Empathy Fatigue

Yes, we are exhausted, but we cannot let our exhaustion rob us of our humanity.

I took time off from writing the last couple weeks to enjoy leisure time with friends and family, feed my soul and, hopefully, refill my over-tapped empathy well. While I had my back turned, a tragedy unfolded in deep-red Texas that killed dozens, including over two dozen little girls at a sleepaway camp. The response on the right has, predictably, ranged from disingenuous to dumb and is not worth exploring in detail. Time and again, today’s GOP has shown that the only part of their base they care about are multimillionaires and billionaires and if no one else has successfully convinced voters of this, I sure as hell won’t. The response from some on the left, aka my people, has shown that I’m not the only one who needed to replenish my empathy well.

So, let me declare this out of the gate: little girls did not deserve to die, terrified in the dark, no matter how their parents voted in November. I strive for consistency in my point of view even when sometimes that may be challenging. For example, regardless of one’s opinion on how the State of Israel has conducted itself since 1948, no Israeli civilian deserved to be targeted for assault, kidnap or murder on 10/7. Similarly, regardless of the atrocities of 10/7, no Palestinian civilian deserved to be targeted for assault, murder or starvation in the 21 months since 10/7. The second and third statements lose all validity if I reject the first.

(The Guadalupe River in Gruene, TX, a town I’ve had the pleasure to visit in happier times. My heart goes out to everyone in Texas Hill Country reeling from the catastrophic flooding over the holiday weekend that has claimed over 80 lives as of when I type this. Photo credit: One of the finest periodicals in these ‘United’ States, Texas Monthly)

But I will acknowledge that it’s easier for me to make the second and third statements because I am both ethnically and geographically removed from the day-to-day reality of the almost 80-year Israel-Palestine conflict. What makes it harder for me, and I can only assume others like me, to embrace the first statement is that we’re all trapped in the hell that 77 million fellow Americans chose to inflict on us all (with an honorable mention to the almost 90 million Americans who couldn’t be bothered to vote at all last November). By their own admission, total strangers gleefully cast votes in November to own me, while I voted based on what I thought would be best for the country.

Among those who could be bothered to vote, we were narrowly outnumbered and here we all are. By here, I mean in the country that is voluntarily ceding its status as a global leader of scientific research, which means that tomorrow we will not be a global leader in the new industries that will grow out of today’s research. Here is where we are doubling down on fossil fuels while the incidence of catastrophic weather events powered by a warming planet is already posing an existential threat to the insurance industry, as China emerges unchallenged as the chief supplier of renewable energy resources and technology to the rest of the (sane) world.

Here is where we are kneecapping our public health infrastructure while promoting fringe ‘wellness’ snake oil in its place, leaving us less prepared for the next pandemic than we were for the last one. Here is where we are taking food out of the mouths of poor children and depriving sick and disabled people of healthcare to provide tax breaks to multimillionaires and billionaires but simultaneously managing to fund a police state at a level that exceeds most standing armies on the planet. And the rule of law? There is no such thing at present. The ICE budget is so massive that anyone who thinks they plan to stop with undocumented immigrants is smoking good shit. And these are just a few highlights!

Trapped as we all are, here, it can be infuriating to see someone who just a few months ago was crowing about ‘owning the libs’ now whining that a friend or family member just got deported or that their disabled child will lose healthcare benefits. After all, it was all there in black and white in the Project 2025 manifesto. We tried to warn them. We begged them to read it. They didn’t, or maybe some of them did, but thought that the pain would be inflicted on someone else. In that case, they knowingly cast a vote to hurt someone else, and they are fine with it if that person isn’t someone they care about.

Given that fact pattern, I don’t fault someone if their kneejerk reaction is, “You made your bed, now lie in it.” In my darker moments I’ve done it. In my darkest moments I’ve found myself thinking, “Maybe they’ll vote themselves into extinction and one massive impediment to real progress in this country will be removed.” And then I think, “What the fuck is wrong with you, Dorothy? You’re being what you claim to despise.”

Schadenfreude is a coping skill many of us have been falling back on as the situation here grows seemingly more dystopian with each passing day. But much like the cliché ‘What’s pornography? You’ll know it when you see it’, there’s a line at which schadenfreude tips into callousness. Responding to human beings being literally washed away forever with ‘this is what you voted for’ pole vaults over that line.

I may not be able to stop this country from sliding fully into dictatorship. I may not be able to stop the regime from embarking on an ethnic cleansing project. I may not be able to stop the immense human suffering and preventable deaths that will result. What I can stop is my own descent into insensitivity and inhumanity, because I do not see how my becoming as hateful as the people who got us into this mess is going to help get us out of it.

When donating for disaster relief, I try to rely on local and community-based organizations to point me in the right direction. The Communities Foundation for Texas has compiled this helpful list of Texas Flood Relief Resources.