What is empathy worth?
And where is it found?
Doomscrolling is a difficult habit to break. Especially in the year 2025. As much as I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend that we’re not witnessing something tragic happening in our country, events keep gnawing at my conscience.
I tried to give up Twitter for Lent. But in mid-March, the executive branch of the United States flouted a court order and sent two planeloads of people to a mega-prison in El Salvador. The administration justified this action by stringing a lot of scary words together. This was not a Maryland man, they repeated about one of the men on the plane. This was not a father. This was a violent criminal illegal alien foreign terrorist gang member.
“The fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.” That’s what Elon Musk said recently as a way of explaining why it’s important to smash through the guardrails of civility and law when it comes to immigration enforcement.
JD Vance introduced a theological point of view. He adheres to ordo amoris, or the ordering of love where, according to Vance’s interpretation of Augustine, God is first, family is second, and people from foreign countries are last. What I still don’t understand is how believing in a ladder of love can justify cruel and unusual punishment of people who haven’t been convicted of any crime.
After the planes took off, Steve Bannon, as he often does, said the quiet part out loud: “I think they got everybody who was a bad guy, but guess what? If there's some innocent gardeners in there? Hey, tough break for a swell guy.”
The depravity of the whole thing caused me to break my Lenten discipline. I logged back onto Twitter and I said, “I think deporting people directly into foreign prisons is wrong because it violates the very idea of what this country is supposed to be about. We claim to believe in the dignity and liberty of the individual person. Our laws protect due process for the accused. This is not going to keep us safe. We are not safer by allowing unconstitutional prison sentences. Without the rule of law, everything will be worse for everybody.”
But I didn’t say it like that because there’s a character limit on Twitter. I had to write short, and I had to match the message to the medium. My new Lenten discipline became writing zingers for due process.
In the back of my mind, I knew that my thoughts and feelings, converted into tweet form, were getting chopped up into the blender of the news feed. I didn’t think my tweets were actually making much difference. It was more about catharsis. It felt like something rather than nothing.
As I’ve shared before on this newsletter, I struggle to balance long-form writing on Substack with short-form writing on Twitter/X. When I read on Twitter, my thoughts start to become 280-character reactions as I formulate things I might want to post.
The week before Easter, I followed through on my intention for Lent. I deactivated my Twitter account. As happens whenever I unplug from the news feed machine, I found myself in a better headspace for reflection. I started thinking about empathy.
From a political perspective, empathy can be a weakness. It might be better politics to pose in front of jailed inmates rather than fight for due process for people accused of doing bad things. And certainly, the word empathy is often used inappropriately to mean leniency. You can be empathetic toward people while also wanting laws to be enforced.
But it remains true that empathy and human dignity are at the very core of Western Civilization. If you start with a Judeo-Christian value set, as Christian nationalists claim to do, then you have to start with the idea that human beings are created in the image of God. Imago dei is a more essential Christian concept than ordo amoris.
Imago dei applied to a body politic means that individual human beings are not scapegoated for the crimes of others. It means that individual rights are not sacrificed at the altar of some supposed collective good.
The right-wing populists in power are not trying to conserve Western Civilization. Their actions suggest they are engaged in a radical effort to break loose the underpinnings of our civilization.
I believe that some of them are aware of the direction of this project, while others are along for the ride, consumed with short-term political expediency and swept up in the rhetorical battles that are happening online.
There is a concept in psychology called “deindividuation” which I think helps explain the lack of empathy displayed by those defending the administration's cruelty and lawlessness. Here’s the dictionary definition:
Deindividuation is an experiential state characterized by loss of self-awareness, altered perceptions, and a reduction of inner restraints that results in the performance of unusual and sometimes antisocial behavior. It can be caused by a number of factors, such as a sense of anonymity or submersion in a group.
When people are caught up in a group's actions, like that of a mob, they lose a sense of accountability for their own behavior. Hyper-partisanship certainly falls within this category. Also, when we interact through digital avatars, we can lose touch with the humanity in ourselves and others. This warps our online interactions. In politics it also warps real world behaviors, because public figures know that their filmed exchanges are going to be chopped into video clips and distributed online.
Ad-driven social media platforms are not the sole explanation for the events we’re witnessing. History is full of cruelty and propaganda. Still, it’s hard to ignore the possible effects of social media on how individuals today are responding to events.
I forget the source, but someone said this on Substack Notes: “On the one hand, Twitter is not real life. On the other hand, it is possible to troll your way to the presidency.”
Per usual, I remain on the fence about how much and whether to engage on Twitter. I would prefer to ignore it altogether, but political actors are spending time reading and posting there. To ignore Twitter is to miss out on a layer of news-shaping chatter.
For now, I am enjoying my time away from the algorithms. I feel more grounded, more empathetic, and more hopeful, despite it all.
I have no social media accounts personally, Billy, so I don't face the same dilemma you do. I do track about 50 Substack sources, though, and I'm now in the process of scaling that back to a workable number. We can easily be overwhelmed by the current avalanche of words.
I agree we can empathize and demand justice at the same time. I have no idea why cruelty and insensibility are perceived as legitimate forms of governance. We will have to find a way to unravel this noose we now have draped around our necks. Or lose our souls as well as The Great American Experiment. Both would be tragic outcomes.
Thank you for sharing your honest thoughts from time to time. You are not alone. Not by a long shot! Perhaps ironically, perhaps fortuitously, my sanity is somewhat shielded from the perversion we now read or view daily by being involved in seeking voting rights for independent minded voters. A long haul. Too little, too late? I have no idea. It is certainly so in the absence of trying.
So, let's stay in the ballgame no matter the communication channels we use. And yes, we have a lot of work to do. So did the nearly 1.2 million Americans whose lives have been sacrificed for us to get this far. I flew with some of them. They won't let me forget. And for that, I'm grateful.
Both Maria and Al made thoughtful and eloquent points. I don’t social media at all. Knowing me I would be online 24/7. Mental health and perspective keep me balanced along with love, kindness and compassion. I can let in bad actors, they can rent room in my head by just reading newspapers and substacks. Also by just listening to people like Donald Trump. I’ve stopped watching him, I do read what he says. Apparently his interview with ABC last night was, as expected, off the rails. When I ask friends why they believe his policy promises while giving my facts they say “we watch different channels.” We are divided by both social and broadcast media. Thats the problem with the first amendment. But where would we be without it. I don’t know.