Is Western civilization an empathy weakling?

Meeting Others Where They Are
Concord Farmer's Market 2019
CC Jean Stimmell

I recently objected in a ‘My Turn’ op-ed to Elon Musk’s bizarre claim that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” This assertion is yet another example of the Trump Administration engaging in what George Orwell called “doublespeak:” fooling citizens into believing that things are the opposite of what they really are.

Classic examples of Orwellian doublespeak include “war is peace,” and “freedom is slavery.”

Musk’s statement outraged columnists across the nation. Molly Worthen in the NYT was incredulous: How can we not want children to grasp perspectives of people different from themselves?”^⁠1 

Michael Ventura, author of Applied Empathy, wrote that belittling empathy is part of a deliberate strategy. He pointed out that Trump has a long track record of disparaging empathy as naïve: “casting strength as synonymous with domination, suggesting that to care is to lose—and to control is to win.”

It is classic Orwellian doublespeak, Ventura pointed out: “They want to reframe care as weakness, dignity as naïveté and trust as a liability.” He urged us not to take the bait.

Until Trump and his apostles came along, empathy had always been regarded as a moral good that promoted virtuous deeds. No longer. Sadly, these empathy nay-sayers have become an increasingly loud chorus, reaching beyond politics and business to infect even my old profession of psychology.

I was dumbfounded when I read that a psychologist like Paul Bloom would adopt a Trumpian stance, asserting that empathy is a “parochial, narrow-minded” emotion — one that “will have to yield to reason if humanity is to survive.”^⁠2

As a retired psychotherapist, I think he has gone off the deep end. So did Cameron, Inzlicht, and Cunningham in a NYT article:^⁠3   These psychologists consider empathy critical to human survival. They proved, contrary to public perceptions, that empathy is not a fixed personality trait – something you either have or you don’t. Instead, it is a skill that requires practice.  It can be improved upon with effort, like learning to play tennis.

Their research shows that when individuals are made aware that empathy is a skill, they put more effort into understanding groups different from their own. Through this effort to understand, their empathy for others grew. Their conclusion: Empathy for people unlike us can be expanded simply by modifying our views about empathy.  

 

I learned that lesson early in my clinical practice.  I admit that occasionally I wasn’t drawn to a new client who, at first glance, might seem hostile, needy, or narcissistic.  

But after I got to know my clients,  I  was able to connect with every one of them, valuing each as a unique and valuable individual. It was a natural process that required no effort on my part, with one significant caveat: I had to first get out of my head – stop my chattering, judgmental mind – to apprehend what the person before me was really saying.

Jamil Zaki has written an excellent book, “The War for Kindness,” reinforcing the notion that empathy is a skill, a skill that requires making a conscious choice to show empathy. Her conclusion is that with practice“over time, empathic choices add up—building empathic habits and, eventually, empathic people.”^⁠4 

***

The empathy research I conducted revealed a very distressing aspect: studies have shown that powerful individuals exhibit less empathy than any other group. This happens because they have little incentive to interact with other people.

 It is a sad commentary on our times that two such powerful billionaires have been able to buy their way to the top of our government—they exemplify how wealthy and influential individuals often exhibit negligible empathy for the downtrodden, the poor, and those who are different from themselves.

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/opinion/sunday/empathy-school-college.html

² https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html

³ https://www.nytimes.com/2015//12/opinion/sunday/empathy-is-actually-a-choice.html

⁴ https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/in_a_divided_world_we_need_to_choose_empathy

My memories of Vietnam 50 years later

 

1966: Passing civilian ships as we prepared our maiden voyage up the My Tho River

The Vietnam War was a collective trauma that became a double-edged sword, representing both an unforgettable nightmare and the bloody spur that drove the transformational change that defined the 1960s. Alongside the Civil Rights movement, this war propelled social justice and sustainability to the forefront of our generation’s consciousness.

The conflict killed over 58000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese, including appalling massacres at places like My Lai, where American soldiers slaughtered more than 500 women, children, and old men.^⁠1 

We dropped over 5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam—the most extensive bombardment of any country in history—and more than twice as much tonnage as was dropped in all of World War II.^⁠2

The Vietnam War, in tandem with Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’, drove home the horrific dangers of pesticides, awakening the environmental movement. Vietnam stands front and center because it is an epicenter of wild species diversity, with many unique species. That was especially true before we flattened rural areas with 4 million tons of bombs, 400,000 tons of napalm, and 19 million gallons of Agent Orange^⁠3 – a curse for which I receive a VA disability.

Those of us in our generation who experienced our country running amok in the Vietnam era yearned for a simpler, more authentic, and more sustainable lifestyle. 

Here’s the background to my writing this: I was sitting around, feeling sorry for myself while recuperating from an operation, when I stumbled across a mesmerizing NYT photo essay commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.^⁠4 

The Vietnam photographs propelled me off the couch, overwhelmed by vivid memories of those years. As Viet Thanh Nguyen, the Vietnamese American author, wrote: “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.”^⁠5 Here are a few of mine:

I served in the Navy on an LST that delivered troops and equipment along the coast and into the rivers of Vietnam. I didn’t encounter much combat, but in 1968, the year I returned home, my ship, Westchester County LST 1167, was mined by Viet Cong sappers, resulting in the loss of 23 men, some of whom I knew.

The Vietnam War was personal to every American because of the sheer number of casualties and the fact that no one could feel safe because of the draft. Country Joe’s popular song expressed everyone’s worst fear: “Don’t be the first on your block to get sent home in a box.”

I grew up in Northwood but attended Pittfield High School. Among my circle of friends, two were killed in action, three returned with disabling wounds, and one committed suicide.

My personal memories wouldn’t make it onto a John Wayne highlight reel. We were relatively safe, battling only the stress and exhaustion of shuttling soldiers and armaments around, sometimes for months at a time without setting foot on land; there was no respite: 4 hours on duty and 4 hours off in the tropical heat that burned our feet through the soles of our shoes while our garbage piled up on the deck like a blossoming tent city.

 I remember the suicides in our squadron: a boy found hanging in the paint locker; the boy on the midnight stern watch who disappeared into the shimmering wake sometime between 12 and 4 a.m. There were others as well. It was always the youngest and the newest: it’s quite a shock to go from your Midwestern high school basketball games to float aimlessly around in the South China Sea, halfway around the world.

I also remember with gratitude both the goodness and diversity of the men I served alongside. It still amazes me that one can assemble a crew made up of individuals from every conceivable background who, under trying circumstances, become a tight-knit clan of brothers able to overlook each other’s shortcomings and come together in camaraderie to accomplish what had to be done.

In closing, I want to remind younger generations who resent us baby boomers – sometimes for good reason – that not all of us have spurned our obligations to our fellow citizens and the natural world to live high off the hog, greedily making money at the expense of others.

Many of us shaped by the blast furnace of Vietnam have rejected America’s wasteful, consumer society and have instead worked to create a more sustainable society based on social and environmental justice.

xxx

¹ https://www.history.com/articles/my-lai-massacre

² https://renewvn.org/the-most-bombed-place-on-earth/

³ Ibid.

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/world/asia/vietnam-war-photography-impact.html

⁵ Ibid

The fundamental weakness of Western civilization

George Orwell at work
photograph by ullstein bild

According to Elon Musk, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” 

When I read this in the Guardian, I almost fell out of my chair. Sadly, it gets worse! This heresy is not merely a hallucination emulating from Elon’s ketamine-fueled brain: It is gaining traction not only among evangelical Christians, “who have begun to recast the pangs of empathy that might complicate their support for Donald Trump” but also Catholics in the JD Vance mold.^⁠1

This is, perhaps, the most extreme example of the Trump Administration engaging in what George Orwell called“doublespeak,” coining the word in his dystopian novel “1984:” This is a trick to try to fool citizens into believing things are the opposite of what they really are. Examples of Orwellian doublespeak include “war is peace;” and “freedom is slavery.”

“Empathy is weakness” is Elon’s over-the-top contribution to doublespeak. It flies in the face of the Golden Rule, which calls on us to treat others as we would want to be treated by them. Various expressions of this rule have been the bedrock of religions and creeds throughout the ages.

Golden Rule gained strength as recently as the Obama administration; that’s when scientists discovered “mirror cells”– a type of nerve cell that reacts both when a subject performs an action and when the subject sees that action performed by someone else. 

This discovery provided a biological explanation for empathy, strengthening religion’s age-old claim. Perhaps this is what led Obama to declare that America was not suffering from a budget deficit but an empathy deficit.

What a transformation from then to now:  From the height of Obama lamenting the cuts to social programs as an ‘empathy deficit’ to Musk gleefully slicing through social programs while wielding a giant chainsaw.

Many other examples of over-the-top doublespeak come to mind, like Trump’s oft-repeated mantra that he won the 2020 election in a landslide when, according to all credible sources, he lost.

But to me, Musk’s empathy statement takes the cake. Riding the wave of their unchecked power, Republicans and Musk forget history. He is a throwback to Ayn Rand, who was the darling of conservatives in the 1950s. Rand wrote popular books promoting ultimate individual freedom while showing no mercy to the weak and disadvantaged. In many ways, Musk is Rand’s clone.

This isn’t the first time Republicans, while in complete control of the government, have leaned too far over their skis and crashed in a ridiculous fashion.  Just look at what happened during the McCarthy era in the 1950s when the FBI was run by J. Edgar Hoover, a right-wing zealot, much like our current director, Kash Patel. 

Here’s one example.

Influenced by testimony from extremists like Rand, Hoover’s FBI issued an official report on the movie industry, including his findings on a revered Christmas classic we still watch. Hoover determined that Frank Capra’s classic,  “It’s a Wonderful Life,” was “written by Communist sympathizers” attempting to instigate class warfare while “demonizing bankers."^⁠2

I predict future generations will reflect on the second Trump administration similarly to how we reflect on the McCarthy era of the 1950s and its baseless witch hunt against loyal Americans accused of being communists.

xxx

¹ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/08/empathy-sin-christian-right-musk-trump

² https://www.openculture.com/2014/12/ayn-rand-helped-the-fbi-identify-its-a-wonderful-life-as-communist-propaganda.html

Trump is bringing patriotism back into vogue for the rest of us

 

"Hands Off" Protest 4/5/25 Concord NH
Photograph by Arnie Alpert

Winter is losing its grip. Even the chunks of snow that slid off my north-facing roof are almost gone. The daffodils have pushed up through matted oak leaves, and the ice went out early on Jenness Pond. It’s a time of renewal not only for Mother Nature but also for our democracy. Since his inauguration in January, President Trump has given it his best shot to become our dictator-in-chief.

But he will not prevail!

As the opposition, we were flabbergasted by the audacity of Trump’s attacks on our constitution and institutions starting on day one of his second term. We were initially struck dumb, but once it sunk in, his outrageous actions became rocket fuel, igniting us into action.

But first, a personal note:  a brief return to Trump’s first term as president to explain how he restored my patriotism.  It took Trump’s first brutal, authoritarian reign to open my eyes – long shuttered by my country’s often unsavory and unjust behavior – to see how special, despite its flaws, our country is. 

At an emotional level, I was infuriated that Trump was able to wrap himself in the flag, anointing himself as America’s supreme patriot despite dumping on our constitution. Even more irking, he was AWOL in the war I fought in because of his lame excuse that he was physically unfit to serve because of bone spurs, despite being a star athlete in high school.

My war was a bad war, but I did my duty. Meanwhile, while  Viet Cong sappers almost sank my ship on the Mekong River, killing 23 brave Americans, he was bragging that his actions were more dangerous than Vietnam: sleeping around with so many women during the AIDS epidemic.

Donald’s gift to me was to take me back to my youthful idealism, which had motivated me to enlist to fight in Vietnam. President JFK’s words inspired me: "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”¹

That’s my tale of how Trump’s shameless wrapping himself in the American flag restored my patriotism; it prompted me to buy a large American flag, which I have flown proudly ever since until it was ripped to shreds by a recent winter storm. It was a harbinger of things to come that the flag should self-destruct right as Trump began his second term.

Now, back to the present. 

Since his inaugural, I have bought a replacement flag and am flying it proudly. It doesn’t seem possible, but our new president has doubled down on his crusade of destruction, ransacking our institutions, eliminating essential safety nets, and gutting our constitution.

But, thankfully, we have now regained our mojo.

We are standing tall again after being sucker punched in the gut.  As the respected journalist James Fallows observed, “Americans as individuals seem suddenly willing in larger numbers to “meet the moment.” More and more people are acting as they might sometime be asked, “What did you do, when it mattered?” And they’ll have an answer.”²

We, the people, are now standing up to fight for the kind of country we want to live in. Bernie Sanders and Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez’s recent tour “Fighting Oligarchy” has drawn enthusiastic crowds, including an estimated 34,000 in Denver.³

And last Saturday, we had a day of rage with over 1200 protests in every state across our country. Here at home, as the Concord Monitor reported: “This was the sixth protest in Concord since Trump took office and was the largest by far, with organizers estimating that more than 2,000 people attended.“

On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the protest stretched for nearly 20 blocks. In Chicago, thousands flooded Daley Plaza and adjacent streets, while, in the nation’s capital, tens of thousands surrounded the Washington Monument.⁴ Nearly 100,000 angry demonstrators gathered in Boston.⁵

After the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, "What sort of government have you given us? A republic or a monarchy?" Franklin's response: “A republic, if you can keep it. “ He understood that democracies are fragile and won’t survive without vigilant citizens.

I had shamefully forgotten the idealism and courage that it took to build our nation. It required clear thinking, tolerance, patience, and perspective.  As Tom Edmondson wrote in a letter to the Washington Post: “Throughout all time and across the face of the Earth, ours is the only nation not founded on ethnicity, territory, or religion. Ours is the only nation in human history founded on ideas, ideals, and a system of government.”⁶

These qualities that our forebearers sacrificed their lives for are desperately needed today to preserve their sparkling achievement. We saw an example of such idealism last Saturday.

xxx

¹ https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/education/teachers/curricular-resources/ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you

² https://fallows.substack.com/p/standing-up-it-looks-like-this?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=ktp62&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

³ https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/thousands-attend-bernie-sanders-aoc-rally-denver-push-progressive-change/

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/us/politics/anti-trump-protests-hands-off.htm

⁵ https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/hands-off-protest-boston-massachusetts

⁶ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/patrick-henry-revolutionary-war-virginia/?itid=sf_opinions_letters-to-the-editor_p007_f003