I HAVE LONG been loath to say anything akin to “if you support Trump you’re a bad person.” It seems so arbitrary.

But it only seems arbitrary. 

To support Trump it is to support one horrid position after another. Positions that no good person would support.

This is not to say that you have no redeeming qualities. Maybe you’re nice to kittens. Maybe you’re good at your job. Maybe you’re a skillful chef. Maybe you’re a good raconteur. These are all things I can like about you. These are things that let me remain friends, or at least friendly, with Trump supporters of my acquaintance.

But you cannot at once support Trump and be a good person. 

It really is that simple.

For a quick overview of Trump’s horrid positions, please read this brief piece by John Pavlovitz.

A LONG–TIME resident was sharing with me a bit of our neighborhood’s unsavory, pre–development history.

The police, I learned, had once dubbed the area Felony Flats. Charming.

Some years ago, he told me, during housing construction that would vastly improve the neighborhood, a sex worker had commandeered a Porta–Potty for turning tricks. A senior citizen burst from her home, barefoot, glass of wine in hand, and chased the sex worker down the street, screaming, “Get your Black ass outta here!” He chuckled that the senior had managed not to spill a drop of her wine.

I winced. Choosing not to go into the empathy I have for a sex worker driven to that extreme, I said that I wish the senior had omitted “Black” in favor of, simply, “your ass.”

The man, who, I hardly need point out, is white, defended the word choice. He found it funny.

Not incidentally, he and his husband have faced their share of prejudice, intolerance, and hate. It saddens me when members of one marginalized community cannot summon empathy for members of another. Pitting the marginalized against one another is one way that a plurality maintains undue power.

In the lovely and spacious atrium of a nearby hospital stands a small grand piano. A little over three years ago, I signed up as a volunteer pianist. Each week for an hour or two, I hammer out tunes while patients, visitors, and staff filter through, some hanging out, some bringing their lunch.

During my first month, a man requested “In My Life,” by the Beatles. I had to reach back into my memory for that one, but there it was. He burst into tears as I played. I learned that his wife of 50–plus years had just passed, in that very hospital, and that he had heard the piano as he was leaving and followed the sound to the atrium. “That’s our song,” he choked out between sobs. I wept with him. I couldn’t not.

Not long after, a woman requested Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s one of my favorites, and I was happy to play it for her. Her husband of 60–some years lay in serious condition in the upper floors. It was their song. Again, there were tears, and again I joined in.

Just last week, a woman in perhaps her 30s or 40s took a seat near the stairs, handkerchief to her face, shaking with stifled sobs. Who was this person? What was amiss? Of course I couldn’t know. More than likely, a loved one was fighting for life on a floor above. She was a stranger, and yet I cared. Lord, did I care. “Play something soothing,” whispered my conscience. I did, doing my best, not successfully, to fight back tears of my own.

Elon Musk once vomited that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” He’s a fool. Empathy is a gift to be nurtured and cherished.