Fixing the System - Page 19

Exit Police & Empathy - A Discussion

Fixing the System Page 19

This is it for O’Reilly, Kimani, and Davis. I wasn’t sure if this would be the last page, The next page will be the last page! Stay tuned!

Empathy

Elon Musk recently said that empathy is a weakness. The opposite is actually true. We are a social species and empathy has enabled us to survive as well as thrive. It is people who lack empathy or suppress it that have brought about the worst of humanity.

The 1%, the billionaire class, do not need empathy in the way that the 99% need empathy. The value that we get from empathy they derive from wealth. They know people will care for them because they will pay for that care, even if it is hollow.

There was a graphic being passed around social media a few years back about the myth of meritocracy and how a lot of CEOs got to their position due to family connections (ie: legacy grants to Ivy League college that bypassed educational excellence). Having generational wealth helps get investment in startup companies. Being male means due to the prove-it-again bias you can fail multiple times and people will still bet on you. Elon Musk was able to make huge investments into technology due to his family’s wealth which included stock in an emerald mine.

Remember during the pandemic how we heralded the essential workers who risked their lives to heal, feed, and teach us? In the US it’s caretakers who often make the lowest salaries. Women, especially women of color, are expected to take these roles as a legacy of slavery and misogyny (see my related post about SUFFS).

During the pandemic the US had a wake-up call about the racism that still exists here with the murder of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmed Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and George Floyd. Our combined empathy for the injustice to these individuals and to black folks as a group led to social justice work that upset the status quo and as the pandemic wound down groups like Moms for Liberty, Q-Anon, and the Proud Boys started to work to undue our efforts. When Trump lost the election the Heritage Foundation got started on Project 2025.

Tech billionaires saw their employees start to protest working conditions and organize. In order to fight back against the employees there were mass layoffs. Google was so inhumane (unempathetic) that rather than having HR announce the layoffs in meetings, employees discovered they were unemployed by seeing their badges wouldn’t admit them.

Lack of empathy leads to dehumanization. If we don’t see Palestinians as human than we can bomb them. If Jews are seen as subhuman they can be killed in mass. If immigrants are seen as a threat to our country than we can put them in private prisons and gitmo. If trans people are seen as not real than we can be fired, blocked from entry, and abused in prison (see below for details).

Federal Court Rules In Favor of Forcibly Detransitioning Transgender Inmates In Florida

Lack of empathy is what leads to ableism, slavery, aristocracy, meritocracy, racism, sexism, transphobia, zenophobia, Islamaphobia, and homophobia. Empathy is what allows us to be our best selves. Understanding others is the best way to create win-win solutions. Empathy led to the civil rights movement, Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, the good samaritan, forgiveness in Masjid al Nabawi, Mother Theresa, and the resistance movements of World War II.

Musk has made it clear he doesn’t believe in empathy, which means he doesn’t care about anyone except himself. He has no intention of helping the working class American. As the 1% get richer the rest of us become closer to slaves and serfs.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. - Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents