As I’ve written before, I haven’t been a practicing Christian for many years. I won’t regurgitate my reasons again, but I handed in my Catholic Club membership card way back in my 30s. This doesn’t mean that I jettisoned my Christian values along with all that dogma and patriarchy, however, because I didn’t. While I may no longer believe that Jesus Christ is what Christians say he is, I still believe in his message, as depicted in that artfully selected compendium of books written hundreds of years after his death and compiled as a ‘Bible’ by powerful men with political and financial agendas. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘Turn the other cheek.’ ‘Forgive your trespassers.’ All worthy principles to strive for.
Many of Jesus’ most profound lessons were taught through parables. One of my favorites is the parable of The Sheep and the Goats in the Book of Matthew (25:31-46), which goes like this. When Jesus returns for his second coming, with all the angels at his back, he’ll sit on a throne with all of the earth’s nations gathered before him. (I don’t know exactly how he’ll manage this logistically. Maybe he’ll do a world tour, country by country, and play big arenas like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen. Maybe he’ll just do one massive Zoom call with mandatory attendance under penalty of eternal damnation. I don’t know how it’ll work. It’s not important.)
All the earth’s nations and people will gather before him in whichever manner he sees fit, and then he’ll separate each person, one by one, into two categories: sheep to the right of him, goats to the left.
Sidenote: Here one would naturally ask a few questions. Do I want to be a sheep or a goat? Which is better? Sheep seem like weak animals. Easily led followers to a slaughter, complicit in their own demise. But goats? Goats kick ass, man! Goats are independent and they do whatever the hell they want. Yeah, they get slaughtered too, but they put up a fight first, and you’re definitely not getting the old ones with the horns and long beards without being on the receiving end of a few bruises yourself. So maybe goats are better? Maybe Jesus respects goats more than sheep? And what standard is he using for this division, by the way? I guess we’ll find out. Let’s read on.
Then Jesus will say to the sheep on the right:
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.“
Then the righteous, the sheep, will answer him:
“Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”
And Jesus will answer:
“Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
And what of the goats? What will Jesus say to the goats??
To the goats he will say:
“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick in prison and you did not look after me.“
Then those stunned and newly-damned goats will look at Jesus and ask:
“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”
Jesus will reply:
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
Erm, I guess being a sheep is better.
To me, this is Jesus’ core message in the New Testament, not the ‘good news’ about his crucifixion and resurrection that we were taught in Sunday school and CCD. To me, it’s a radical message, the significance of which most Christians fail to recognize and treat as a mere suggestion rather than a mandate. Why is it radical? Well for one, Jesus is saying that most of the things the world worships–wealth, power, influence, connections, good looks, relationships, professional accolades and achievements–don’t matter at all when it comes to grabbing that heavenly brass ring and avoiding the sulphuric fires of hell. Indeed, he’s using a really simple and straightforward standard to separate the blessed from the cursed, the heavenly inductees from the fallen: how you treat the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the homeless, the stranger, and the imprisoned. How you treat other people besides yourself, the weakest and most needy people in society. Whether you help them or ignore them, or worse, contribute to their plight and pain. Whether you only focused on yourself and your own selfish needs and wants in your life, or whether you did unto others as you would do unto yourself. And unfortunately for 99.99% of American Christians, those ‘others,’ the least of us, includes illegal immigrants, foreigners, and the poor. This, not donations, attending church, evangelizing, going on missions, thanking God and Jesus after every Super Bowl or World Series win, or having one’s own Jesus-centric television show or podcast, is the only standard for determining whether one goes to heaven or hell. Don’t blame me for this. Jesus said it himself! Supposedly.
It’s a radical message because it shitcans every core human motivation and tells people that if heaven is their goal, they’re focusing on entirely the wrong things in life. That nonsense they care about day in, day out, is totally irrelevant when it comes to unlocking one’s Pearly Gates Retirement Plan. They should be doing what he says in this parable instead of doing whatever they’re doing that they think will be enough. They need to be a sheep, not a goat. We all do. But it’s waaaaaay harder to be a sheep isn’t it? It requires us to reject, or at least shelve, so many of the things we chase every day of our lives and start viewing people and the world itself differently. It means massively downgrading the significance of our identity, citizenship, skin color, religion, borders, geography, wealth, power, social and professional status, and celebrity, and the time we spend on them.
It’s also a radical message because Jesus is saying that we’re all the same. None of us have any more value or worth than anyone else, no matter our differences, where we live, or the life we’ve led. He’s also saying that he exists in all of us, including, most notably, the very LEAST of us. How we treat the least of our brothers and sisters is how we treat him. How we treat the least of our brothers and sisters is how we treat ourselves. Because they are us, and we are they. It’s an incredibly profound message, and it’s my favorite one in the Bible. I think it’s the core message in the entire book.
At bottom, the parable of The Sheep and The Goats is about demonstrating universal empathy for everyone, including strangers, and seeing every person as valuable and worthy of help, care, and love. Not just some people. Not just your family and friends. Not just people who agree with you politically. Not just people who were born in your country and came here legally. Not just law-abiders. ALL people. Everyone. Even people you hate. This parable teaches that Jesus exists in all of us, including the worst of us.
So it’s no surprise that those poor goats are shocked when Jesus summarily damns them. “When did we see you and not help you?” they asked him. His answer: “When you didn’t help the LEAST of your brothers and sisters, you did not help me.” Once again for the cheap seats. The LEAST of us matter. How we treat the LEAST of us, the empathy we show to the LEAST of us is the actual standard. Which makes sense, because (a) the “most” of us don’t need as much help, and (b) achieving heavenly bliss should be a little harder than just going to church once a week, dropping five bucks into the collection plate, and then swearing at the asshole who cuts you off as you leave the church parking lot (my Dad actually did this once, lmfao).
I’m writing about this not because I believe in heaven and hell, or eternal salvation and damnation. I don’t at all. To me, those are just child fairytales, and the Bible is allegorical, not historical or factual. No, I’m writing about this because of the way this parable connects to something that’s been on my mind a lot these past two years. A human mental defect that returned with a vengeance after the horrific and senseless murder of Charlie Kirk. The defect of selective empathy.
With apologies to all you atheists out there, look around and you’ll see that the human race lives in a world dominated by organized religion–specifically, the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam–and the belief systems of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. I haven’t studied all of them in detail, but I’m fairly certain that they all contain the same teaching of The Sheep and The Goats in some form. It may not be stated the same way. The penalty may not be as severe and may not involve demons flaying the damned for eternity. But they all contain the same principle of universal empathy for others, seeing them as yourself, and treating them the way you want to be treated.
In a world with this many religious believers and adherents of these belief systems–literally billions of them, most of the human race–you’d think we’d be surrounded by billions, or just millions of people who actually follow what they profess to believe, even this small slice of it. You’d think we’d see more empathy, a more objective empathy for other people, people in need, the least of us. But that’s not what we see at all, is it? We see the exact opposite. Instead of universal empathy, the kind of unconditional empathy that Jesus spoke about in the parable of The Sheep and The Goats, what we see is selective empathy. Empathy for some people, but not others. Human beings are actually quite discriminatory and scrupulous about the recipients of their empathy and care. It’s an incredibly subjective standard, not an objective one. Instead of our empathy being driven by an impartial standard of morality, decency, and humanity, it’s just another appendage of our unconscious mind. Due to our unconscious bias, which is ingrained in us from the very moment we’re born to this very moment, we only (or at least primarily) care about people who look like us, act like us, and believe what we believe. We only care about people who share our religion, our geography, our skin color, and our social ties. We only care about people who agree with us and align with our political, religious, and moral values. We only care about people whom we’re indoctrinated to care about, either by our parents, our friends, our education, our government, or our media.
In stark contrast, we don’t give two. flying. fucks. about the people who lie outside the subjective boundary we all set for ourselves. Those people can all get fucked. FAFO. Right? Or if we don’t wish karmic fuckery on them, our empathy for them is, at best, muted. Hedged. Incomplete. Fractional.
Look around and it’s not hard to see this selective empathy dynamic playing out in real time. Go read a few Facebook posts from your old friends about one of the political issues of the day. Or in my case, go talk to your mother for a half hour. Bring up Israel and Palestinians in a conversation with one of your Jewish friends. On second thought, maybe don’t.
Let’s discuss a couple of examples instead. After Charlie Kirk was killed, many conservatives who relentlessly mocked Nancy Pelosi’s 82 year-old husband when he was attacked with a hammer and nearly killed three years ago, and who had absolutely nothing to say when a Minnesota legislator was murdered two months ago, or when Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s house was lit on fire by an arsonist last April, totally lost their shit when some liberals mocked Kirk’s murder by throwing his own callous words in his face. Specifically, when Kirk famously said that a few deaths a year are the unfortunate cost of having a Second Amendment. The aftermath of Kirk’s death is a great example of selective empathy (and rank hypocrisy). Conservatives who thought Pelosi’s husband nearly being killed was so fucking funny, and who made up stories suggesting that the unhinged nutter who did it was a disgruntled lover of his, have the temerity to get upset when liberals returned the favor after Kirk’s killing. And some liberals who were justifiably upset about the lack of empathy shown by conservatives, including the President of the United States himself, when Pelosi’s husband was nearly killed, are now doing the same thing they complained about.
Why does this happen? Selective empathy. In this charged political environment, some people are simply incapable of demonstrating basic humanity when someone on the other side of the political aisle is attacked or killed. They are unable to separate their politics from basic human decency. They’re not able to distinguish between the tragedy itself and the vile things a person may have said or done in their life. Things they may have evolved on or changed had they lived longer. Yes, Kirk had odious views and said repulsive and racist things as he grifted his way into a powerful personality brand. He was a disgusting person who cloaked himself in religion and Christianity even though in many ways he was the total opposite of the person Jesus taught us to be. He was a fucking goat, people. A GOAT. A rich goat in sheep’s clothing.
But that doesn’t mean he deserved what happened to him, or the schadenfreude that followed. He was murdered in cold blood for God’s sake. Murdered for some of his words and political positions it appears, though there’s a lot we still don’t know. Everyone should be condemning this. Everyone should be able to separate the vile person he was during his life from the human being, father, and husband who was horrifically murdered. It’s not that fucking hard. Ta-Nehisi Coates did a masterful job of it in his recent Vanity Fair article, which I was only able to read snippets of because I’m not a subscriber.
Another example. During the pandemic, most American liberals supported censoring ‘disinformation’ about COVID from social media platforms. Remember that? More specifically, most pro-vaccine liberals wanted the widely debunked film ‘Plandemic’ removed from YouTube and other places because it was ‘dangerous disinformation.’ In July 2021, the new Biden administration followed suit and accused social media platforms of “killing people” by allowing misinformation to spread online. It then took action against them, flagging posts and pressuring social media companies to take them down. Many did exactly this, and liberals cheered, not caring a whit about the free speech concerns of people on the other side of the aisle who disagreed with them about COVID.
Now we find ourselves on the flip side of that coin. We have a fascist MAGA government in power which, through overt threats, has gotten two financially-conflicted corporations pursuing mergers that require government approval to terminate two prominent, late-night talk show hosts. Why? Because our fascist MAGA government doesn’t like what those hosts have been saying about our fascist MAGA government and its supporters. Jimmy Kimmel, who was just fired by ABC for telling an arguably false joke that accused MAGAs of blaming liberals for Kirk’s murder to protect one of their own, is only the most recent example. Conservatives claim he was fired because he ‘lied’. Even assuming that’s true–which is debatable at best, because we still don’t know enough about the shooter’s motivations and political orientation, and MAGA politicians and personalities like Jesse Watters on Fox News, who still has a job, were blaming Democrats and ‘The Left’ for Kirk’s murder straight out of the gate–since when is lying a fireable offense? Fuck, if this were the First Amendment standard, Biden and Obama would have shut down Fox News for lying about 1000 things a day for the past 15 years, including its hosts’ blatant lies about Dominion voting booths during the 2020 election. That blatant whopper cost Rupert Murdoch $780 billion (yes, that’s billion with a “b”) to settle Dominion’s lawsuit. You don’t pay $780 billion when you told the truth. $780 billion is not a nuisance settlement. It’s a wallet-denter, even for a huge corporation like Fox News.
Liberals certainly aren’t immune from this hypocrisy. The same liberals who were totally fine with censoring COVID ‘disinformation’ a few years ago are now screaming about our fascist MAGA government’s unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment, which was most recently demonstrated by newly-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s public extortion of ABC like some a two-bit Tony Soprano. And conservatives who bitched about the COVID censorship for four years are totally fine with the current censorship and abuse of the First Amendment demonstrated by this President in a dozen different ways since January.
Why? Selective empathy borne of political tribalism.
Here’s my final and most deadly example of selective empathy, and it belongs to my own political tribe, including many of my own friends.
American liberals, including myself, were furious at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a few years ago, and were thrilled that President Biden did everything he could to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s invasion. Likewise, we were horrified at images of helpless Ukrainian civilians being shot in the street and in their homes shortly after the invasion, including a little girl in a pink jacket who I still remember. Many of these innocent victims received prominent, multi-paragraph articles in American mainstream media like NPR and CNN.
Similarly, when Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023, most Americans, including myself, were horrified by Hamas’ mass murder of civilians on that day.
Sidenote: We were upset by the stories of Hamas’ atrocities *that were conveyed to us by American and Israeli media at the time*, including the total lie that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, which took almost a year to debunk. It turns out that many–possibly most–of the Israeli victims on October 7th were killed by Israeli gunships and IDF soldiers pursuant to Israel’s ‘Hannibal Directive’. This includes all those burned out cars we saw from the Nova Music Festival. Hamas didn’t blow up those cars and doesn’t possess the weapons to blow up those cars. IDF helicopters and planes bombed those cars. This is straight from the mouths of IDF soldiers themselves, who, months later, admitted to Israeli media that they were ordered to shoot at escaping Hamas operatives with Israeli hostages to prevent them from escaping back into Gaza and trading for Palestinian hostages who have been languishing in Israeli jails for years. The investigation of who knew what that day, and how many Israelis were killed by the IDF is being stymied by the Israeli regime, who is trying to avoid disclosure of the truth about what it did and failed to do that day, and exactly how many Israelis were killed by Israel itself, rather than Hamas.
After Hamas’ attack, we all supported a strong response by Israel, which had the right to defend itself, and I was totally on board with a decapitation of Hamas’ leadership for its war crimes.
But in the two years since that day, Israel went far beyond a proportionate and justified response to the October 7th attack. In the two years since that day, Israel has killed upwards of 65,000 Palestinians, including nearly 20,000 children. This is likely a severe undercount because Palestinians lack the ability and equipment to pull dead bodies from the rubble of the buildings that Israel has destroyed in its razing of Gaza. Since October 7th, we have also watched Israel impose on Palestinian civilians an intentional military strategy of starvation and destruction of all infrastructure, including hospitals, universities, mosques, and thousands of residential homes. We have seen Israel target and murder over 270 Palestinian journalists who risked their own lives to document their own murder and the murder of their family members. We have watched Israel intentionally target and kill doctors, medical workers, and ambulance drivers, including UN workers and Doctors Without Borders workers who were clearly marked as such. We have watched Israeli citizens block the entry of badly needed food into Gaza with their bodies, with a wink and a nod from their own fascist government. We have watched Israel murder desperately hungry people who were fishing for food in the ocean. We have watched Israel deprive starving babies of baby formula, which it refuses to allow into Gaza for no apparent reason. (Does anyone seriously believe Hamas drinks baby formula?) We have watched Israel force doctors and nurses to leave NICUs under threat of death, later to return to find the dead bodies of premature Palestinian babies rotted blue and yellow in their incubators. We have seen the most horrific and gruesome examples of Israeli depravity, images that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. Two days ago, I saw a video of a young girl no older than five lying on a dirty table, still alive, with her intestines spilling out of the right side of her body. She died shortly thereafter. I’ve seen video images like this for two years, children burned alive and killed in the most horrific ways imaginable.
For two years, we have watched Israel commit a livestreamed genocide in real time, the first in human history. And what do American liberals, those passionate defenders of human rights and equality have to say about this abomination, this American-sponsored genocide? What do they have to say after we have sent Israel $18 billion in American taxpayer money in the past two years alone, and we’re about to send it another $6 billion, to fund this ongoing slaughter of innocent people and ethnic cleansing masquerading as self-defense? What do 98% of my friends have to say about it when I’ve posted about it on Facebook, to my social (and hopefully not professional) detriment?
Absolutely. Fucking. Nothing.
Not only have most American liberals had nothing to say about this holocaust, for two years they actively supported the quashing of free speech and political dissent by pro-Palestinian activists, including Jewish students, on American university campuses under a horseshit defense of ‘antisemitism.’ The vast majority of American liberals have said nothing about this unabashed pissing on the First Amendment, apart from a half-assed muted response that first requires mention of Hamas and October 7th before anything else can be said. Most American liberals who have been screaming about Trump’s fascism didn’t give two shits when foreign pro-Palestinian activists were sent to jail for simply exercising their free speech against Israel’s genocide, including by writing an op-ed in a college newspaper. An op-ed.
So which fascism do you care about, you hypocritical fucks? Only the fascism that directly impacts you? This is a fascism cafeteria now? Grab a burger and leave the broccoli? How convenient.
Fortunately we still have some semblance of a judicial system in this country and these political prisoners were eventually forced to be released by our fascist MAGA government, but it was no thanks to Democrat politicians or 99% of American liberals. It was IN SPITE of them.
American liberals, including most of my Jewish friends, who scream to the rafters whenever Hamas shoots an inaccurate missile into Israel (which is also a war crime) and forces Israeli citizens to run to well-equipped and ubiquitous bomb shelters for safety in case one of those dummy missiles somehow makes it past Israel’s American-supplied Iron Dome and hits something, have had nothing to say as Israel uses the most modern military technology in the world–cutting-edge gunships, unmanned quadcopters, drones, remote bombs, and satellite imagery–to slaughter defenseless Palestinian civilians, including children, in their homes, schools, hospitals, and refugee tents. Unlike their well-protected and well-fed Israeli counterparts, Palestinian civilians not only lack bomb shelters, they don’t have homes, food, drinkable water, or any functioning hospitals left.
In the past two years, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who I’ve heard from in response to one of my social media posts about this genocide. Only two or three of them have a Jewish background. To say that this has been disappointing would be a serious understatement, but it’s the best example of selective empathy I will ever encounter in my life. Americans who are against Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukraine, and who would support the bombing of Israel if it were almost any other country doing this to someone else, continue to support Israel’s genocide, either through outright support, gaslighting about facts, ignoring the historical context of this conflict, or through their deafening silence. Only now are a few of them starting to come around. Now. Two years later.
Why? Selective empathy. Unconscious bias. In my humble opinion, the people who are still on Israel’s side of this genocide, even now, even two years later, suffer from the same mental affliction as Trump’s diehard MAGA supporters. They have cognitive dissonance rot. They are knee-deep in their beliefs about what Israel is and what it represents, and it’s way too late for them to change their minds, even as the world watches and increasingly condemns Israel’s extermination of an entire group of people under the guise of ‘defending itself.’
Let’s dig a little deeper. Why does this selective empathy exist?
I can only speak about the United States and what I’ve seen and read. First, if you are Jewish, Israel is a core part of your identity, especially if you have family members who died during the Holocaust, you likely were raised to view Israel as a shining country on a hill, a critical and necessary response to the Holocaust and a safe homeland for Jewish people who have been persecuted throughout history. This makes total sense, and before this war, I used to view Israel that way myself, even though I’m not Jewish.
In the past two years, I’ve wondered what separates Jewish protestors and vocal opponents of what Israel is doing from those who have remained silent throughout this holocaust, or worse, actively supported it. I’ve listened to American Jews speak about this difference, and this is what some of them have said. At a very young age, they were taught about the Holocaust and its connection to the creation of Israel. They were indoctrinated about the creation of Israel, what it is, what it represents, and why it needs to be protected and defended at any cost. Conversely, the indigenous people whose land was stolen by Zionist paramilitaries at gunpoint and who were displaced into Gaza and the West Bank before, during, and after 1948, are mentioned only in passing and in the most slanted way to minimize their pain, historical grievances, and significance. Instead, this education makes it appear that the creation of Israel was both necessary and justified, a return to Jewish destiny and identity, and the people who opposed it, the 750,000 people whose land and homes were stolen, and the thousands who were killed by Zionist militias when they refused to leave, are the real bad guys. There are major parallels between the treatment of Palestinians during Israel’s creation and our own treatment of Native Americans in the American pursuit of Manifest Destiny during the 1800s.
According to the Jewish people I’ve heard speak about this, this ingrained belief system, indoctrination, and arguable brainwashing about Israel from a very young age make it extremely difficult for them to view Israel objectively later in life. I totally understand this and empathize with it, but plenty of Jewish people in the world have managed to accomplish this, and many of them, including some very prominent people, have been leading moral voices in opposing this holocaust. I have a ton of respect for them because I can imagine the familial and social alienation that they must be dealing with in order to take this position.
Second, since Reagan’s presidency, the American public has been inundated with decades of Israeli, AIPAC, and evangelical influence and propaganda in American mainstream media, where the other side of this conflict, including Palestinians’ right to defend themselves against decades of occupation, calorie rationing, restriction of basic freedoms, and routine mass murder by a well-funded and well-armed Goliath that’s sold to us as some kind of David, is intentionally never presented to the American public. In fact, the Palestinian perspective is actively quashed through censorship and the use of the passive voice in headlines and news articles that rarely, if ever, name the country doing the killing. In western media, Israel’s murder and starvation strategy are always qualified in a way that rationalizes and excuses its depravity.
If any pro-Palestinian interviewee appears on American media, the first thing they’re asked is whether they condemn Hamas and what it did on October 7th. The second thing they’re asked is whether Israel has the right to exist. Conversely, every Israeli personality who appears in American media is never asked whether they condemn Israel’s wanton murder and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since Israel’s formation. They’re never asked whether Palestine has a right to exist. They’re never asked whether killing children is proportionate, justified, or a war crime.
No, no. The Israeli point of view is always taken at face value in the United States. And the history of this conflict began on October 7, 2023. No context. No objectivity. No fairness. I’ll say it again, it’s a different shade of MAGA brainwashing, except in this case, it doesn’t just apply to Fox News and Newsmaxx, it applies to ALL American media across the board. Some of the worst offenders are The New York Times and WaPo. When hundreds of starving Palestinians are murdered each day while seeking food, like some kind of sadistic Hunger Games, the victims are always described en masse, as if they were collective animals in a zoo, not people who had a right to live too, people with dreams and goals in life, people just like you and me, starving people who had to walk ten miles just to risk getting killed or getting a scrap of food for their families. No, The New York Times and WaPo don’t give these people names or identities like they do for Israeli victims. Dead Palestinians are nameless ciphers. Collateral damage.
Go compare western media headlines when Russia does the exact same thing in Ukraine that Israel is doing in Palestine. The pro-Israel bias is so blatant, it would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. The effect of this complicit propaganda by American mainstream media is that it exacerbates selective empathy on the part of the American public and anesthetizes them into rubber-stamping mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide by Israel. None of what Israel is doing to Palestinians would be possible without the United States. And the United States government wouldn’t be supporting Israel’s holocaust without the tacit support of the American public. There’s a reason why our media does what it does regarding this conflict and Israel specifically. It’s basically a decades-long psy-op.
But good luck telling this to most American liberals.
Selective empathy is a human disease, a disease of the unconscious mind. No one is immune from it, including me. I’m absolutely biased about plenty of things, and my empathy, particularly regarding this war, has absolutely become more selective over the past two years. It has become very hard to check myself on this, to remember that even though Palestinian civilians are suffering overwhelmingly and disproportionately, Israeli civilians are suffering too. In many ways, Israeli civilians are being held hostage by a fascist government the same way we are in the United States. In many ways, and due to their own justifiable horror at what happened two years ago, Israeli civilians are as brainwashed by their government as Americans were after 9/11, to the point that they’ll rubber stamp anything, even when it’s inhumane and to their own long-term detriment.
But American liberals who are still supporting this holocaust and not doing the bare minimum of publicly calling for an arms embargo against Israel and recognition of a Palestinian State by the United States have no similar excuse. American liberals who are still silent about this American-sponsored genocide and ethnic cleansing can’t blame 9/11 again because we have the debacle of the Iraq War and governmental overreach in the ensuing 20 years as critical lessons, not to mention all the senseless wars the United States has supported in its history, which American liberals typically opposed. The information about this modern-day genocide is out there. You’re just choosing not to find it, or you found it and don’t care, or you’re too biased to see it for what it is, or you’re too afraid to say something because you’re afraid of the social fallout.
Your empathy is as selective as it comes, and you people smell like fucking goats.
I guess my selective empathy for you makes me a goat too.
BLEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
