and equality... A likely majority that tends to be obsessed with certain historical periods and uses them as prime examples of human selfishness and cruelty, such as Nazism, which emerged and established itself as the dominant social and ideological system in Germany more than eighty years ago. And only or especially Nazism... While Cubans, people like you and me, live in misery, lacking the most basic necessities, even when there was Soviet aid, because they didn't even have the most basic democratic right to have a voice and to be able to use it, for example, to criticize the government/party. And they continue like this, only now it's even worse. Of course, the same can be said about the North Koreans...

What also persists are the excuses of those who coldly remain silent about the suffering of these peoples, as if denying its legitimacy (and that seems to be what they do). Because, according to this majority, it is not the "socialist/democratic" dictators (??), and their henchmen, who are most to blame for the deplorable states in which Cuba and North Korea find themselves. The blame, for those who adopt victimhood as a habit, always lies with the other: the American embargo, Western imperialism, structural racism... in short, any abstract expression that denotes a pretense of intellectual depth. Even with all the evidence pointing to the fact that every so-called socialist regime is basically a reinterpretation of what happened in the first revolutionary experience, in the Russian Empire, because.this perfectly illustrates what the most important political prophet, George Orwell, wrote in the form of a children's fable in his brilliant book: Animal Farm. Even though Nazism always deserves a definitively negative mention*, the absolute contempt of many leftists for the suffering of these exemplified peoples, while simultaneously always trying to associate the idea of ​​evil only with the other side of the political-ideological trenches, calls into question their capacity for moral discernment, due to an extreme selectivity of indignation, very incoherent or contradictory...

*although it is entirely possible, and I think even necessary, to explore and emphasize its complexity, for example, to show that not "everything" that was/is defended was/is unequivocally wrong, as many leftists/Orwellians like to do (for example, claiming that people, especially those of Caucasian white race, cannot have a more positive feeling about their race, because that would be the same as racism, "white supremacy" or even Nazism, as if only European peoples had a history of conflict, wars and oppression and, therefore, were no longer allowed to have and demonstrate it). that feeling...

My politics aren't about right or left, they're about empathy, knowledge, justice...

It's not about Trump or Maduro, socialism or capitalism.

It's about focusing on what's most important: people, animals, nature... Whether they are suffering or satisfied. Whether the arguments for or against are valid.

It's about putting myself in the other person's shoes and thinking if I would like to be in their place. It's much simpler and more accurate than any analysis of the current political situation.

If the real problem is the US economic embargo, for example, or if it's the fact that a country is a dictatorship whose rulers don't care at all about the collective well-being of its people... After all, a country with powerful allies, like Venezuela, shouldn't have such chronic social and economic problems...

My politics, which is also my ideology, is about the clarity of facts so that it illuminates my lines of reasoning and helps me to make fairer judgments, without falling into the temptation of clinging to simplistic, contradictory speeches and narratives that are out of touch with reality...

It's not about which group, but which position, thought, or action is most correct.

And if the people are suffering, it doesn't matter if the government is on one side or the other. Even though I dislike the liberator, may the dictator not continue oppressing innocent people, animals, life itself...

The capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro, at the beginning of 2026, will not change my opinions on capitalism or the USA, which have never been the best. Because I've learned that it's perfectly possible to like X more without having to dislike Y more, that these binary oppositions are inferior to a multi-perspective approach, inevitable for anyone who truly intends to understand the world as it is, first, in order to propose solutions or measures more appropriate than those that are products of indoctrination or sentimentalism...

Um possível efeito colateral logicamente inesperado da alta empatia: limitação do círculo social/A possible, logically unexpected side effect of high empathy: limitation of social circle

 Mais empático é o indivíduo, mais profundamente simpático ou afetuoso com os outros ele tende a ser. Só que, ao invés disso resultar em uma maior capacidade de se relacionar com os outros, pode acontecer o efeito oposto, de dificultar essa capacidade e acabar limitando a quantidade de pessoas com as quais consegue estabelecer contato permanente e/ou frutífero. Porque a empatia, em seu sentido associado com simpatia ou afetividade, não é apenas sentir carinho, ser respeitoso ou cuidadoso pelo ou com o outro, especialmente se percebe o mínimo de afinidade, mas também de sentir preocupação pelo mesmo, bem como de tomar suas dores. Além disso, outro efeito que também pode ter um papel negativo nessa finalidade, de se fazer amizades, é a percepção de carência do outro em relação ao mais empático, se a alta empatia tende a, pelo menos, tornar o seu "portador" mais aparentemente carente, característica que costuma afastar mais do que atrair pessoas. Pois não bastasse o que já foi comentado, o mais empático também pode desenvolver uma visão mais crítica e, portanto, rabugenta sobre o mundo, particularmente sobre o mundo humano, suas injustiças, crueldades... que também afasta mais do que atrai pessoas para o seu convívio. 

The more empathetic an individual is, the more deeply sympathetic or affectionate he or she tends to be with others. However, instead of resulting in a greater ability to relate to others, the opposite effect may occur, hindering this ability and ending up limiting the number of people with whom one can establish permanent and/or fruitful contact. Because empathy, in its sense associated with sympathy or affection, is not only about feeling affection, being respectful or caring for or with the other, especially if one perceives the slightest affinity, but also about feeling concern for them, as well as empathizing with their pain. Furthermore, another effect that can also have a negative role in this purpose of making friends is the perception of the other's neediness in relation to the more empathetic person, if high empathy tends to, at the very least, make its "bearer" more apparently needy, a characteristic that tends to drive people away rather than attract them. As if what has already been said were not enough, the most empathetic person can also develop a more critical and, therefore, grumpy view of the world, particularly the human world, its injustices, cruelties... which also drives away more people than it attracts to their lives.

About the perversity of lying to avoid offending and its consequences

What does it mean to be really good??

There's a film, "Florence: Who's That Woman?", from 2016, that I've never seen and it looks very interesting. Starring the legendary actress Meryl Streep, it tells the real story of an American granddaughter named Florence Foster Jenkins who, despite having no talent for operatic singing, believed in the opposite and, precisely for that reason, came to invest in an artistic career and present themselves publicly. She was even "successful" in her presentations or... gratuitous humiliations, as there were many people willing to pay to see her playing out of tune live. For this story can give us a lesson about kindness and truth, if it is about a woman who had a great delusion about herself and whose belief was further reinforced by others, not just those who wanted to see her humiliate herself and, perhaps, without any awareness of the role she was playing, but also by those who, feeling sorry for her apparent innocence, supported her dream (and without forgetting to talk about the possibility that she may have "wet the hand" of some to help her in your endeavor).

Realize that even this modern and popular idea that "empathy", as a synonym for kindness, is expressed particularly through the act of lying to avoid offending or to please, has its limits. Take the case of Florence, where those who lied to her, supporting her career, were no better or kinder than those who took pleasure in seeing her humiliating herself, if the right thing to do is to tell the truth, especially if necessary, because there are situations in which frankness may be optional. But, when it comes to intelligence, talent or competence, it is best to always tell the truth, no matter how harsh it may be. Here, it is still necessary to differentiate between subjective truth or what one thinks and feels and objective truth or what one perceives objectively.

To make matters worse, this habit of always lying to avoid offending is definitely no longer limited to the personal sphere, entering the world of politics, as it has been adopted by so-called "progressive" or "left-wing" parties and in relation to their "politically protected" groups " or, "relevant" to their power projects: historically or socially 'marginalized' groups. So, from the dictatorship of political correctness in the main institutions of most Western countries, based on an alignment of related ideologies: from egalitarianism to cultural relativism, it began to condemn any idea or thought that confirms potentially innate differences in cognitive performance and behavior between individuals and groups, even more so if it is about these "protected" groups. As a result, we have been living in a scenario similar to of Florence's story, in which most people have been emotionally coerced into believing that, for example, cognitive differences between men and women or between racial groups are due exclusively to cultural and social factors, and not because, perhaps, they are reflections of the intrinsic differences between them: lying so as not to "offend", it seems nicer to "blame" the environment than to endorse a more deterministic thought that justifies rather than problematizes certain differences in representation, for example, the disproportion of men working in the world of science and technology. And, in addition to discursive imposition, these groups or political parties have also created laws based on these beliefs, such as establishing quota systems for their "politically relevant" groups. But, if their differences are deeper, if they are not just products of privileges of one group over another, then individuals below the required competence are being hired, mainly because they are of the race or ethnicity covered (or another category). Therefore, we have a definitely anti-meritocratic or unfair situation that can still have serious consequences in the medium and long term, precisely because we are assigning important functions to people who are less capable or ideal for the position...

Empathy, the act of putting yourself in someone else's shoes, is an indisputable quality. However, it either seems to have been excessively valued and/or superficially understood, as I commented in this other text: "Pathological altruism or underdeveloped empathy?". Because, even if it is respectful to avoid saying certain truths or to avoid sincerity, not every situation will be the most correct habit, as seems to be the case with capacity or intelligence, since a complex society depends on these competence filters to function in a minimally adequate manner.