MAGA Moral Bankruptcy and the War on Empathy

As Congressional Republicans debate the Felon's "big, beautiful bill," a bill that would inflict very real harm on millions of Americans so that the super wealthy can pay even less in taxes, it underscores the moral bankruptcy of MAGA world and today's Republican party that bears no resemblance to the party I grew up in and in which I once held positions.  Greed, selfishness and open hatred of others now definite both MAGA and the GOP. Indeed, many in the ugly world argue against empathy towards other, especially the poor and oppressed, following the lead of the malignant narcissist who leads today's GOP and the MAGA fascist movement. As for "conservative Christians" who have pledge fealty to the Felon and back policies that will harm millions within the USA and likely cause the deaths of millions in Africa in particular through cuts to humanitarian aid, their complete moral bankruptcy is on open display. Given the choice between (i) Christ's social gospel message and (ii) greed, selfishness and disregard for others - indeed the demonization of others, they have embraced the latter.  To call such "Christians" modern day Pharisees is to insult the Pharisees of the gospels.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this rejection of both empathy for others and the gospel message itself.  Here are article highlights:

Five years ago, Elon Musk told Joe Rogan during a podcast taping that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit.” By that time, the idea that people in the West are too concerned with the pain of others to adequately advocate for their own best interests was already a well-established conservative idea. Instead of thinking and acting rationally, the theory goes, they’re moved to make emotional decisions that compromise their well-being and that of their home country. In this line of thought, empathetic approaches to politics favor liberal beliefs. An apparent opposition between thought and feeling has long vexed conservatives . .

But the current ascendancy of this anti-empathy worldview, now a regular topic in right-wing social-media posts, articles, and books, might be less a reasonable point of argumentation and more a sort of coping mechanism for conservatives confronted with the outcomes of certain Trump-administration policies—such as the nightmarish tale of a 4-year-old American child battling cancer being deported to Honduras without any medication, or a woman in ICE custody losing her mid-term pregnancy after being denied medical treatment for days. That a conservative presented with these cases might feel betrayed by their own treacherous empathy makes sense; this degree of human suffering certainly ought to prompt an empathetic response, welcome or not. Even so, it also stands to reason that rather than shifting their opinions when confronted with the realities of their party’s positions, some conservatives might instead decide that distressing emotions provoked by such cases must be a kind of mirage or trick. This is both absurd—things that make us feel bad typically do so because they are bad—and spiritually hazardous.

This is certainly true for Christians, whose faith generally counsels taking others’ suffering seriously. That’s why the New York Times best seller published late last year by the conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, is so troubling. In her treatise packaging right-wing anti-empathy ideas for Christians, Stuckey, a Fox News veteran who recently spoke at a conference hosted by the right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA, contends that left wingers often manipulate well-meaning believers into adopting sinful argumentative and political positions by exploiting their natural religious tendency to care for others. . . . But Toxic Empathy is not a sermon. It is a political pamphlet advising Christians on how to argue better in political debates—a primer on being better conservatives, not better Christians.

The Atlantic reported in 2015 that “the social psychologist C. Daniel Batson, who has researched empathy for decades, argues that the term can now refer to eight different concepts,” such as “knowing another’s thoughts and feelings,” “actually feeling as another does,” and “feeling distress at another’s suffering,” a kind of catchall term for having a moral imagination. Stuckey’s definition doesn’t distinguish among these different elements; she instead frames empathy itself as a specific emotion rather than a psychological capacity for understanding the emotions of others, which makes her usage especially confusing.

The toxic kind of empathy, she contends, is the kind that makes you double-check your specifically conservative political priors. Some examples: “If you’re really compassionate, you’ll welcome the immigrant” and “If you’re really a Christian, you’ll fight for social justice.” This argumentative technique, in which Christians are asked to consider their political positions in light of the logic of their own faith, can hardly be described as empathy in any common sense of the term. . . . Labeling those emotions as fruits of toxic empathy is a strategy for dealing with them: It resolves the tension between what one feels and what one thinks by dismissing one’s feelings as misguided. This approach glibly ignores the possibility that such emotions are in fact the voice of one’s conscience, and takes for granted that ignoring one’s sympathies for other people is a good Christian habit of mind.

It’s true that every person should be judged equally in the administration of the law, but it’s also the case that Christianity actually does dictate that the needs of the poor and powerless should be prioritized in society. Far from being a misleading interpretation adduced by bad-faith actors in political debates, it is rather the plain meaning of the Gospels, attested to by thousands of years’ worth of Christian saints and thinkers who have declared that God especially loves the poor and the oppressed. That fact remains as radical today as it was when Jesus was preaching, and now, just as then, there are people who can’t stand to recognize it.