When the Hell Did Empathy Become a Flaw, America?

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

How in the hell did we get here?

Really.

I’m not asking how America elected a convicted felon, or how nearly every Republican in Congress steamrolled one of the most malevolent pieces of legislation in recent history through, or how the Evangelical Church ended up fully making its bed with a political party to disastrous results for both entities.

Those things can at least be reasonably explained by a perfect storm of Christian nationalism, cult-like political tribalism, systemic racism, and the fierce pull of wealth and power.

As unthinkable as our political realities seem and as shocking as the legislative fallout appears, if we look at this nation’s history, in many ways, they become less a mystery and more a logical progression.

This isn’t what is leveling me these days.
This isn’t why my incredulity is this profound.
This isn’t the question that makes sleep difficult.

I want to know how the people around me lost the ability to care about the suffering of others, and worse, how that ability became a character flaw.

When and how, for tens of millions of people, did empathy move from one of the highest human aspirations, one prized by the greatest ethic, moral, and spiritual leaders this planet has known, to a supposed deficiency to be ridiculed? How does a collective so lose the plot of humanity so thoroughly?

Looking at my timeline, eavesdropping in local coffee shops, and replaying exchanges with family members and people in my social circle, the realization of just how fluent so many Americans have become in cruelty has sucker punched me in ways no Congressional vote or human rights rollback has.

These aren’t politicians putting on a persona to curry votes, or opportunistic clergy looking to fill their pews and coffers. I’m talking about ordinary, supposedly decent, faithful, rational adults who simply don’t give a shit about other human beings. I am grieving so many people I once loved or at least respected, who seem to have been invaded by some parasitic beings for whom the pain in their path is something to be celebrated.

This is outside the realm of politics or the reach of religion.

It’s one thing to believe that our borders need to be more secure, and another entirely to post posturing, taunting memes about immigrant prisoners dying of heat stroke and being fed to alligators. What brings about the kind of heart mutation?

There is a massive moral leap from not supporting the LGBTQ community on some theological grounds to publicly advocating for their violent eradication. How exactly does a soul justify such ugliness?

I can’t count how many times I’ve scrolled through a longtime friend’s social media page or walked away from a neighborhood block party or finished reading a relative’s text and thought “I remember when you cared about people.”

I don’t know how to reach them anymore, because the ways I always believed worked to bridge the gaps are proving ineffective.

And that is the most bitter pill to swallow right now: to realize that I can’t appeal to these people’s compassion as a way of awakening them to the suffering around them because that well seems to have permanently dried up.

And the irony of it all is that these are the people who most test the empathy in me. I am finding it more and more difficult to keep my heart from being hardened toward them.

Lately, I’m not as worried that we won’t eventually course correct out of this newly arrived fascism or that the pendulum of power won’t swing to a less predatory group of lawmakers, as I am that we will be able to reach the humanity of people who have grown to believe that this humanity makes them weak.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is what far too large a section of our nation has become: people who haven’t just lost empathy, but now have complete contempt for it. I always believed that most people want good things for other human beings, and to be proven wrong so often is deflating.

As for me, I refuse to allow the cruelty of the crowds to drain the compassion from me.

Empathy is still the better path, even if so many continue to walk away from it.