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Conservatives mock compassion... until they need it.
Conservatives' performative calls for compassion in the face of Kirk’s assassination were strangely striking, precisely because they have spent countless hours letting us know that they believe compassion is a character flaw and a cultural danger; something to drive out and to rid ourselves of. . . .
The Right has long ridiculed the supposed bleeding heart Liberals across the aisle, with many Conservative preachers going so far as to declare empathy a sin even as Jesus’ entire life overflowed with it. And yet, when the abject horror of gun violence hit home and someone they cared about was in the balance between living and dying, that empathy was the first thing they asked for—and received.
That’s because we who are labeled weak for how deeply we care about other human beings understand that empathy is the single greatest way to honor the humanity we recognize in someone else: to see the commonalities between us, to feel internally altered by another person’s pain, to fully grieve when life, any life, is squandered.
The empathy that Conservatives joke about and condemn is the same empathy they came looking for today.
It’s the empathy we wished they’d shown Melissa Hortman and her husband.
It’s the empathy we should feel for terrified immigrants, for bullied trans teens, for school shooting victims, for fathers deported without cause, for children starving half a world away.
It’s the empathy that all imperiled human beings should be greeted with when pressed up against the myriad of terrors visited upon them by circumstances and other human beings. . . .
The Right has long ridiculed the supposed bleeding heart Liberals across the aisle, with many Conservative preachers going so far as to declare empathy a sin even as Jesus’ entire life overflowed with it. And yet, when the abject horror of gun violence hit home and someone they cared about was in the balance between living and dying, that empathy was the first thing they asked for—and received.
That’s because we who are labeled weak for how deeply we care about other human beings understand that empathy is the single greatest way to honor the humanity we recognize in someone else: to see the commonalities between us, to feel internally altered by another person’s pain, to fully grieve when life, any life, is squandered.
The empathy that Conservatives joke about and condemn is the same empathy they came looking for today.
It’s the empathy we wished they’d shown Melissa Hortman and her husband.
It’s the empathy we should feel for terrified immigrants, for bullied trans teens, for school shooting victims, for fathers deported without cause, for children starving half a world away.
It’s the empathy that all imperiled human beings should be greeted with when pressed up against the myriad of terrors visited upon them by circumstances and other human beings. . . .
https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/the-right-mocks-empathy-until-they