In this time of madness, a cadence of the measure (h/t Miss Cellania):

(Illustration found here).

A decent foible of the horrid nowadays is showing empathy (without the screaming and crying) — there’s a lot of shit out there happening to folks all around us, from the pandemic to politics (MAGA relatives) to severe weather. And a social question is how to be sympathetic toward others, especially toward anti-vaxxers, and ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ assholes, and when is enough of this crap enough, and empathy flies the f*ck out the window — a prime question for Miss Manners (The Washington Post yesterday):

Not your fault — that the objects of your sympathy don’t understand the simplest conventional expression, and the need for them to reply graciously.

Miss Manners would suggest “I’m sorry to hear that,” but those literal-minded folks might respond, “Then I guess I shouldn’t have told you.”
How about “I’m sorry for your loss”?
But the response might be that the person “didn’t get lost, just died.”

Oh, well. Just keep remembering that other people’s deflecting sympathy is not your fault.

Or they’re victims of their own shit.

Anyhow, once again here we are…

(Illustration out front: New Yorker cartoon by Bruce Eric Kaplan, found here)