QOTD -- Our Deformed American Conscience

"The day after these two people perished in the Rio Grande, the president of the United States dismissed an accusation that he had sexually assaulted a prominent author and columnist in the 1990s. He used a phrase similar to ones he has used in the past to deflect similar allegations: 'She’s not my type.' It is a terrible thing to say, with a specifically misogynistic meaning in the context of how men practice violence against women.

"But it is a perfect summation of our new and deformed American conscience. It is pithy and dismissive, an invitation to look at people who have been victimized and see only otherness. It shuts down any understanding of trauma before empathy has begun to interrogate how trauma is felt and experienced. It is about looking without seeing, judging without understanding. For anyone who wants an off-ramp to the moral demands made by this image, this could be the universal caption: 'They weren’t our type.'” -- Philip Kennicott, in today's Washington Post.  (Be advised that the picture of the father and daughter who perished are included in the linked article.)