Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar has been stabbed multiple times during an altercation with another inmate at a federal prison in Florida. Nassar is serving decades in prison after admitting sexually assaulting athletes at Michigan State University and at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, including Olympic medalists.
I have to admit my first reaction was “he deserves it” but I immediately felt bad for thinking that. Same as when Trump got Covid. I wouldn’t call it a “perverse inner lust to hurt other people” though. I’m human, human reactions are complicated. Nassar inflicted unspeakable harm to hundreds upon hundreds of girls and young women. He doesn’t deserve to be stabbed, but I definitely have less sympathy for him than I would for someone innocent. I don’t think I’m a monster for feeling like that.
Perhaps I got a little poetic with it, but I do think there is a kinda twisted inner instinct in people that enjoys seeing harm come to those who we feel deserve it. A lack of sympathy is just that - a lack of something. But when you look at, for instance, the sheer joy people felt when seeing anti-vaxxers get COVID, I think there’s more going on there than just a lack of sympathy. It’s an active pleasure.
There’s definitely a difference between being unsympathetic about someone’s situation and wishing/celebrating vengeance against them. I’d like to think most most people fall into the unsympathetic group and that thoughtless comments celebrating his attack/antivaxxers getting covid are just that - thoughtless comments, not hateful ones. I’m not at all convinced everyone who makes a flippant comment actively takes pleasure in seeing harm come to others. Perhaps I’m naive.
I guess I’d just imagine that a mere lack of sympathy, and nothing more than that, would result in simply no comments. I don’t talk about things I don’t care about. Some random conservative anti-vaxxer in Texas dying of COVID has no more impact on my life than some random average person in Iowa dying of a heart attack. But if I saw two articles about those two events in a social media timeline, I know which one I’d be a lot more tempted to click on, and which one would get significantly more engagement. And I can’t help but think that it’s because, on some level, a part of us likes hearing about those we consider to be bad people “getting what they deserve”.