Feeling sympathy for Maduro — a dictator — is the latest wrong vibe |
Something strange is happening in the reaction to Nicolás Maduro’s arrest, and I’m seeing the same thing play out almost every day in my therapy practice in Manhattan and Washington, DC.
People who once spoke clearly about the suffering in Venezuela are suddenly treating Maduro not as the man who helped cause it, but as someone being wronged.
In fact, a lot of the same people who marched for Black Lives Matter, showed up at No Kings rallies, embraced hard-line pro-Palestinian activism or romanticized figures like Luigi Mangione are now expressing sympathy for a dictator.
It’s not because they suddenly studied Venezuela and gained insight they didn’t have before. It’s because a certain feeling gets triggered. That feeling tells them who is supposed to be the victim and who the villain is, long before they look at accurate information.
As I write in my forthcoming book, “