Reaction to Biden's cancer diagnosis shows power of empathy and compassion

Today the news broke that Joe Biden, the former president of the United States, has a serious variety of prostate cancer. 

Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, with metastasis to the bone, according to a statement from his personal office Sunday.

Doctors diagnosed Biden last week with a prostate nodule after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms. By Friday, they diagnosed him with cancer.

Biden’s office said the cancer “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”

A spokesperson said in a statement that the 82-year-old Biden and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.

Biden’s news seemed to, for a short time at least, break through Washington’s current fierce divides. Among those quickly offering support was his immediate predecessor and successor in the White House.

“Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social, his social media platform. “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.”

I've been irritated at Biden for his refusal to drop out of the 2024 presidential race until his mental senility was too obvious to ignore following his disastrous debate with Donald Trump. 

But as soon as I turned on my car radio to CNN after having coffee with a friend this afternoon, and I heard about Biden's cancer diagnosis, all that went through my mind was I'm so sorry Joe; best wishes for a full recovery.

Even Trump had a similar reaction, and he isn't known for exhibiting a lot of sympathy to his political opponents. 

This shows how we humans are hard-wired, basically, to feel empathy and compassion toward other people who are suffering. Physical suffering seems to elicit the most empathy and compassion, perhaps because this is something that we all share: pain, disease, disability, and eventually, death.

Mental suffering is a bit harder to empathize with, since it is more personal and often difficult to understand if we've never experienced something like deep depression or psychosis -- whereas physical pain is easier for us to think, "I know what you're going through."

Still, we all know what it's like to suffer through hardship, bad news, serious disappointment. So I can picture what Biden and his family are going through as they wonder what the future will bring, for I've had loved ones deal with serious medical diagnoses, and I've experienced significant physical and mental suffering myself.

It's just unfortunate, though probably unavoidable, that we can dislike some people so strongly because they don't share our political, religious, or other sorts of views, then feel a sense of commonality with them if they suffer from a serious medical problem, accident, tragedy, or such.

There's a saying, "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy." That shows how many things divide us, but deep down almost everybody feels a sense of commonality with other people no matter our differences -- since we are all members of the same human family.

Comments

[Manjit]

It is a shame that that Joe Biden, rather than showing compassion for brown babies, infants, mothers and others, committed genocide against them, overseeing the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent souls.

One can only hope and pray for the day brown babies are shown a tiny fraction of the compassion shown to genocidal old white men in my lifetime 🙏🏼

[manjit]

Some 500 babies, children, women and a few men too have been discriminately (I've dropped the "in", it was a stretch 18 months ago, at this point we know with certainty Israeli slaughter of babies is DISCRIMINATE) slaughtered by Israel with US taxpayer bombs and US political support, in the past 4 days, continuing Joe Biden's policy of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people.

One can only wonder why each individual one of those thousands of murdered brown babies is not worth the same care and consideration as the man slaughtering them?

Does not each and every one one of those babies have a mother and father, sisters and brothers, friends, does not each and every single one have a being worthy of our compassion and empathy? Does not each one have hopes and dreams, fears and loves?

There is clearly, clearly something deeply, deeply wrong with a world where we can talk about "compassion" towards a genocidal monster who less than 6 months ago was 12 months deep into one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history, without even a hint of consideration or mention for the tens of thousands of souls he massacred in the most horrific and barbaric of ways imaginable.

It is a powerful bit of symbolism for the degenerated human condition, where even words like "compassion" are reverted and inverted.

[manjit]

I guess these folks aren't "members of the human family", because Biden "feels" NOTHING for them?

https://youtube.com/shorts/HK4x-PiI9rE?si=LwnmqM_dyyd0JLDN

https://youtube.com/shorts/_Dwukfg9MzI?si=WRDRCk_bJk8olj8H

https://youtu.be/RFNnxCj7suI?si=AmPIJuC-S1exmkGE

https://youtu.be/4fyhcOdlpm4?si=WBLWf7xMMTio4Aa9

https://youtu.be/FKgFjty1YHo?si=njNFyqDWGmIWJSmi

Ad infinitum.

[sant64]

What a load of nonsense. We have Biden 2 years ago letting slip that he had cancer. "He just misspoke!" his lying handlers told us. A US president receives the most cutting-edge preventive health care in the world, including prostate cancer screenings. Now we're told to believe that Biden developed advanced prostate cancer overnight?

They lied about COVID, thus needlessly ruining 2 years of our lives, they lied about Hunter’s laptop, they lied about Trump being an agent of Russia, they lied about Biden’s severely impaired brain, they lied about Biden signing documents, and now they’re lying about Biden’s cancer.

"We must have compassion." Why? We were obviously lied to by this corrupt megalomaniac who had cancer and senilty and still wanted to be president for 4 more years. The only compassion Biden had was for his family, hence his blanket pardons.

So tired of you people and your phony boomer sentimentality, demanding compassion for this decrepit pol while ignore the plight of people in South Africa and Palestine.

[Brian Hines]

sant64, you have no evidence that anyone covered up Biden's cancer diagnosis, yet you assert that this happened anyway. That strikes me as a lie, the very thing you accuse the Trump administration of doing. Also, Trump lies almost every time he opens his mouth, but you don't criticize him.

Regarding the "you people" comment, I'm not sure who you're referring to. I do know that it has been Democrats who have been the most critical of the horrible way Israel is treating Palestinians, while Trump and the Republicans believe Israel should be able to do whatever it wants. How much pressure is Trump putting on Israel to stop the needless killing of people in Gaza and let in humanitarian aid? I'm not aware of any.

[sant64]

OK I guess Joe Biden does deserve compassion. He needs compassion. Here, I'll give him compassion.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...Joe, I am sending you waves of karuna. May Joe be happy, may Joe be well, may Joe be peaceful.

There. I wrote out the correct compassion words. That accomplished a whole lot. Didn't it.

There's a mistaking here of genuine compassion with official courtesy. Of course, Trump and other GOP leaders are going to send messages of condolence. That's the politic thing for leaders to do in this situation. Former president Joe Biden, for all his faults, remains a symbol of the people of the United States. The messages of condolence are made for less for Joe Biden the person, and far more in respect of the United States. In short, it's simply cordiality in the service of politics. Who believes it's anything deeper then that?

Trump surely doesn't, because he well remembers that Joe Biden and his DOJ tried like hell to bankrupt Trump, ruin his life, and put him in prison.

So whatever Trump's message was, it's hard to buy it's compassion. "I love you now Joe, all is forgiven." Come on.

If Trump is demonstrating compassion somewhere, he's doing so with his incredible political comeback to save this country. One wishes he'd do more to collar Israel, but everything else is, finally, in the right direction.

But Joe Biden...yes, impending death tends to melt the heart. But here, the news of that impending death comes with disturbing baggage that this news was kept a secret for years. Did it matter? Well, POTUS is only the most important job in the world, and the person holding that office, with the help of his cronies, kept his mental and physical decline under wraps from the public. They did it out of lust for power and out of sheer contempt for us.

[Jimmy]

Joe Biden is a God come down to earth-so is everyone. He just used his imagination to build a life few of us could manage. As my gift to Joe I imagine a newscaster like David Muir on his newscast recount the amazing recovery of Joe. Feeling is the secret so my happiness explodes at this result. Then I take this into sleep.
See it's that easy to get the result you want.
All religions call or treat us as weak we are far from that. We need no Guru or teacher of what use is that when you are Gods.

[PomPomsforTrump]

It’s honestly a marvel of modern psychology—nay, a full-blown case study in cognitive contortionism—to observe the unwavering devotion of Sant64. The man could watch Trump hurl a watermelon off the Empire State Building while shouting, “It’s infrastructure week!” and he’d still nod approvingly and call it 4D chess. There’s a kind of tragic beauty in such blind allegiance, the same way one might admire a lemming’s loyalty to the cliff.

This isn’t political ideology—it’s performance art with a MAGA hat. Sant64 doesn’t just bend the knee to Trump; he practically rollerblades behind him, waving pom-poms stitched together from discarded truth and Facebook memes. Ask him about policy, and you’ll get a sermon about “owning the libs,” as if public discourse were a WWE promo.

The irony? He probably thinks he’s the freethinker, courageously resisting the “mainstream narrative,” all while he mainlines talking points from Truth Social like they’re divine scripture. It's cultic thinking in a red baseball cap, where nuance goes to die and slogans are sacred texts.

And heaven forbid you mention another political party. To Sant64, the mere idea of political complexity triggers a firewall response, like you tried installing Linux on a calculator. The man doesn’t just lack the ability to think across party lines—he's erected an emotional border wall to keep nuance out.

Truly, if political tribalism were an Olympic sport, Sant64 would be up there on the podium, hand over heart, saluting a golden statue of Trump playing golf in a thunderstorm.

[Spence Tepper]

Politics is the arena of complaint.
Still there are patterns in factual evidence of the effects of the two parties on our economy.

Under Republican Presidents the Federal Deficit tripled three times: Reagan, Bush Jr and Trump. This was not due to an explosion of spending but due to huge tax cuts that disproportionately favored the wealthiest. They did produce nominal economic gains but never generated the promised revenue increases that would more than offset their tax deficits.

"Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues."

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tax-cuts-are-primarily-responsible-for-the-increasing-debt-ratio/

Trickle down economics has failed over and over again, with Trump's last presidency a rehash of the same failed policies.

In contrast under Democratic Presidents a degree of budget control was achieved.

" The CBO reported in November 2022 that the budget deficit for FY 2022 was nearly $1.4 trillion, down from nearly $2.8 trillion in 2021."

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/which-united-states-presidents-have-run-largest-budget-deficits.asp

And as for economic growth, Democratic Presidents have consistently outperformed their Republican counterparts. Here is the average annual percentage of job growth by President.

Roosevelt 5
Truman 2.5
Kennedy 2.2
Johnson 3.8
Carter 3
Clinton 2.2
Obama 1
Biden 4.2

And for Republican Presidents
Eisenhower 0.8
Nixon 2.1
Ford 1.1
Reagan 2
Bush Sr 0.5
Bush Jr 0.1
Trump -. 5

Federal spending is growing due to inflation and as our population increases. But during Democratic Presidencies the economic growth has proven to more than offset Federal spending.

Want to end the deficit? Invest in the economy while maintaining tax rates.