George Saunders

Sure, but I think all those things are compatible.

I think the problem is when you start trying to understand your enemy,

Okay, I come from a scientific background.

So for me to say, can you understand a geological problem?

Of course, there's no problem.

And there's no limit to the lengths you can go to understand that problem.

It doesn't incriminate you.

It doesn't involve you.

So likewise, if the goal was to try to understand your enemies, I think the point of that is it's kind of strategic, right?

I mean, if you're a football coach and you're playing a team, if you could inhabit the mind of the other coach for five minutes, that would be unbelievably great.

So the problem, but the problem is, I think in that process of trying to understand, there's something, I certainly have it, where as I try to understand, I think I'm trying to quote unquote empathize.

That's where I think it gets a little, for me personally, it gets a little mushy because then you start to feel a kind of overinvestment

that then interferes with the judgment that you have to have.

Like this guy in the book, he kind of is a pretty good father, I think.

Pretty good, maybe.

We don't really know, but at least he would say he is.

Yes, yes, she does, and she's disappointed in him, and he seems to love her.

If I had said, well, he's evil, I don't want him, he's going to be a terrible father, I think that's a less convincing portrait of him.

So for me, that empathy thing, both in a book, but when we're imagining our political enemies...

It has to be scientific.