It takes them just a second to pick a side. There is a fight between a vagrant and a law-abiding commuter, and they know who they will come up with excuses for, and who will get epithets. Immediately. Whereas normal people will identify with the law-abiding normal guy.

Again, it’s about who you have empathy with. You may later think about it, learn new facts, and change your opinion. But when you first learned about the death of Jordan Neeley, you immediately knew who you were rooting for, and who felt like a villain to you.

And if the person you immediately felt empathy for was Jordan Neeley, I am sorry to say, your brain is broken. A normal person’s first impulse—again, they may change their mind upon reflection, but their first impulse should be to empathize with the normal person.

Again, this is so revealing, because when you choose you pick a side. The point isn’t that it’s bad to have empathy for homeless vagrants. What is twisted, however, is to have empathy for someone like that AT THE EXPENSE OF a normal person.

It’s good to have empathy for a homeless person. But if you kick your children out of your house to house homeless people, you are a psychopath & should go to prison. Empathy for outsiders is fine, perhaps good even. Empathy for outsiders at the expense of your own is twisted.

You are not, in fact, having "empathy" for the vagrant. In fact, YOU ARE EXPERIENCING HATE. You are experiencing hate for the normal person. And your brain is tricking you, representing it as empathy for the other guy, so that you can keep telling yourself "I am a good person" … even though you just experienced hate for a totally normal person.

The tell that it’s not actually empathy is that their "empathy" always produced bad results for the targets of their tender mercies, and yet they never adjust their behavior: Jordan Neely was indeed failed by his government. As all parents know, enforcing limits is an act of love, and refusing to endorse limits can be an act of hate. He was on track to die of an overdose in a gutter, to the total indifference of every good soul now feigning outrage.