[Phillip Alvelda is an old friend from MIT, and CEO of Brainworks.]

Pondering how to close what seems to be a rapidly widening empathy gap here in the U.S. and globally.

I used to just be resigned to the fact that many of my white friends who had never felt, or experienced discrimination directed at themselves seem incapable of seeing or recognizing implicit, or even explicit, bias directed at others. I didn’t used to think of these people as mean or racist…just oblivious through lack of direct experience.

But now, with a nation inflamed by our own government inciting and validating hatred and bigotry, with brown asylum seekers and children dying in mass US internment camps, and LGBTQ and women’s’ rights under mounting assault, the discrimination has literally turned lethal. And the empathy gap is enabling these crimes against humanity to continue and grow in the US now, just like the silent majority in Weimar Germany allowed the Jewish genocide to advance.

I’ve come to see supporters of this corrupt and criminal administration as increasingly complicit in the ongoing crimes. It is no longer just a matter of not seeing discrimination that doesn’t impact your family directly.

Trump supporters and anyone who supports any of his Republican enablers must now find some way to look past the growing reports of discrimination, minority voter suppression and gerrymandering, hate crimes, repression, the roll back of women’s and LGBTQ rights, a measurable biased justice system, mass internment camps, and now even the murder of the weak and vulnerable kidnapped children that commit no crime other than to follow our own ancestors to seek freedom and opportunity in the US….. This growing mass of willfully blind conservatives have abandoned fair morality, and are direct enablers of evil.

We are now in an era I never thought to see in the US, when government manufactured propaganda is purposely driving the dehumanization of women, LGBTQ people, and people of color. The US empathy gap is widening rapidly. How can we fight these dark divisive forces and narrow the gap, when our polarized society can’t even agree on measurable objective realities like the climate crisis?

Otherwise, I fear the U.S. is on a path to dissolve into at least two countries, divided along a border between those states who value empathy and seek an inclusive and pluralistic future society, and those who seek to retreat to tribal protectionism of historical rights for a shrinking privileged majority.

That this struggle rises now really baffles me. Consider the world’s obviously increasing wealth and abundance, with declining poverty and starvation and increasing access to virtually unlimited renewable energy. The need for tribal dominance to horde resources is dissapearing. The need for borders to protect resources that are no longer scarce, is vanishing.

Just imagine if all of our military and arms spending, all of the money we spend enforcing borders and limiting access to food and medicine and energy and education were instead directed towards sharing this abundance!

Pluralism and empathy are clearly the answer. How can we get more people to realize this despite the onslaught of vitriol and tribal Incitement from the likes of Fox News?