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3/28/25

3/28/2025

THE WAR AGAINST EMPATHY

RUMEYSA OZTURK, in white parka, Tufts University doctoral student, is captured by masked federal agents on a street in Somerville, Mass., March 25, and whisked away to Louisiana. Donald Trump hopes that most people won't care.

I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED. And neither should you.
     The story I heard last weekend on NPR seemed so preposterous that I thought at first it must have been a satire, a spoof, or maybe I just heard it wrong.
     So I went to the online archives of “Weekend Edition,” found the segment, and listened again.
     Yup. I heard it right the first time. It was a story about empathy. And it wasn’t good. Not the story; the story was okay. The problem was empathy – empathy, it turns out, is bad.
     Empathy has been added to the Right Wing's enemies list.

HOW COULD THIS BE, I WONDERED? Doesn’t the Right have enough to do without picking a fight with empathy?
     Aren’t there enough college students to deport? Aren’t there millions of people my age to be impoverished by undermining Social Security? And what of the campaign against Canada? There's so much history to distort. So much climate to change. And so many hungry school children to make hungrier. It's a long list.
      So why pick on empathy? Sweet little old empathy, which is the harmless – should I even say it, virtuous – practice of understanding what someone else is going through or thinking? You know, that "Walk in the other person's shoes" sort ofthing.
      The problem for the Right Wing, it turns out, is that empathy has been hijacked by the Left Wing. The liberals have weaponized empathy as an underhanded way of advancing their nefarious causes.
      Headlined, “How empathy came to be seen as weakness in conservative circles,” the NPR story included soundbites from the front lines. One went like this:
      “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
      Turns out that the speaker isn’t just any Joe Blow spouting off at the neighborhood bar.
      It’s none other than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the rocket guy, the electric car guy, the satellite guy, the guy who’s tearing the bejezzus out of the entire U.S. government.
     Elon was talking in February on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most-listened to podcasts of our moment.
      Elon and Joe were chatting about immigration and how it can get out of hand, imperiling a country’s politics and culture, and empathy was part of the problem.
     “There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself,” Elon says.
     “Yeah,” says Joe.
     NPR seems to have picked up the idea for its story from David French, a New York Times columnist, who explained the basics in an essay “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy.”
     French mentioned other Right Wing “thinkers,” who are so bothered by empathy they’ve written books about it. Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcaster, authored “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” And Joe Rigney, a theologian, turned out “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”
     One chilling fact about empathy: women.
     Women are empathy’s fall guys. The girls are easily led astray by the empathy lure. NPR found a soundbite from Stuckey on a podcast, “Family Talk,” explaining how liberals exploit the ladies:
     “They’ll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, ‘Well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders, I have to be pro- LGBTQ, I have to be pro-choice.’”

AS I SAID, there’s nothing here that should surprise us as we head into the fourth month of the Trump nightmare.
      Cruelty, the opposite of empathy, is essential to the Trump agenda.
      I don’t know why the president is so angry, so savage, so sadistic and so determined to inflict pain, terror and fear on friend and foe alike.
     But it turns out that he is.
     Most people aren't. At least, I don't think most people are like are like Donald Trump.
      Most people are kind. They care about other people, and they want others to care about them. Most of us don’t want each other to be hungry, homeless, to live in poverty, to be sick without medical care, to suffer in pain, or to be scared out of our minds every day when we tune into the news.
      For Trump to succeed in whatever it is he’s up to, he has to change the fundamentals of being human, to warp the national character.
     Compassion must be turned into disgust, love into hate, empathy into revulsion.

SO THAT WHEN WE WATCH that video showing the capture of the Tufts University doctoral student, Rumeysa Ozturk, by masked federal agents on a street in Somerville, Mass., on March 25, and see her hustled away in an unmarked SUV, we must not care.
We must not care that Ms. Ozturk ends up in Louisiana, where, lacking her medications, she has an asthma attack. We must not care that her apparent “offense” is co-authoring an op-ed essay in a student newspaper. We must not care that a former classmate, Jennifer Ruth Hoyden, tells the Boston Globe that Ms. Ozturk is “an extremely gentle human being, who could not use a swear word if you paid her.” We must not care that Ms. Ozturk, is 30 years old, from Turkey, enrolled in Tufts’ doctoral program for child study and human development.
Because empathy has no place in Donald Trump's America.

DONALD TRUMP'S "bad picture" at the Colorado State House before he pleaded for its removal.

THERE'S AN EMPATHY EXEMPTION, of course, because nothing is straight forward with Donald Trump.
     Trump demands empathy for Donald Trump.
     An example is Trump’s recent complaint about his portrait in the Colorado State House, which he described this way on his social network platform:
     Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one ….
     By March 25, the day on which Ozturk was, in effect, kidnapped by Trump’s goons, empathetic Coloradans had taken taken down the hurtful painting, which produced a sort of win-win outcome: Trump got his wish; State House visitors no longer had to look at him.

BUT FOR TRUMP TO SUCCEED, empathy must seen as a fool’s errand, too naïve, so wrong-headed and dangerously foolish.
     Which suggests one way to counter the horror Trump is inflicting on our country and on our world.
     Maybe we can’t make it to the next big protest.
     Maybe an inspiring Democratic leader has yet to emerge. Maybe we can’t contribute to every email demanding campaign money. Maybe we don’t own a a Tesla that we can trade in as a rebuke to Musk. And for sure none of us can speed up the calendar to get to the 2026 midterm elections.
      But we can do one simple thing.
     We can care.
     We can be kind.
     We can empathize.
     We can do that every day.

2 Comments

3/21/25

3/21/2025

1 Comment

CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WORD?
Readers have suggested more words to define Trump. The hunt continues.

A DEMONSTRATION ORGANIZED by the Newport Democratic City Committee at the interchange to the Newport Bridge March 19 featured American and Ukrainian flags and signs saying “No kings,” “Stand for democracy/ Stand with Ukraine,” and “Protect democratic rights.”

EARLIER THIS MONTH, when it was still winter, and as Trump was deporting people for speaking their minds, openly defying court orders and continuing to betray Ukraine, I wondered if there was a single word that described the president.
     I threw out a couple of my own – CRACKPOT and BONKERS.
     Acknowledging their flaws, I invited suggestions. I proposed ground rules: no swears; no comparisons to animals; none that would degrade people with mental illness; no compound phrases; the choices should suggest meanness, racism and depravity.
     “I like MALIGNANT,” wrote one friend from the Other Coast. She said that her husband calls Trump “THE FERAL HOG. But,noting the contest rules against animals comparisons, she suggested just “FERAL.”
     “I vote for MANIACAL,” said another respondent, who included a fragment of a dictionary definition: “Afflicted with extreme mental derangement … wildly irresponsible.
     “And DEMENTED,” this person continued. “It’s a word I use a lot about Trump.”
     Still another also supplied two words, averring both were “probably not good for reaching a wide enough constituency. I chose them because my Gut reacted when people said them to me.”

CRUEL – “This is the word used by animal rights advocates in ads destined to get us incensed and motivated to donate to ASPCA”
GREEDY – “I was struck when a Scottish immigrant told me that when he told his college professor colleagues he was moving to the USA, they said to him: ‘Just remember, you are going to a country that can be described in one word, GREED.”

Three other correspondents supplied one word each, without explanations, figuring that they spoke for themselves:

     BASE
     NARCISSISTIC
     ARSONIST

I PARTICULARLY LIKED ANOTHER SUGGESTION, finding it chilling in its depth and intimations of malevolence:
     SADISTIC
     “It’s a word that comes to mind when I think of Trump (and I think of him way too often).
     “I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to understand the moving parts beneath behavior, and “sadistic” comes as close as any to suggesting Trump’s animating dynamic.
     “He’s all about ‘getting even’ with the original sin against him, rooted in his personal history. It’s ‘getting even’ with a bullet.
     “He’s addicted to the satisfaction of his own cruelty, and those cruelties, large and small, play out, over and over again.”

A HEADLINE IN THE ATLANTIC magazine purported to echo the same idea I had raised: “One Word Describes Trump.”
     “Wow,” I exclaimed, “a Vulcan mind-meld just in the nick of time, and I began to devour the piece by writer Jonathan Rauch:
     He wrote:
     “Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
     “There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism – nor is it is autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy,” Rauch continued. “Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.”
     That’s it? The elusive last word in defining Trump?
     I despaired . I never heard of the word, had no idea how to pronounce it, much less the foggiest idea about what it meant.
      PATRIMONIALISM ?
     That’s supposed to go on my bumper sticker? Or my next protest placard? No wonder the forces of truth, justice and the American way lost last year’s election.
     Rauch explained that a German sociologist, Max Weber, wrote that the word refers to a ruler who considers himself the “father of the people – the state’s personification and protector.”
     Such regimes, he said, have two self-destructive flaws: they are incompetent and corrupt, and democracy advocates can use both weaknesses to undermine and defeat them.
     Maybe PATRIMONIALISM fits Trump just like his fake hairdo and orange skin, maybe it provides political strategists with the secrets of turning back the Trump assault on democracy.
     But it’s not the word that I and many Americans are looking for.

SO THE HUNT GOES ON.
     Lately, CRIMINAL lately is working for me, both as a noun and an adjective.
     Trump literally is a CRIMINAL. Remember, he was convicted last May of falsifying business records in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
     And Trump’s manic campaign to destroy America is CRIMINAL in its lawlessness, heartlessness and thoughtlessness, with equal parts savagery and selfishness mixed in.
     So today, the second day of spring, I thank responders for their suggestions. But the work is not done.
     Defining Trump – which will help in his undoing – remains a continuing and important pursuit.
   The suggestion box remains open and hungry.

1 Comment

3/17/25

3/17/2025

2 Comments

INTERLUDE
A joyful parade reminds us of cherished traditions worth defending

OVER THE WEEKEND, my neighborhood was invaded by federal troops, State Police with K-9 units, sword-wielding militias, demonstrating university students, scores of local cops on the march and a truck loaded with rugby toughs.
     Taking all of this in was a crowd numbering in the thousands lining both sides of more than a mile of city streets, shouting and waving and hollering.
     The occasion was the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, an institution in Newport, R.I., with the march ending conveniently at the end of my street.
     For more than an hour, what might be symbols and mechanisms of oppression in an America now struggling to defend its democratic roots and commitment to the rule of law, instead helped celebrate one of this community’s most cherished traditions.
     The military units included a marching band from the nearby Newport naval base, along with a free-spirited National Guard groups, outfitted in camouflage uniforms, playing jazz and dancing and swaying as they played.
     The State Police K-9 units strolled the parade route, encouraging bystanders to pat the friendliest pooches. Firefighters rode on the back of their red trucks, holding on with one hand, and waving frantically with the other.
     The student “demonstration” broke out spontaneously at an approaching float sponsored by Salve Regina University, whose ocean-side campus was only a few blocks from the reviewing stand.
     The “militias” were traditional groups hearkening back to the country’s founding, with classic uniforms and "guns," plus a crew of bearded, grouchy and aging pirates.
     There were men in skirts. And a St. Patrick "cleric" more than willing to pose for selfies with his pastoral flock.

Heading the line of march were the state’s top political leaders: Gov. Dan McKee, Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha, U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo and the state’s two U.S. Senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.
But you hardly would have known the big shots from the spectators and other marchers mingling at the end of the route as the parade broke up. The governor posed with some Cub Scouts; Senators Reed and Whitehouse – among their chamber’s leading members – chatted with folks in silly green hats and other “Irish” trappings who happened to wander by.

      It occurred to me that this was a rare moment in our national life.
     An hour or two to wave at the cops, and for the cops to wave back; to clap for the local high school bands; to smile at Shriners scooting around in their ridiculous mini-cars; to sing along with flat-bed trucks loaded with musicians belting out live music; to stare at the a guy on stilts and to say “Hello” to Elmo.
     If felt like a huge weight was lifted, if just for a moment.
     Gone was the oppressive, scary, cruel, monstrous assault by Donald Trump, determined to tear apart the United States by crippling its agencies and departments, thumbing his nose at the courts, reversing civil rights, setting one group of citizens against another, betraying foreign allies and getting chummy with the nation's enemies.
     Instead, hundreds of marchers and thousands of spectators gathered in a common purpose stretching back decades – honoring the folklore and traditions of a once-oppressed immigrant group, determined that this edition of the parade would deliver the friendliest, excessively exuberant and most exhilarating edition ever.
     Don’t get me wrong.
     The St. Patrick’s Day parade did nothing to stop or slow the Trump onslaught.
     But it did provide a welcome interlude – a moment to cheer and to wave and to share the comic, friendly, silly and profound symbolism of a united community.
     It was a reminder of the kind of traditions that we may have taken for granted in America, but now find ourselves in an urgent life-and-death struggle to defend and preserve.

2 Comments

3/9/25

3/8/2025

3 Comments

CAN WE HAVE A WORD?
What word best describes Trump and the awful country he is crafting? How about “crackpot?” Maybe “absurd?” Perhaps “demented,” “bonkers?”

WE NEED A WORD.
     Just one that describes what Trump – and so many of our fellow citizens – are doing to our country.
     I’ve been puzzling about this for a while.
    We need a word – one, in Trump-speak, that’s “perfect.” A word that captures the outlandish, abnormal, cruel, bizarre, destructive and just plain stupid changes in the national character that have evolved since Trump took office in January.
     A word that describes his unfunny joke of annexing Canada. Or expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, so it can be turned into a beach resort. Betraying Ukraine. Reviving America’s racist roots. Breaking the government. Imperiling the economy. Snuffing out scientific and medical research. Accelerating climate destruction. Replacing truth with lies. Playing the bully.
     The various actions that Trump has undertaken as an individual are ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful, and need a word to define them.
     The same applies to the country – our country – when it likewise becomes ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful. Because the new America is not just one man - it's all of us.
      Is there a unique word that will describe all of these dreadful individual and national betrayals? Here are some ground rules:

We need just one word. No cheating with hyphenated concoctions. No phrases. No subtitles.
The word must apply to both Trump and the country.
However tempting and fitting, the word must not be salacious or profane.
The word must not compare humans to animals, especially when that is meant to degrade people, while simultaneously insulting the creatures.
It should not belittle people with mental illness or physical disabilities.
It must convey the cruelty, malice and sadism in which Trump thrives.
The word should suggest betrayal of American ideals and traditions.
It should note the racism that is Trump’s only core principle.
It’s probably an adjective.

     You might well ask: Why fuss over the “perfect” word, when the crisis demands real action?
     We already know the damage, which Trump is inflicting and which many people are mimicking, actively or passively. So, screw the semantics, and let’s concentrate our limited resources on the practical challenges of resistance, reform and recovery.
      My answer is that language is a weapon beyond all others.
     If we can somehow divine the right word, one that puts Trump in his place, while doing the same for a Trumpified America, we will clarify our goals in defending democracy, while increasing our chances of success.

HERE’S A LIST of some of the words I’ve come up with.
     I’m not at all satisfied with the list. For one thing, it's too short. And none of the words completely hits the spot. So consider this just as a starting point:

CRACKPOT
MALEVOLENT
BONKERS
DEMENTED
CRAZY
MAD
ABSURD
VINDICTIVE
MANIACAL
MALICIOUS
MALIGNANT
EVIL

One way of testing a candidate word is through a fill-in-the-blanks exercise.

     Donald J. Trump, America’s _________ president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of __________ proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office.
     Under the --------- executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections.
     Trump is considering imposing more ____________ tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under ________________Freedom to Drive principles.

I’M PARTIAL TO “CRACKPOT.”
     CRACKPOT president.
     CRACKPOT country.
     But it’s not a winner. As one friend noted, CRACKPOT conveys a charm and zaniness that you might associate with a favorite uncle who invents things in his backyard shack. CRACKPOT lacks the serial-killer menace that infuses Trump’s activities.
      Still, the word does imply danger. Who knows what the CRACKPOT uncle is actually up to in his shack. And it does convey silliness, stupidity and recklessness of a president and country, neither of which are firing on all cylinders.
     It also works nicely in our test sentences.

the      Donald J. Trump, America’s CRACKPOT president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of CRACKPOT proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office.
     Under the CRACKPOT executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections.
      Trump is considering imposing more CRACKPOT tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under the CRACKPOT Freedom to Drive principles.

     Another favorite is BONKERS. While it lacks the fire of some of the others on the list, it does capture the ridiculousness of Trump and his presidency.
     Strangely, it seems to me more judgmental than I would like, since I’m searching for word that’s objective and descriptive.
     But BONKERS also works in the test case, and has a nice cumulative effect:

     Donald J. Trump, America’s BONKERS president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of BONKERS proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office.
     Under the BONKERS executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections.
      Trump is considering imposing more BONKERS tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under the BONKERS Freedom to Drive principles.

I INVITE SUGGESTIONS.
     As noted, my list is imperfect. It’s distressingly short, and there’s a problem with every word.
     Some of the words stray into prohibited mental health area. For example, CRAZY, while not an approved medical term, implies discomfort with mental illness, although its meaning is broader than that.
     Another favorite is ABSURD, but someone knocked that one down, because it lacks fire, and it seems a little too happy when there’s nothing happy about Donald Trump or the cloud smothering democracy and its citizens.
     At one time, I hoped that TRUMP itself would the perfect word, that it would enter the language as its own universal pejorative, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao or any of the other monsters of history.
     So far, however, TRUMP is a word that won the last election, has mesmerized the Republican Party, intimidated business leaders, frightened much of academia and so far seems to be holding its own in the polls.
     If anyone has a nomination, I’d invite you – no, I beg you - to suggest it.
     Proposals can be submitted to the comments section of the blog, or as replies to emails that alert readers to new blog posts.
     If there are enough suggestions, I'll include them in a new post.
     Should this treasure hunt be successful, the terrible times in which America finds itself will be closer to ending, heralding a day when we've written the last word on Donald Trump.

3 Comments

3/28/25

THE WAR AGAINST EMPATHY

3/21/25

CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WORD?Readers have suggested more words to define Trump. The hunt continues.

3/17/25

INTERLUDEA joyful parade reminds us of cherished traditions worth defending

3/9/25

CAN WE HAVE A WORD?What word best describes Trump and the awful country he is crafting? How about “crackpot?” Maybe “absurd?” Perhaps “demented,” “bonkers?”

Categories

CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WORD?
Readers have suggested more words to define Trump. The hunt continues.

INTERLUDE
A joyful parade reminds us of cherished traditions worth defending

CAN WE HAVE A WORD?
What word best describes Trump and the awful country he is crafting? How about “crackpot?” Maybe “absurd?” Perhaps “demented,” “bonkers?”