I'm beginning to think there is something in the republican brain that Impedes their understanding

[nuxvomica]

11. It's probably their lack of empathy

People who lack empathy don't get sarcasm and probably irony as well. Empathy is related because it requires the ability to put yourself in another's place, to think outside yourself. Irony requires a similar extension of understanding, to sort of view your own words and actions as they appear to others. But this empathy deficit is actually correctable. Subjects who were given literary fiction to read had higher empathy scores when tested afterward than those given genre fiction. The theory is that litfic focuses on the inner lives of its characters, training the reader's mind to think about what's going on in other peoples' heads. If only we could get right wingers to read Virginia Woolf or E.M. Forster, our country's problems could be solved.