July 26, 2025
By Nick Valencia
ATLANTA— Hurt people, hurt people.
This idea crystallized during a conversation I had with a close friend.
He told me that what I’m doing—my reporting on deported U.S. veterans, on ICE raids, on the migrant workers in California’s Central Valley—is manipulating the minds of public to create sympathy where, in his mind, there shouldn’t be any.
It’s all black-and-white thinking. Law and order. Right and wrong. You break the rules, you get sent back. Resentment is the oxygen of today’s politics.
The truth is, the more pain someone has endured, the more likely they are to inflict it on others. For others to suffer similar pain is the point. They will tell you it builds character. To me, it builds walls between us.
I’ve been hurt, too. We all have. But I believe those of us who choose empathy are guided by a different moral compass.
President Donald Trump, for all his bluster, has tapped into that raw nerve—into the grievances of people who feel they’ve been wronged by people who look like me, or like you. People who don’t look like them.
Pain and resentment shape the way we see one another—and that’s why right now empathy feels like rebellion. Because empathy matters.
Because hurt people hurt people—but they don’t have to.
Nick,
You write of humanity and injustice. I call you human, and a responsible journalist and U.S. citizen for reporting it.
We have lost touch with placing ourselves in the shoes of our fellow human beings. Is it sympathy? Yes, because sympathy is what makes us human and not self-centered monsters.
When pain or neglect is inflicted on groups of people, we as humans need to look inward and examine WHY these people are suffering, and I mean real human suffering. Furthermore, we need to question and examine as humans WHY we chose not to say anything and remain complacent about this suffering.
Living in the richest country in the world makes too many Americans blind to the real human suffering. For example, do Americans know what it is like to actual live under famine conditions, to know how it feels to travel thousands of miles by foot to escape violence and death threats, or to hear the cries when someone is arrested at their job by ICE and sent to detention camp where their human or civil rights may or may not be recognized.
When I hear “Make America Great Again”, I believe it is the mantra to keep Americans in the darkness to the outside world and blame any disturbances within our American society to those who cannot and will not follow the designated policies of this new federal Project 2025 bible.
And let’s face it, those suffering, those who take up space in need of food, education, human rights, jobs, medical needs, whether they are Americans or not, are burdensome to this new bible citizenry. And for those who do not fit inside this new citizenry, they will find themselves of no use to those individuals who chose solely to protect their own livelihood over the humanity of others.
It's the classic "us" versus "them" way of thinking. Whether it is physical appearance or "ideology", pointing to an "other" as the enemy keeps the powerful powerful and the non-powerful hanging on every word and looking for the next "them" to point to so they can soothe the hurt they have experienced.
Pre-technology it makes sense, but nowadays with access to credible information to tear down those "them" walls, I am genuinely surprised that people still gobble it up.
Plus, the "law and order" folks seem to follow the "rules for thee, not for me" approach: "we" are breaking laws/levels of decency for a "greater good". However, "they" are (always) wrong, regardless of context or circumstances.
Sad.
8-year-old me truly thought we'd be better off as a society by now.