US kindness loses out to promise of more to come

US president-elect Joe Biden gestures to the crowd after he was declared winner of the US presidency on Saturday. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images

Alison O’Connor equates kindness, or the lack of it, for virtually half the voting population of the US casting their ballot for the incumbent — ‘Millions of Americans have abandoned the act of kindness’ ( Irish Examiner, November 6). She sees kindness as a strength, a necessary human quality.

For kindness to be a strength, though, there has to be an appreciation, a trust that the person being kind and the receiving party (if there is one) will acknowledge and reciprocate the gesture of being considerate, of being civil as genuine. Otherwise, kindness is something aloof, something akin to holiness that only the foolish would ascribe to in today’s world.