But now we're getting into "blaming the victim" territory with all the confusions inherent to politics. It makes me wonder if a strong desire to be sympathetic, translated into controversial political questions like these, limits a person's likely appreciation for cultivated rationality? Maybe the (Gendlin ignoring) logic would run: "If I believed people could have predicted and avoided their current tragic circumstances, then it will be harder for me to be sympathetic, but I want to be sympathetic so I should not believe that people could have predicted and avoided their tragedy."

I think it is better to be sympathetic regardless of whether the "people could have predicted and avoided their current tragic circumstances" (whatever the counterfactual means, maybe that a more rational person facing the same problem would have predicted and avoided the problem?).

Like Eliezer says:

It is not always helping people, to save them from the consequences of their own actions; but I draw a moral line at capital punishment. If you're dead, you can't learn from your mistakes.

I am going to go ahead and push that moral line out to cover paralyzing loss of autonomy.