“Under the Hitler regime…the most important thing that I learned…was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.”-Joachim Prinz, Rabbi of Berlin, exiled in 1937 to the United States, from his speech on August 28, 1963, in Washington, DC.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire
Shortly following their high school graduation in Southern California, two 18-year-old young men, best friends since childhood, drove to a casino just across the Nevada state line where they intended to play video games before returning home the next day.
Related:
Dive deeper every day
Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues
After engaging in the games for a while, one of the friends, Jeremy Strohmeyer, walked toward the restrooms. Seeing that he entered the women’s room, the other young man, David Cash, walked in to see what Jeremy was doing. He noticed that Jeremy was playfully throwing wadded paper towels at a young black girl, who seemed at first to have enjoyed the attention.
But then the scene turned violent. Strohmeyer grabbed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, placed his hand over her mouth, and spirited her into a toilet stall as Cash watched by the sinks. He entered an adjacent stall and mounted the toilet edge allowing him to peer down as he saw Jeremy continuing to muffle the girl’s screams and warning Sherrice to keep quiet or he would kill her.
Not wanting to get involved, Cash returned to playing video games. He did not attempt to stop his friend from attacking the young girl. He did not seek help or call law enforcement officials. He calmly played games and waited the 20 minutes it took for Jeremy to return. David asked Jeremy what had happened.
“I killed her,” Jeremy asserted with a certain serenity in his tone on that summer evening in 1997. Soon thereafter, the two friends coolly entered nearby casinos, where they enjoyed mechanical rides and continued to play video games until it was time for them to return home.
With the assistance of the video security system implanted at the casino, Strohmeyer was eventually caught, tried, and convicted to life imprisonment for rape and murder. Cash, on the other hand, was never indicted because inaction was not a crime in Nevada at the time.
In reaction to the case and the lack of charges against Cash, Richard Perkins, Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, sponsored the Sherrice Iverson bill requiring Nevadans to notify law enforcement if they witness violent acts committed against a child. The law took effect in 1999, and a similar measure passed in California one year later.
Asked on a 1999 CBS 60 Minutes segment, The Bad Samaritan, whether if given a chance, he would do things differently, Cash said, “I don’t feel there is much I could have done differently.” Asked a similar question during an interview on a Los Angeles radio station, Cash gave a similar reply and added: “How much am I supposed to sit down and cry about this?” he asked. “The simple fact remains that I did not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people dying of disease in Egypt.”
The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Cash as saying that he wanted to sell his story to the media. One movie company offered him $21,000. He added. “I’m no idiot,” he declared. “I’ll (expletive) get my money out of this.”
In not taking action to intervene on behalf of Sherrice Iverson, David Cash colluded in her death. “Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.
Though I have studied the Holocaust and other genocides, until I discovered this case, I always had the gnawing and seemingly unanswerable question pulling at me, “How could these incidents have taken place throughout the ages”?
David Cash taught me that mass murders happen on the macro level when people on the individual and collective levels let them happen, when witnesses – so-called “bystanders” – do little or nothing to intervene. When people allow either their fear or reluctance to “get involved” and supersede their empathy.
David Cash refused to see, hear, and stand up to do the right thing in the face of evil around him.
For the past eight years, the not see Republican Party has continually refused to see, hear, and stand up to the would-be authoritarian dictator, Donald J. Trump. By burying their heads in the political sand, they have permitted Trump to grab, assault, and ravage our governmental institutions physically and figuratively.
I now fully understand the process in the rise and takeover of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Following the death of tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza and now more in Lebanon, I wonder if, in addition to Hamas and Hezbollah, who often use civilians as human shields, any bad samaritans have enabled this to happen.
Leaders and followers who lack empathy
Empathy, that special and majestic human quality, has always been a vital life force of our humanity. As we understand in psychology, unless there is developmental delay, infants demonstrate the rudimentary beginnings of empathy whenever they recognize that another is upset by showing signs of being upset themselves.
Very early in their lives, infants develop the capacity to crawl in the diapers of others even though their own diapers don’t need changing.
Though empathy is an innate part of the human condition, others often teach us through the process of socialization to inhibit our empathetic natures with messages like “Don’t cry,” “You’re too sensitive,” “Mind your own business,” and “It’s not your concern.”
We learn the stereotypes of the individuals and groups our society has “minoritized” and “othered.” We learn who to scapegoat for the problems within our neighborhoods, states, nations, and world.
Through it all, that precious life-affirming flame of empathy can wither and flicker. For some, it dies entirely. And as the blaze recedes, the bullies, the demagogues, the tyrants take over by filling the void where our humanity once prevailed. And then we have lost something very precious.
We can define empathy as “a prosocial ability and communication skill to feel, understand, and respond to emotions of others…” Put another way, it is the ability to walk in the shoes of another person.
Critical questions need to be addressed:
· Should our political, corporate, religious, and social leaders score high on the empathy assessment scale or empathy quotient (EQ)?
· If so, how high should they score?
· Might empathy actually inhibit their effectiveness in fulfilling their primary goals or tasks, and if so, in which circumstances?
· Can one retrieve empathy if lost or frozen for a time?
David Cash represents the termination of empathy on the individual micro level, resulting not only in the possibly preventable rape and murder of a young girl, but also the death of his own soul.
When the demise of empathy comes to people who are around powerful leaders and their willing subjects, the consequences on the macro level become exponentially deeper, more toxic, and more tragic.
Let’s take the example of two current leaders: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President of the United States, Donald Trump.
In the case of Netanyahu, several questions demand to be answered.
Over one year into his government’s war with Iran’s proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, does the Israeli government truly hold in mind the safety and release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas? And what about Netanyahu himself?
If they do, why then does the government not attempt to come to an equitable conclusion of hostilities and a ceasefire short of a total annihilation of Hamas?
Does the government feel for the innocent civilian deaths (more than 40,000) of Gazans and the many more injuries, or rather, does its pipe dream of fully destroying Hamas cloud its judgment and, yes, its empathy for the people of Gaza and now, the innocent civilians in Lebanon?
If the right-wing government truly had attempted to punish Hamas leaders while sparing as many civilians as possible, wouldn’t the IDF have conducted more “surgical” strikes in Gaza and Lebanon?
Is Netanyahu expanding the war not only to kill as many insurgent leaders as possible but also primarily to remain in power as long as possible to avoid investigations of the intelligence breakdowns within his administration leading to the October 7, 2023 massacre and his possible incarceration of past crimes?
In many ways, Donald Trump is much easier to assess.
Jeremy Strohmeyer and Donald Trump were cast from the same mold, both displaying narcissistic sociopathic personalities. David Cash comes from the same mold as many current members of the Republican Party in that they lack sufficient empathy, which overrides their possible compassionate actions.
For example, Trump knew early of the deadly potential of the Coronavirus, but he decided to lie to the public while failing to mobilize any discernible national policies and actions over concerns for stock markets above the health and safety of the people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump has referred to our military personnel as “suckers” and “losers” for joining the military, for being captured, for dying, and for receiving meager financial compensation. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Earlier, he carelessly blamed the mayor of London for being incompetent after a terrorist attack on his city. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He accused the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico of playing politics and being ungrateful and the Puerto Rican people for being lazy and expecting everything to be done for them on their “bankrupt” island after a “500 year” storm virtually shut them down as people clung desperately to life. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He referred to white nationalist neo-Nazi terrorists in Charlottesville, Virginia – who showed up for a so-called “Unite the Right” rally – and the counter-demonstrators as “good people on both sides.” Regarding his reference to the white nationalists, many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He mocked a disabled reporter, took away the rights of trans students to use bathrooms of their choice, demonized Latinx people, Muslims, and women, and ridiculed Gold Star parents who sacrificed so much. Trump sat on his gold-plated toilet as he attempted to take away affordable healthcare insurance from an estimated 20 million low-income people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
And he behaved as if the series of package bombs sent through the mail to leading Democratic politicians and activists was nothing more than an inconvenience during the closing days of the midterm election season of 2018. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump separated young children from their refugee parents and placed them in cages as if they were feral animals. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He risked the very lives of members of Congress and his own Vice President on January 6, 2021, after he lost over 60 court cases in his attempts to circumvent the results of a fair election. While some Republican leaders harshly criticized Trump at the time, they ultimately reversed themselves and got on their knees to kiss his ring.
Quite frankly, I find few differences between the attitudes and actions of Jeremy Strohmeyer on the micro level and Donald J. Trump on the macro level. An argument can certainly be made that Netanyahu also fits this mold.
I find few differences between the attitudes and inactions between David Cash and the majority of the current Republican Party in their refusal to stand up and act in the best interests of a young girl, in Cash’s case, and in service to the fragile democratic experiment we know as the United States of America in the case of the Republican Party.
Though the Cashes and Republicans are more numerous than we can even imagine, empathy has always been an antidote to the poison of inaction, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and scapegoating, and to bullies and demagogues who take power and control.
Empathy is the life force of our humanity and ultimately to our recovery during the current crises around the world.
I often wonder how Trump’s Republican Party and Netanyahu’s government’s bad Samaritan enablers can sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by attacking democratic institutions and seriously dismantling the United States’ and Israel’s standings in the world.
Every time anyone enables an abusive action or actor, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
