I’ve Got a Feeling

Ev'rybody had a hard year
Ev'rybody had a good time
Ev'rybody had a wet dream,
Ev'rybody saw the sunshine
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
The Beatles – I’ve Got a Felling

Yup. Truth.

Also in Beatlemania today – I am the Empath (Goo goo g’joob) or was at 1:30 this morning when my brain shook me awake like a terrier worrying a rat.

I’m in pain for my father who’s sad, angry and fading. I’m in pain for my friend Rita who, with two children and not much money, is facing a needed but depressing and difficult divorce. I’m in slice and dice sharp pain for the asylum seeking families ripped apart by the Tr45son Weasel administration. Children, toddlers and infants are stolen and caged – while him and his duplicitous, sanctimonious , turd bucket Facist party clangs on about the sanctity of life.

The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents, and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them. The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers. (source)

Do you remember the Star Trek ep, The Empath?

Kirk, Spock and McCoy are doing a pick-up of research workers from some weird rock or other. They’re captured, natch, by imperious, hostile (no doubt Republican/Fascist) aliens. The Vians are “testing” the planet's natives to see if they’re worth saving from their sun’s imminent death. Actually, they’re just testing one of the planet’s residents. She holds the weight of saving all of her planet’s people.

Gem and her lot are Empaths. Their ability to understand others, to feel what others feel, is so intensely advanced that they can heal by taking away a person's physical wounds. The hitch is that they take the pain and damage onto themselves. Empaths are resilient but not unbreakable.

The test? After Kirk and Spock are tortured, the Vians go full metal Torquemada on McCoy. If Gem, who's already worked hard healing the captain and the Vulcan, opts to save Bones from certain death,  courting the grim reaper for her ownself, her peeps will be deemed worthy of saving from the supernova.

HEY, no pressure, no pressure AND nothing personal in all this pain and suffering stuff. The Vians are just being “good” biz heads – they’re looking to see how exploitable Gem and the rest of the Empaths are. No different from Captain Callous Malice and his party of despicables. Right?

The hate mongering, greedheaded reprobates of the “right” would fit in well on the Vian's home planet – neither are cursed with even the faintest, smoking glimmer of compassion. If yur of no clear, mega value – out the airlock you go.

Empathy is the experience of understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and condition from his or her point of view, rather than from one's own. (source)

Why don’t Empaths exist outside my tiny television screen? Why can’t I be a real and true Empath? Why can’t we have a president (NOW) who knows the meaning of the word?