Said Michelle Cottle, in "Why Politics Feels So Cruel Right Now/Three Opinion writers on the death of empathy in America" (NYT).
So there's the "hierarchy of intersectionality," the "social... hierarch[y]," and the "economic hierarch[y]." These "progressive" minds, obsessed with "hierarchy," love their own capacity for "empathy," but it's nothing like compassion for all human beings. It's something to give only to the ones you decide are most oppressed — those with what Cottle snarks have "the most right to be upset" — and something to withhold from everyone else.
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As a conservative white male, I’m not on the defensive. I’m on the offensive. I regularly engage with liberals on FB and I really can’t believe how stupid, ignorant and poorly educated they are.
As to empathy, my first duty is to myself and my children. I don’t care about Palestinians and other so-called oppressed groups and tribes. Many of them have created their own problems. They need to fix themselves.
Intersectionality is a combination of tribalism and Marxism. It is rat poison squared.
White women hardest hit...
Lordy, lordy, they are boring. I thought the top priority new rule for the liberal dems was to stop using the word "intersectionality".
"Freaked out" is a needlessly dismissive description, and inaccurate, and I'm not the slightest bit surprised that's the approach Cottle took.
open to the idea that empathy or compassion is a weakness
No, there is a well-developed argument that empathy and compassion can be weaponized to manipulate the empathetic and compassionate person into harming themselves. Cottle's blindness to the validity of her subject's ideas makes her...the perfect Times writer.
Many on the right are no longer moved by accusations of cruelty. They default to seeing it as bad faith. Progressives respond by doubling down.
As the meme goes, "Here's 10 pictures of crying immigrants that will make you give up on having borders or a country".
Against weaponized, suicidal empathy, a hard heart is a survival requirement.
The key word is 'hierarchy', and the key message is that it's very important that we all understand the concept.
Progressives opining about the loss of empathy that they killed off. When you use power to decide losers based on inherent traits, not only are you the racist, but the people you chose to be losers won’t care about you the same as you did about them, loser.
Stop, I say !
Intersectionality is whatever you want, like nationalism and racism, stupidity and obesity, ignorance and confidence. I've got a million of 'em. I'm hear all week.
Straighten up
Dominance Hierarchies are Jordan Peterson's favorite topics of human intercourse and societal stratification.
Make your bed
Back around '82 or '83, Saturday Night Live had a skit where Eddie Murphy played a reggae singer named Tyrone Green who was performing before an American Legion or VFW show. The song was "Kill the White People" and it had a couplet that sums up the whole enterprise:
We sign of freedom and for equality
But we really don't care we just want money money money
Tell an entire block of people that they are on the lowest rung of your contrived moral universe, and wonder why they reject everything you stand for. Once again, it's the ubiquitous scape goats that are at fault. Modern Progressives believe as strongly in racial determinalism as a 1850s Mississippi plantation owner, with less self awareness.
People who weaponize empathy -- psychopaths and sociopaths -- have done very well for themselves in America since the 60s. One can see how they think they are on the right side of history. Like Karl Marx sponging off his sister's husband (founder of the Dutch Philips corporation), whatever its claim to accurate historical insight, it's certainly a paying gig.
hey have been very open to the idea that empathy or compassion is a weakness...
The problem is that the left only puts on an air of empathy or compassion, but does not really feel it. True compassion would result in recognition that the big government approach we have been trying for the last 70 years has not produced change or helped those for whom the left allegedly has compassion. Left "compassion" merely results in increased power and wealth for the left.
Looks like nobody has ever pointed out to Michelle that on the hierarchy of stupidity empathy that ignores certain logical constraints ranks right up there with at least Curly or Moe. For example, empathy for MS-13 "migrants" is definitely 3 Stooges level. YMMV.
I have more examples, but my empathy for people like Michelle restrains me from listing them.
@ Howard - Dominance hierarchies may be Jordan Peterson’s favorite when it comes to human intercourse, but lately I’ve gotten into Japanese
Prog women want to find out why Mae Clarke got half a grapefruit pushed into her face.
Empathy did not die, it evolved with progressive principals targeting "burdens" and endorsing abortive ideation as a wicked solution and religious rite in progressive sects performed with liberal license at the twilight fringe.
DEIsm is an umbrella philosophy for class-disordered ideologies.
@planetgeo, seems strange to me that Progs have more empathy for Tren de Aragua and MS-13 criminals than for the victims of their crimes. But so it seems to be.
Intersectionality is a BS word used to help buttress the left's Victim hierarchy. Are you a victim? Come join!
Progism these days is like a convention for mothers with Munchausen By Proxy.
Empathy became a loophole that Progressives exploited.
Admit that the teen years can be a struggle for kids who are different, and eventually, penises are swinging in the girls locker room and the parent is an arse for complaining that gifted and hardworking girls lose at the state tournament to an athlete who was a mid-tier boy last year.
Understand the plight of families migrating to the US from third world countries, and eventually, a third of the population in Springfield, Ohio are Haitians with temporary protected status.
Discriminatory hiring practices are wrong, and eventually, the fire chief turns out to be a chunky woman of color who says that if a female firefighter can't pull you out of a burning building, you shouldn't have gotten yourself in that situation.
Conservatives have become reluctant to give an inch, because Progressives are not reluctant to take a mile.
It is to laugh…
This isn't quite right. White people saw the success of being able to claim to be the victim and decided it was a good strategy that they could also use. So, rather than rejecting the "heirarchy of intersectionality" white people - or at least the populists who buy into the idea - are claiming to be the major victims.
You can see this clearly with the role that antisemitism currently plays among the maga-right. Maga basically considers Jews to be about as white as Italians - they're not quite as 'white' as everyone else, but they're white enough to be on the team. Meanwhile, Jews have a pre-built apparatus to combat antisemtism that other white people can capitalize on. Chris Rufo had an article recently where he basically stated that this was the strategy outright.
Personally, I hate the DEI stuff and I'm not happy that the populists seem to have adopted their own version of it.
Immigration reform in lieu of emigration reform in order to enjoy the benefits of labor arbitrage, Democratic gerrymandering, and compensation for the millions of victims of planned parenthood transnationallly, annually.
Albinophobia under Rainbow banners and rhetoric.
CAIR in the woke of ethnic Springs.
Shared responsibility in equitable redistribution of elective dysfunctional behaviors and progressive conditions.
“Maga basically considers Jews to be about as white as Italians - they're not quite as 'white' as everyone else, but they're white enough to be on the team. Meanwhile, Jews have a pre-built apparatus to combat antisemtism that other white people can capitalize on. Chris Rufo had an article recently where he basically stated that this was the strategy outright.”
What a crock of bullschiff.
Whatever, the grievances of American blacks will always suck the life out of every other cause because SLAVERY.
The collective hive left have no compassion.
They don't care about the sexual abuse of children, human trafficking, open borders, slavery in they modern world, subjugation of women in far off lands, their non-stop lies and hate, their petty grievances... their snobbery...
White Leftist pro-Palestinian death cult American leftists don't care at all if Jews are slaughtered by Hamas... or anyone marching for Palestine.
So Matt Walsh was on to something: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t29au-wFyO0
The Left: WE demand you show compassion for the man in a dress, in the women's locker room who is undressing your young daughter. He's helping!
Leftists demand you respect the man in a dress who will
beat your daughter in her favorite sport.
You will be made to obey the corrupt insane social contagions of the corrupt insane left... Or you will be dutifully labeled as uncompassionate.
"Comrades: We have received disturbing reports of deviationist thinking!"
Steven - What tired cliche BS.
Skin color? do F off.
Reality - it's you eternal victim lovers on the left who don't give a crap about the safety of Jews.
"The PA Gov home arson attack and DC Jewish event murders have been memoryholed by the media. [Boulder terrorist/Hamashole/leftist] This will be also."
No "civility bullshit" tag?
"Why Politics Feel So Cruel Right Now," with "now" being in the wake of a huge progressive political defeat?
This civility b.s. also happened immediately after the 1994 GOP House takeover, 2010 Tea Party victories and Trump 2016. It's rote.
The associate rector of my former church, once she received a rectorship of her own, began posting prolifically on social media about politics. It seems that she is all in on outsourcing compassion to government - there isn't a government-program-to-aid-an-oppressed-group in existence that she doesn't support in the most moralistic terms ("vote for this or you're evil"). She doesn't seem to care that her message to her congregation is, "Government will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the dying, all that stuff Jesus told us to do. Your monetary pledge goes toward my salary, groundskeeping, and better stained glass windows."
Now, maintenance of the physical plant is indeed one responsibility of a church's members. But shouldn't there be at least a fig leaf of interest in community service?
By the way, has there been a time when politics wasn't perceived as "cruel" by, like, half the electorate?
Is Progressivism a viable religion? Perhaps a Choice should be made to relieve its "burden" on society. #HateLovesAbortion
has there been a time when politics wasn't perceived as "cruel" by, like, half the electorate?
In a democracy minorities are subjugated to majority rule.
Yeah, things always turn bad when the Republicans gain power in DC. Suddenly, in the MSM, we go from "Happy days are here again" to "everything stinks". "
Why cant we all just get along?" replaces "Those Goddamn Republicans need to be wiped out" In 2025, darkness and cruelty has come to america. After a brief time under Biden where Democracy bloomed. LOL!
The far-left Democrats will shamelessly play the victim after being the worst hate-filled bullies and tyrants when they had power. Everything about them is fake. Its all propaganda from them 24/7.
Steven. Thank you for the current rendition of the current progressive narrative.
You can fuck off now. The childrens table is in the other room.
I think Dave nailed it up top.
The lord likes our good words but he likes our good works more.
The cruelty comes from getting the state to administer your empathy. We all know where that leads.
Everyone on earth meets or exceeds their allotment of suffering endured and suffering inflicted.....The kind of empathy that is most genuine and effusive is self pity. My life has been marred and subverted by any number of problems, and they're not the kind of problems that attract the attention of poets, social workers, or activists.. Still, like Hillary, I persevere. It has been truly observed that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself, and this is especially true of self pity. I continue to contemplate the injustices done to me, and the fact that these injustices do not attract the attention of Hollywood or Bob Dylan, is just another injustice to contemplate.
I don't think empathy or compassion is weakness. I think the hacking of it is destructive to both the giver and receiver and is abusive to the community at large.
One of the really bad ideas of the twentieth century was collective farms. It is estimated that some forty to sixty million people starved to death and a higher multiple of that number had the experience of desperate, chronic hunger because of that dumb idea. Can anyone here name a single person who perished during one of those state sponsored famines? Can you name a single movie, play, novel, opera, folk song or ditty that empathized with such suffering?
So a lot of people are tired of feeling guilty, and they have been very open to the idea that empathy or compassion is a weakness...."
Once you've defined a "hierarchy", whoever is at the bottom of it are the ones deserving of "empathy and compassion." Which in this case would be the people who the Left has absolutely NO "empathy and compassion" for.
The sole proper response to people who weaponize "empathy and compassion" the way the Left does is to refuse to give any to anyone they support
"Why Politics Feel So Cruel Right Now." Because you're losing?
I watched ABC's World News Tonight. They reported on the fire bombing in Boulder. They did not report on the immigration status of the perp. They also had a report on a high school student who was picked up by ICE on his way to school. That report was somewhat more protracted......I don't feel a lot of empathy towards ABC's World News Tonight.
'Why Politics Feels So Cruel Right Now." They can't even hear themselves, can they. I mean, they might consider that "politics" felt pretty "cruel" to lots of people under prog rule. And what's cruel exactly? Take the Trump DEI/trans efforts--what's the argument that it's cruel to enforce nondiscrimination and keep men out of women's sports?
These "progressive" minds, obsessed with "hierarchy," love their own capacity for "empathy," but it's nothing like compassion for all human beings. It's something to give only to the ones you decide are most oppressed
Thomas Sowell has quite a lot ot say about people that think like this. None of it very flattering.
Said Michelle Cottle, in "Why Politics Feels So Cruel Right Now/Three Opinion writers on the death of empathy in America" (NYT).
I told you that at some point we are going to treat you like you have been treating us.
And Karen did not listen. Karen is stupid and incapable of thinking.
The next 20 years is going to be really hard on Karen. Nobody is going to put up with Karen's bullshit anymore.
And very few groups have deserved more derision and humiliation that the greedy stupid overeducated white woman.
Nobody is going to feel bad for you. At least for a while. The easiest viral clip to make right now is a Karen getting humiliated. It is mana for the soul.
I have empathy for people who can't have a conversation without using the word "hierarchy" at least three times
It was comply or be ostracized from civilization. So many were ostracized, now all us rejects are forming a new civilization….
Howard said...
Dominance Hierarchies are Jordan Peterson's favorite topics of human intercourse and societal stratification.
Dominance hierarchies will always exist.
How long a hierarchy exists depends on the firmness that power is grasped by the dominant zeitgeist and the perception of fairness of that zeitgeist by a critical mass of the population. The looser the grip on power the better your leading coalition will do. Obviously treating people fairly is important.
Karen took grip of her power like a starved weasel and went straight for racist DEI policies, Men in women's sports, trashing the working class, and supporting wars that men had to die in.
History is going to judge the experiment of allowing women to participate in politics.
Have fun with that Karen.
Empathy like sitting whilst everyone else is giving the black child (DJ Daniel) with cancer a standing ovation because Trump's administration gave him his wish and gave him an honorary Secret Service job?? Empathy like that??
"It’s interesting to note that the same people who pop up with “fascism expert here!” whenever anyone suggests that we ought to change the sales-tax rate always seem to stay deathly silent after, say, a man throws Molotov cocktails at Jews in a public park." - Charles C. W. Cooke
"If a right-wing movement had burned down a governor’s mansion, murdered two foreign diplomats & firebombed kids and elderly people at a peaceful protest — in the span of a few weeks — what would the coverage look like? What sort of “national conversation” would we be having?" - Guy Benson
"So a lot of people are tired of feeling guilty..."
If you tell people that they're racist (or whatever the latest bad thing is) and nothing they do will ever change that, is it any surprise they stop paying attention to you?
And as far as guilt goes, that's something you personally feel, not something others can choose for you without your cooperation. If you want to feel guilty about something, go ahead and knock yourself out.
As for myself, I don't give a shit about the grievances of people who demand that I do. Life's not fair- get over it.
With less and less say on who or what gets my empathy, while the empathy deserving list grows, is the little empathy I may have left even mine to give?
I'm considering de-transitioning out of empathy.
I very well may be missing something, but except for robother at 7:44 a.m., it seems that almost everyone, particularly the NYT author of the original article, seems to be confusing the terms "empathy" and "sympathy." The most empathetic people in the world are con artists, who know exactly what their marks are feeling. Empathy is quite difficult and requires intense focus, while sympathy, on the other hand, is a common emotion that simply requires one to feel pity for what another person is going through.
Empathy is selective. Sympathy makes some sense.
Scientific Socialist said...
“I have empathy for people who can't have a conversation without using the word ‘hierarchy’ at least three times.”
What happens when you say the word ‘hierarchy’ three times? Does Max Weber appear?
"What happens when you say the word ‘hierarchy’ three times? Does Max Weber appear?"
Worse. Margret Meade
It was never about who has the most right to be upset. It was always about making it clear that white men had the *least* right to be upset.
But of course modern progressives have no idea how to stop while they're ahead. Putting white men at the bottom of the stack wasn't enough.
Virtue gazing into a mirror is not empathy. Virtue gaming is also not empathy. Geez these people are insufferable hypocrites.
What was the justification for increasing wage minimums in California? The inflationary spiral Democrats created by stifling fossil fuel energy production, pushing "sustainable" energy platforms, and putting the costs of all that green virtue on the poor.
Men are 91% of the workplace fatalities. One never hears this statistic. Yet one often hears the faux statistic relating to differential pay between men and women.
If the Democrats had any real sense of empathy, they would empty their own coffers to fill the pockets of all the illegal immigrants that are deported. After all it was they who enticed the monstrous influx of unfortunates and the death dealers in their ranks. And what for? for serfdom On the voter rolls And to make Wage slaves of the middleclass.
when they’re already freaked out
Freaked out? Really? What a twit.
Empathy is selective. Sympathy makes some sense.
In my shoes, in your shoes, precisely. Ethical and moral religions, respectively.
Democrats' religious intersection is transactional. Case-in-point: DEIsm.
The black whore h/t NAACP conception marks the intersection of racism and sexism.
It's the hard side of the left that hierarchizes oppression to support the demands made on behalf of the most oppressed. That's not about compassion. It's about -- depending on your point of view -- anger and social justice or about power and retribution.
The soft side of the left is talking about safe spaces and microaggressions. For some people that is about compassion and empathy. For others, it's about power and anger.
For many, it's about proving and using one's progressive credentials. One proves and uses those credentials by supporting the designated victim groups (and showing little compassion or empathy for those outside such groups).
I saw a meme this morning (I think it was on the Instapundit open thread last night). Top part, labeled "2015" had a crying black woman saying, "You're racist!" to a bearded white guy, who replies, "Wait. What?" Bottom part, labeled "2025" has the same crying black woman saying, "You're racist!" to the same bearded white guy, who replies, "Fuck off!" That's how I feel about intersectionalism. They can take every one of their intersections and stick them where the sun don't shine.
Howard said...
I'm hear all week.
Now you're mocking the deaf, Howard!
“Conservatives have become reluctant to give an inch, because Progressives are not reluctant to take a mile.”
IMHO… conservatives are reluctant to give ‘em an inch, because progressives don’t shy away from asking for nine more… they be starvin’.
@William - Novel - “And Quiet Flows the Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov; movie - “Satantango” directed by Bela Tarr; Play - “the Caucasian Chalk Circle” by Bertolt Brecht; opera - •Animal Farm” music by Alexander Raskatov, libretto by Ian Burton; folk songs - without number, how is your Ukrainian? And if you want some ghastly history read “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder.
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