Conservatives Declare War on Empathy

Understanding others' perspectives and caring about their welfare? Why would we?

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When Elon Musk recently told Joe Rogan that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” no one could have been surprised given what we know about Musk. Nevertheless, out of context this is an awfully weird thing to say. Why exactly would it be a weakness to have a society in which people are able to understand the perspective of others and see the world through their eyes? In context, however, it makes slightly more sense, though it’s no less repugnant: What Musk is arguing against isn’t empathy but sympathy, caring about other people’s welfare and not wanting bad things to happen to them.

This is not just an odd thing that an exceedingly odd man said on a podcast. It is being elevated to a pillar of the new conservative synthesis, one that unites the disparate parts of the movement led by Musk and Donald Trump and will continue driving that movement forward.

Here’s the longer version of Musk’s quote:

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization which is the empathy response. I think empathy is good, but you need to think it through, and not just be programmed like a robot.”

“They” here is Democrats and the left, who are cynically “exploiting” people’s compassion for others in order to propel their sinister project to destroy civilization. Despite what Musk says, feeling empathy is the opposite of being “programmed like a robot.” Robots do not feel emotions, nor can they appreciate others’ perspectives. Yet Musk believes that if we “think it through,” i.e. arrive at the most rational course of action, we will discard our foolish interest in other human beings.

Musk uses the language of computer programming (using “exploit” as a noun, meaning a piece of code that takes advantage of a vulnerability in a system), but if you’re looking for someone to dress this idea up in some theological vestments, JD Vance is happy to oblige. In justifying the administration’s immigration policies, he recently told Fox News that “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” He later explained that his argument derives from the Catholic notion of “ordo amoris.” But what he was actually arguing is not that we naturally feel the most intense love and compassion for those closest to us, which is inarguable, but that as a matter of policy we should have essentially no compassion for those outside of our circle, wherever we choose to draw it.

In case you didn’t know, Vance, like many of the most intense and disturbing right-wing weirdos in our national life, is an adult convert to Catholicism:

Blessed are the meek? Nah, screw ‘em.

These ideas echo what is apparently a growing movement among evangelical Christians to explicitly reject empathy, because caring about the suffering of others might distract you from the more urgent task of accumulating power.

Perhaps this was the inevitable end point of the evangelical embrace of Trump. At first, they had to reconcile their gleeful enthusiasm for him with the values they professed to hold, including sexual restraint, respect for the covenant of marriage, care for the downtrodden, and so on. So they came up with a variety of justifications to square that circle, many of which centered on the idea that though Trump might be a walking collection of character flaws, God had nevertheless chosen him to lead (my friend Sarah Posner wrote an excellent book on this topic).

But now it seems that some of them have decided that rather than tell themselves a story in which Trump may be a sinner but his goals are those of Jesus, they’ll just alter their value system to align with his; forced to choose between Trump and their lord and savior, they choose Trump. For instance, until recently, evangelicals looked at a program like PEPFAR, started by the pious George W. Bush to prevent and treat AIDS in Africa, as Christian values in action: For a relatively modest expenditure, the U.S. government has saved millions of lives, especially those of children. Thanks to Trump and Musk, the program is all but dead, and precious few Christians are objecting.

Again, this is less about empathy than sympathy, but we did recently see one perfect example of the lack of empathy in action. “Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month,” said Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. “My mother-in-law, who’s 94, she wouldn’t call and complain.” Only a “fraudster” would complain.

On his financial disclosures, Lutnick, who was the head of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, lists over 800 LLCs and other entities which he either owns or has a financial interest in; his net worth is estimated at a couple billion dollars. So yes, I’m guessing that if his mother-in-law doesn’t get her Social Security check next month, she won’t be too put out by it. But a government study from a decade ago found that Social Security made up over 50% of income for more than half of people over 65, and over 90% of income for a quarter of those over 65. Lutnick literally cannot imagine why missing a Social Security check might be a big deal.

Rejecting empathy brings the right together

I’ve written many times over the last ten years that one of the keys to Donald Trump’s political success was that he gave people who had felt constrained by evolving societal mores permission to be their worst selves. Join me, he said, and like me you can be sexist and racist and as rude as you like to people you hate.

Some of his supporters embraced this valorization of obnoxiousness instantly, and it quickly became clear that America’s biggest assholes were rallying around him; had someone asked you in early 2016, “Guess who Bobby Knight just endorsed?” you wouldn’t have to wonder. After he was elected, schools saw dramatic increases in Trump-themed bullying; as the Washington Post reported in 2020, “Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.”

But many on the right would claim that they didn’t like Trump’s nastiness; they were just on board with the “policies.” It was never persuasive, but at least they stuck to the story. Then the covid pandemic happened, and out of that trauma many conservatives decided that anything that asks us to consider other people is an unconscionable encroachment on their freedom. Today, they are willing to just come out and say that not caring about others is what makes them who they are.

Any political coalition must find ideas and goals that unite its various components, and explicitly rejecting both empathy and sympathy may be what holds the right together. Trumpists don’t want to feel sympathy, because Trump doesn’t and caring about other people (other than your own kind) is for wimps. Traditional business conservatives like Lutnick still have well-worn copies of Atlas Shrugged on their shelves; their wealth is proof of their virtue, and if the pathetic plebs wanted to join them in the Hamptons all they’d need to is give those bootstraps a good yank. To Musk and the tech bros, the seething mass of humanity are literally not human, nonplayer characters who exist only as background elements in the game they are playing. You couldn’t empathize with them any more than you could empathize with a thumbtack.

The reasons vary, but the destination is the same. If nothing else, this new proud anti-empathy is at least honest. You don’t have to ask how many people your policies will hurt if you don’t really care what the answer is.