Notes

Times in my life where I've tried understanding someone else's behavior is in politics. I attempt to find out the rationale for why the opposing opinion chose their stance in the situation. What I also do to try to understand someone's behavior when it comes to politics is to have a civil discussion with somebody that doesn't share the same opinion as me, sometimes I find that trying to rationalize their opinion and my own opinion leads to an understanding in why someone may choose their political stance. And I find that when having political civil discourse with somebody else, sometimes, somebody says something that is thought-provoking and changes my opinion at times. I find that in the current political climate people don't even want to talk to or hear about the other side of the political spectrum's opinions and why they do something and automatically vilifies them.  

How I initially try to understand the behavior listed, to be completely honest it was extremely hard to try to empathize with the people that did these heinous acts, I tried to understand what happened to the situation prior and their environment before and during their acts. What I believe happened when the Trump supporters stormed the capital was that I believe that they felt like they were being cheated by the government because they truly believed that Trump won the election and that the government at the time was against them, another contributor was that they were in all in a large group so I believe that mob mentality was a big factor, the idea of when being in a large group of people you can do anything. What I believe happened when Derek Chauvin, in an act of police brutality, killed George Floyd was that he just didn't believe that George Floyd was telling the truth when he said that he can't breathe; Chauvin believed that Floyd was acting erratically and some reports were saying that Floyd was saying "I can't breathe" even before he was restrained, but this still doesn't justify the actions of Chauvin. A person that doesn't wear a mask or doesn't practice social distancing during the pandemic, their reasoning for that may be that they are misinformed in how dangerous the COVID-19 virus is. For mass shootings, the biggest and semi-recent mass shooting that comes to mind is the Vegas mass shooting. What I believe would cause a person to do something so evil would be due to an underlying neurological issue, where they don't value basic human life.