MAGA keeps telling us that empathy is poisonous and that it will lead to our downfall as a nation. Of course, this is wrong on so many levels.
First of all, empathy has been at the core of some our most dignified moments as a nation. The Americans with Disabilities Act, for instance, gave Americans with disabilities to participate more fully in everyday life. This empathetic act, by the way, was signed into law by a Republican administration, back when that party didn't embrace a dog-eat-dog ideology. Empathy was also at the core of child labor laws, which prevented children from working at dangerous jobs like meat packing or heavy construction. We agreed as a society that childhood should not be spent in a coal mine. Instead, we should allow kids to enjoy sunshine, football practices, geometry textbooks, and pep rallies.
We should also realize that MAGA doctrine is loaded with empathy. Didn't Donald Trump promise from the very beginning of his campaign to recognize the "forgotten men and women of our country"? That sure sounds like empathy for a group that had fallen by the wayside, doesn't it? And MAGA told us we should feel sorry for billionaire class, which carried too heavy a burden. They've gotten some help, haven't they? The coal and oil industry, too. Donald Trump, meanwhile, had empathy for people like Andrew Paul Johnson, who received a pardon for his January 6 participation and was later found guilty by a Florida jury for the alleged sexual abuse of middle school children. And didn't Ghislaine Maxwell get a little MAGA mercy when she was transferred to a minimum-security prison a few months ago?
As I write this, I'm starting to realize that empathy is bad. I'm not talking about the normal kind of empathy that has brought out the best in our country, but the warped MAGA empathy that rewards a cynical "me-first" belief system.
That's the real poison.
