Is the left’s “suicidal empathy” destroying America?
In his latest book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, Dr. Gad Saad, the evolutionary psychologist and scholar affiliated with the University of Mississippi, may have identified the precise malady afflicting the American left. It may explain the underlying cause of progressive policies that seem antithetical to traditional values and common sense.
Saad, who launched the book at Ole Miss to wide acclaim, pulls no punches. As he has stated in television interviews and public appearances, “We care more about the rights of the felon than we care about the victims.” He further explains that empathy is great but “when it goes hyperactive, it becomes fatal.” Saad calls this phenomenon “suicidal empathy”, and he is correct. It is empathy gone amok. It is the orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, and it is destroying the fabric of the nation.
Suicidal empathy is not ordinary compassion. It is not racism, xenophobia or any of the other isms. It is the pathological prioritization of empathy over reason, self-preservation, and the common good. It elevates victimhood to virtue and treats punishment as cruel. It conditions people to display empathy for those who harm society while ignoring the victims of that harm. Saad argues that this misdirected altruism leads societies to implement policies that endanger their own survival and security. The left has turned empathy into a political weapon, and the results are plain to see.
This suicidal empathy is inseparable from left-wing virtue signaling. The modern progressives – radical types — do not merely feel sorry for the downtrodden. They must broadcast that sorrow loudly and publicly to prove moral superiority. Virtue signaling demands that one side with the illegal immigrant, or the rioter or the common criminal, no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens. To question such policies is to be labeled heartless. Thus, empathy becomes performative rather than practical. It is not about helping people rise above their circumstances. It is about feeling good about oneself while society crumbles.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the left’s excessive tolerance of crime and antisocial behavior, especially when minorities are involved. Suicidal empathy dictates that criminals must be understood rather than punished. Bail reform, reduced sentences, and defunded police flow directly from this mindset.
The great irony is that suicidal empathy is mutually destructive to all demographic groups – including those to which the empathy is extended. No group suffers more from leniency and lack of enforcement of minority crime than the innocent members of the minority communities themselves. Rioters, looters and the drug cartellians are most active in the minority communities.
The left wrings its hands over “over-incarceration” while violent crime is iconic in America’s cities across the nation. Saad’s insight explains why repeat offenders are released back onto the streets only to victimize again. The focus is not on protecting the innocent but on avoiding any appearance of unfairness toward the perpetrator. We saw and example of that when the judge apologized to the would be presidential assassin Cole Allen for the conditions of his imprisonment. Or when a Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan aided and abetted the attempted effort by a person in her court avoid the execution of an ICE warrant.
When the perpetrator belongs to a favored minority group, the empathy meter goes into overdrive. Facts about crime statistics – or previous criminal record — become irrelevant. The race card is played where none exists, and society pays the price in blood and treasure.
The same suicidal empathy fuels the crisis of illegal immigration. The left cannot bring itself to secure the border because that would require turning away people it has decided to view as victims. Never mind that uncontrolled entry strains public resources, depresses wages for American workers, and allows criminals and terrorists to slip through. Empathy for the migrant overrides empathy for the American citizen whose community is transformed without consent. Yet the left persists, driven by the need to signal compassion while the nation’s sovereignty erodes. There is no better example of suicidal empathy that the creations of sanctuary venues designed solely to put people beyond the reach of the law.
Excess welfare programs follow the same pattern. Suicidal empathy insists that government must provide endless support without demanding personal responsibility or accountability. The result is generational dependency, broken families, and communities trapped in cycles of poverty – and massive fraud.
The left refuses to acknowledge that such policies often harm the very people they claim to help. Instead, any criticism is dismissed as racism or lack of compassion. Playing the race card becomes the default response to any debate about fiscal sanity or cultural norms.
One can view suicidal empathy as a variation of Stockholm Syndrome on a societal scale. Just as hostages begin to sympathize with their captors, large segments of the left have come to empathize with those who do the people and the nation harm. They identify more with the transgressor than with the law-abiding majority. This is not rational policymaking. It is emotional self-flagellation dressed up as moral progress.
Suicidal empathy acts as a virus that infects the DNA of the left. It spreads through academia, media, and politics, replicating itself in every institution it touches. It weakens the immune system of the culture until the host can no longer defend itself. Crime rises. Borders dissolve. Welfare rolls expand. Racial grievance replaces individual merit. All the while, the left pats itself on the back for its kindness even as the country suffers.
Dr. Saad has done the nation a service by naming and defining this affliction so clearly. If America is to survive, it must reject this self-destructive impulse. It must reclaim the balance between compassion and common sense. Without that correction, the left’s suicidal empathy will continue its deadly work until there is nothing left to save.
So, there ‘tis.
If you REALLY want to understand what is destroying America, read this:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/what-would-be-truly-bullish-actually-fixing-whats-broken
Larry, I think you (and the right wing author you quote) are fixated on a few judges who allow people out of jail when they should remain in jail and ignore the far more serious problems that your fellow conservatives have brought to our country. Of course I am talking about the do nothing elected officials who offer their ‘thought and prayers’ every time there is a mass shooting and want to do nothing about the massive gun problem that we have in this country. That is one of the biggest problems that we have in this country-bigger on a daily basis than the people released from jail, most of whom deserve release, but occasionally a mistake is made. Not everyone in this country should own a gun, no civilian in this country should have an assault rifle and ‘ghost guns’ need to be done away with. But will you hear any of the fools who agree with your demented diatribes agree with me on that? Doubtful…. But those are the issues that ‘lefties’ (as you refer to me as) focus on….
Mike f as in fag you are saying that I shouldn’t own guns? Well guess what asshole. We will NEVER surrender our rights just because a jerk off son of a bitch like you wants us to. So fuck you and the rest of you gun grabbing commie pricks. Come and take them asshole. I’m calling on the people in the country to say HELL NO!!!!
Andrew Gutterman … Excellent article. It pretty much reflects my view. I have long criticized the growing disparity between executive compensation and the working class. I first wrote about it more than40 years ago — and it was not nearly as severe as it is today. I have no problem with a person who invents and owns making a billion dollars. I complaint is against the exorbitant compensation packages for hired executives. In terms of healthcare, it is partly the third party payer problem. Essentially,, patients are merely the transfer point for money to flow from the government (taxpayers) to the medical institutions. Just like student loans use the students to transfer money from government to the universities. In both cases, costs soar from avarice and lack of supervision and cost controls. And there are other problems in healthcare. For me the only viable solution is to drive down costs. Unfortunately, most government policy is directed at finding more money to cover increasing costs. That does not solve the problem.
Andrew, read your piece and while I am not sure it’s germane to Larry’s comments, it seems spot on to me.
The health market is broken and we broke it. The pricing model alone is broken beyond repair starting with a retail price that would make a used car dealer blush and an antiques dealer chagrinned. And yet that’s the price for the indigent who can’t pay, but we serve them anyway with the rest of us covering their bet via insurance payments. The pricing is so bad, and so untouchable by consumers that we have to hire guido’s for price protection is this mafia-like scheme. We can it insurance. So they charge ridiculous retail that only the poor must pay, but they can’t so we cover via insurance, and then insurance lowers our price by beating up on criminal retail prices. I mean the whole thing is a criminal enterprise.
To fix it, the best we could do is use taxpayer dollars to buy insurance for some while setting a baseline for fair play. We call it ObamaCare. Supposedly, ObamaCare could make our health data transparent across doctors for a single consumer database but it failed in that task so pretty hard for us to track what we need, what was done, so difficult for us to change doctors without having a file drawer of info in our back pocket. How many of us even know our own vaccine records from age 5 for example?
About a decade ago, I came to the conclusion that Sanders is right, universal healthcare via a medicare-like system. After being on a great corporate plan, I saw the advantages of Medicare even over that and feel it’s a good use of taxpayer dollars to make it universal, and then pay for it based on earnings, means-tested. My goal; no hard-working citizen should go bankrupt just because they got sick.
Frank,
I’m just tired of Larry’s endless bashing of the left as an explanation of what ills us. The reality is that it’s the 1% vs. the rest of us, just like it has been that way for the last 6000 years. What Larry and his ilk never seem to understand is that it’s the left that always tries to balance out that never ending battle between the 1% and and the rest of us. The right always tries to increase what the 1% own and control. Trump is doing that right now, in spades.
I often chide folks on PBP for not having a critical eye. When you see a story without evidence, facts, statistics, but instead relies on urban myths, feelings, opinions, and emotions, from a snake oil salesman, look deeper. Have a critical eye to the facts. Otherwise, you fall prey to: “first you make people believe they have a problem, and then you sell them the solution. That’s how advertising works. Every snake oil salesman knows that.” Oliver Markus Malloy. The problem with “snake oil” quotes: statements promoting worthless or fraudulent products as miracle cures is that they exploit vulnerability for profit, often replacing evidence-based solutions with dangerous misinformation. These claims rely on manipulative, hyperbolic language (like iconic, antithetical, orgiastic, etc.) to deceive consumers, creating a false sense of hope that delays legitimate approaches while wasting money. Snake oil marketing targets people in need or pain, selling “hope” rather than efficacy. They always have something tangible, like a book, to sell.
“Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please! Come in close where everyone can see! I got a tale to tell, it isn’t gonna cost a dime! (And if you believe that, we’re gonna get along just fine.)” Stephen King
“Is the left’s “suicidal empathy” destroying America?” Why are so many of Larry’s prognostications prefaced with a question? He seems to always know the answer, so why pose it as a question?
“may have identified the precise malady afflicting the American left.” That’s right, like making up the fictional disease TDS, Larry now offers up the made-up disease “suicidal empathy” which does not even exist in the medical world. No scientific or medical evidence is presented; who needs that? Now Larry’s got his second major malady that confirms his long-held bias against Democrats: what luck?
“It may explain the underlying cause of progressive policies that seem antithetical to traditional values and common sense.” We are half the country. Does not that mean we own some of our national, traditional values? Some of our shared national “common sense?” “orgiastic misfiring of one of our most noble virtues, and it is destroying the fabric of the nation.” Orgiastic? Misfiring? Fabric? Too much empathy will destroy self-preservation, survival, and security. I ask, then why are we still here?
“while violent crime is iconic in America’s cities across the nation.” Iconic? Really? How about some reality? According to the Council of Criminal Justice, and focusing on US cities, some post pandemic numbers: Compared to 2019:
• Homicides: 25% lower than 2019 in studied cities.
• Robbery: Down 36%.
• Carjacking: Dropped 29%.
• Aggravated Assault: Fell 6%.
• Sexual Assault: Decreased 4%.
Recent key 2025 Findings (Compared to 2024):
• Motor Vehicle Theft: Dropped 27%.
• Residential Burglaries: Fell 17%.
• Shoplifting: Decreased 10%.
Long-Term Context: Overall violent crime rates in the U.S. have generally trended downward since a peak in the early 1990s. The 2025 data shows a significant normalization, with homicide rates finally falling below the 2020-2021 peak levels.
Recent data: “Violent crime fell sharply across the largest U.S. cities in early 2026, extending a nationwide decline that began after the pandemic-era crime spike. Why it matters: Data from 67 major U.S. law enforcement agencies show violent crime fell across major categories during the first quarter compared with the same period in 2025.
• The declines show up across every major region, suggesting a systemic, nationwide trend.
• The quarterly reports collected by the Major Cities Chiefs Association have been a good measure of trends that are reflected in the annual FBI crime data released in the fall.” Axios.
BUSTED, ironically. Orgiastically.
Larry avoids facts, instead ruled by urban myths and outright hoopla with made-up diseases and maladies. In the past, he has discounted or dismissed real diseases like covid, measles, and sexual abuse. He claims we are soft on crime as he votes for a Felon to be his King and demands that all rape babies been born. Now he kneels at the feet of his bigger, better, great explainer; a Lebanese Jewish Canadian “affiliated with the University of Mississippi…” He laps it up like a pig at the trough.
This guy is a Canadian marketing professor at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University. He IS a smart guy pedigreed from McGill University for a mathematics and computer science BS, an MBA in marketing, master’s in management, and a doctorate in marketing from Cornell. Hey, I have an MBA in marketing too after I bailed from finishing my finance MBA upon the arrival of another child pretty much made the choice of Wall Street as a bridge too far. For me. At that time. Family first.
But none of my, nor his, degrees grant him expertise to create medical and physiological diseases without a single quantitative assessment. He held the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption for a decade until that did not pay. Now that’s an academia word salad. He has visiting professorships in numerous US colleges like his current at Ole Miss. For three years he was an associate editor for a peer-reviewed psychology magazine. He did a blog for Psychology Today for a decade. Saad has researched how hormones affect and are affected by consumer behavior, such as how conspicuous consumption affects testosterone levels, how testosterone levels affect risk-taking, and how hormones in the menstrual cycle affect buying decisions. Getting a woody in the checkout line. Gad Saad once claimed that he analyzed Islamic canonical texts (Qur’an and Hadith) and said that the “hatred of Jews (9.3%) is higher in them than in Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf'”. He got a huge bump from Elon Musk, who, like Larry picked up on the term; the WSJ even called it a public bromance. His theories are often linked to The Great Replacement Theory that Larry probably thinks is reality too. It basically boils down to white supremacy, again. Pope Francis asks for us to have more empathy for immigrants, not less. Is the Pope suicidal?
This is quack science to support the right’s culture war in a shallow, urban myth manner often offering to fix problems that don’t even exist except in perception. Who is this Lebanese Jewish Canadian pitching woo to Americans as an expert in their wokeism? Dr. Gad Saad has been a vocal proponent of classical liberal values, free speech, etc. for his entire life. However, starting in the 2010’s, commensurate with the Tea Party’s rise, he became a critic of “wokeism,” with public-facing, conservative-aligned views becoming increasingly prominent in the mid-2010s, you know, around 2016. Observations suggest that around 2014-2015, Dr. Saad gained prominence for his outspoken, uncompromising stance on freedom of speech and opposition to what he perceived as irrationality in academia. In 2016, his appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast, “The Frontiers of Political Correctness,” marked a significant moment in his public profile.
From 2020 on, his anti-woke” focus was cemented by the release of his book The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense focusing on topics like anti-immigration, the dangers of ideological “pathogens,” and cultural criticism. We were parasitic, but now have turned suicidal. Hyperinflate much? He is viewed as a right-wing provocateur in the Canadian and international media landscape. Why? Because that’s where the money is. You guys are so easy.
“Gad Saad’s “suicidal empathy” thesis is the kind of shallow culture-war framing that sounds clever in a tweet but falls apart when you look at it seriously. Larry does not look at it seriously.
Larry thinks that the left’s emphasis on empathy, especially toward marginalized groups, refugees, or people fleeing violence has become excessive, overriding our ability to make rational, hard-nosed decisions to treat them with cruel and unusual punishments like third-world prison death camps or dropped off in countries they don’t speak the language or languish in a Texas camp overrun with disease. About 90% of all heard cases are tossed out as they are arresting anything brown. This empathy excess, he argues, is weakening the West and leading to its collapse. Oh the horror of it all for the white race….because after all, that’ the culture he’s talking about.
Saad does not argue that empathy is inherently bad. He argues that too much empathy—empathy that allegedly overrides risk assessment and policy judgment—becomes “suicidal.” That’s a deadly sin in his mind.
If the claim is true, it should be possible to show a clear causal chain from empathy through specific policies to measurable societal collapse. Larry never establishes that relationship. Matter of fact, he offers no scientific quantitative analysis at all. Nada. None. Instead, he relies on intuition, anecdote, and moral alarm rather than evidence, again.
This sounds familiar in Larry’s maga world where: it’s a familiar trope: “too much” kindness equals weakness. Sorry, Larry, reality is far more complex.
Saad and Larry do not offer neutral warnings, policy tradeoffs or compromises. They advance the culture-war narrative where empathy now a cultural weakness demanding war against “woke nonsense” to regain the realism lost to empathy.
As I have oft said: Larry picks a fight and then blames the other guy for starting it. He’s also a rubber/glue deep thinker. In my opinion, in my reading of his words. In this case, woke, empathy, dei, are weaknesses leading to cultural extinction. Only by extinguishing this woke, empathy, and die nonsense with meanness will overcome this reality. It’s culture war I tell you, maga must win, must vanquish, must destroy, take no prisoners, or the maga culture will be destroyed. It’ them against the bad guys; there is no us. It’s not persuasion, it’s prosecution, persecution, or worse. It’s a win-lose world for domination and maga must win, win, win. Half the country wants a kinder, gentler, culture and they must be vanquished. We are wrong, wrong, wrong and we must be dealt with. Harshly. Meanly. After all, empathy is cultural suicide, woke is discrimination, antifascism is fascism, and black lives really don’t matter. IF Larry had a cultural nuclear bomb, he would not hesitate to drop it. He seems to like war.
What’s the truth: The truth is it’s actually fear that drives the Larrys. Fear they are losing their way of life. Fear that they are being overrun by others, foreign and domestic. Fear that they are being preyed upon by violent criminals. Fear of difference, equality, and inclusion. Fear of what their future holds. Fear that manifests scapegoats rationalizing that the fear is not their fault but the fault of those who are not them. Just get rid of the immigrant, the Muslims, the liberals, and life will be Mayberry again. Keep the Jews, maga loves the Jews now. Even if Jews be bad, Jews be good for maga now because Jews, as a country, have little empathy today.
I ask: is the real danger from the immigrant Muslim, immigrant Latino, the citizen socialist, or fascist billionaires leveraging AI to replace workers while whining about overseas factories and goods. Musk, Theil, Murdoch, Sterling, Ratcliffe, Trump, and Ackman types with ties from Germany to South Africa lead the culture war for white supremacy and I don’t see any immigrant or Muslim with anywhere near those powers waging culture wars. Just maga fear driven by these fine folks of financial favor. How many are on the plane to China right now, along with Trump’s deal-making son? Do you think they are lobbying for you? Or lobbying against you?
Sidebar: I resonate with Larry’s response to Gutterman. More or less given his examples. I think health care is broken top to bottom. First, it’s not a normal capitalistic market where the laws of supply and demand rule. When you are sick, you do not shop, you go to the nearest available service. The pricing model is not capitalism and if it were used cars, they would be in jail. They charge a retail price often 50% greater than net price. No one pays it, we pay guido-the-insurance-thug and medicare to set our insured prices. Then we let them charge the indigent retail which we cover with our insurance premiums. That’s just whack. We force people to buy domestic drugs, make cheaper foreign drugs illegal. This is not a normal market and we should quit treating it as if it was.
Larry’s college loan whine falls short I think and can be extended to so many programs across the board. The issue is we start programs, some are great ideas, but then we do not monitor and correct for downstream issues as long-term unintended outcomes crop up. As Larry said, we loaned our way to higher tuitions as colleges used monies for increasing costs like fancy dorms, single rooms, etc. and then passed the cost on via higher tuitions as we just gave more loans at higher values to cover. We made that market with the loan program. Same thing happens with food subsides, oil company kickbacks, etc. We never look back and then, over time, things go South for all sorts of reasons, the main one being the markets adapt; the markets make decisions to survive and thrive that may be counter to the program’s original intent.
Larry’ lament is why these Musk attacks have some relevance in that, at some point, even a chainsaw is better than doing nothing when nothing seems to be the rule of the day, for many days past. I would prefer a scalpel to excise waste, fraud, and missed objectives. But in the case of healthcare and college loans, I think the time to use a scalpel has passed and a chainsaw approach is long overdue. It’s just that Trump never has a follow-on act to replace what he cuts down.
Frank Danger … Yet another loooong rant filled with petty and inaccurate personal insults and disinformation. Your obsessive criticisms are always in the form personal attacks — not to the issues. If you would improve your readding skills … or your honesty … you will note that the empathy in my commentary and Saad’s book is the misplaced empathy toward the criminal class … not people who genuinely suffer. I can call you a liar because you have provided the evidence over a long time. I will leave it to the shrinks to figure out what motivates your obsession. And for what? You writings have no impact on me — other than amusement and an occasional laugh — and no impact on the world. It is all a game you play in your head for your own satisfaction. The crazy part is that you seem you believe that your writings have importance. LOL
“Frank Danger … Yet another loooong rant filled with petty and inaccurate personal insults and disinformation. Your obsessive criticisms are always in the form personal attacks — not to the issues. If you would improve your readding skills … or your honesty … you will note that the empathy in my commentary and Saad’s book is the misplaced empathy toward the criminal class … not people who genuinely suffer. I can call you a liar because you have provided the evidence over a long time.
Your piece is just under 1,000 words, mine is just over 1,000 words. Hmm.
“misplaced empathy toward the criminal class,” a word used 4 times out of 1,000 words. He also condemn: “The modern progressives – radical types — do not merely feel sorry for the downtrodden.” Are the downtrodden criminals now?
“Virtue signaling demands that one side with the illegal immigrant, or the rioter or the common criminal..” One out of three ain’t good. The undocumented are misdemeanors, not felons, so sure, empathy for traffic tickets. Protestors can be just folks gone a little frisky at the Capitol and then pardoned since patriots, not criminals, at least according to your leader.
“Excess welfare programs follow the same pattern.” Is that because Larry feels people on welfare are criminals? Does he portend to end welfare to fix suicidal empathy?
“Just as hostages begin to sympathize with their captors, large segments of the left have come to empathize with those who do the people and the nation harm.” Seems Larry is broadening the definition of criminal to the great mage gray area of “national harm” no doubt by the likes of Comey, Pelosi, Obama, you get where his drift will lead.
The bottom line is whatever Larry is trying to prove, he has not. “If the claim (of suicidal empathy) is true, it should be possible to show a clear causal chain from empathy through specific policies to measurable societal collapse. Larry never establishes that relationship. Matter of fact, he offers no scientific quantitative analysis at all. Nada. None. Instead, he relies on intuition, anecdote, and moral alarm rather than evidence, again.”
Larry offers no quantitative casual relationship to prove his theory, or Saad’s. That’s the big takeaway here; the emperor has no clothes, the theory has no quantitative analysis to support it. NONE. There’s no there, there, just a bunch of anecdotes and tropes like illegals are dangerous, welfare corrupts, liberals are soft on crime, blah de blah de blah. Citizens are STATISTICALLY more liable for crime than immigrants. SNAP welfare benefit trafficking at 1%; when you add fraud, usually by white guys in power, you get 10%. Since 2025, Trump has let more criminals loose than all the liberal judges across the land for the same period. Hey, it took five minutes to look that up to refute Larry; Larry has not entered one statistic for his theory.
My research includes conclusions from other experts. Saad became a maga conservative around the time of Trump, was a liberal before that and, like I said, you guys are easy to fool and you pay well. I have suggested a critical eye when folks like Larry bring you anecdotes and tell you they are analysis, much less quantitative analysis.
And then he whines about personal insults; I don’t see it and he, again, does not prove it. Just vents, whines, and point fingers. No facts again. Not one example lest he looks more foolish than now.
I don’t get it; I take time, I research, I put my thoughts to words, and because he don’t likey, he thinks it’s useless. He calls me a liar, can’t prove it, he says I insult, but no examples, pretty weak tea except for his seemingly over—knotted knickers. He demeans my writing when no one much has seemed to read his new book that it looks like printed himself and I don’t ding him for that apparent misread of the reader’s demand. Now it’s Amazon priced at $5.64, 77% marked down from $24.99 —- wait, next they will pay you to read it. It’s rated 5,200+ for racism and discrimination books and has a best seller number 2,386,606. I think he’s looking a gift Horist in the mouth when I do all this work to raise all this interest and controversy in his weak tea tomes. Instead he’s dinging my comments like there’s a taste in his mouth, but it’s no taste at all. Because he can’t prove the worth of his comments, rendering them feckless fodder.
I spell my name D A N G E R and I aliterate too much, I protest.
But you are full of dunger
IMO, the real suicide of civilizations is historically more likely come from greed, avarice, arrogance, corruption, racism, and a society betraying its own stated values through compliance and silence, and not from an excess of empathy and compassion. Only the Larrys of the world say “kindness kills.”
Rome didn’t fall because it was too kind. It collapsed under exploitation, overexpansion, and elite rot. Germany did not fall because it was woke. It feel because it attempted to own it all.
Our existential threats today come from climate breakdown, pollution, widening inequality, and endless wars, all systemic failures, not because some care too much. Larry amplifies statistically marginal threats while he renders systemic violence invisible. The lesbian housewife is a brutal terrorist attempted cop killer; the system acted in self-defense. The nurse shot in the back was a gun packing terrorist, the system protected us. The sailors wiped from the planet were killer drug runners and when unarmed, begging for help, we blow em out of the water like real men; that’s not curtailing kindness, that’s cruelty.
Larry shows Saad’s thesis resting on cherry-picked anecdotes highlighting grooming gangs, isolated attacks, and some splashy crimes by immigrants, not a statistical assessment of the situation or definition of his new, made-up, not peer-sanctioned disease. Larry in accepting this also ignores the concept of scale. And scale you must have if you are to bring down an entire culture.
The Larry’s of this world will tell you his focus is on dangerous criminals; note that’s what they said about illegal aliens and then they disappeared those not dangerous whose only crime was the misdemeanor of jumping the border. As he describes his “criminal class,” he already adds in the downtrodden, those protesting who riot (like the 1/6 supposed patriots?), the undocumented with their only crime a misdemeanor, and he even includes welfare recipients. His real tell on “criminals” is his summary of “those who do the people and the nation harm.” He already broadens the definition of criminal to those who do harm to the people and the nation —- that’s incredibly vague and open to wide interpretation. That sounds like something I would expect a Nazi to spew. Not that I think Larry is a Nazi, but I think these things have a tendency to grow, to expand, in their attempt to not survive, but thrive.
I worked in an industry that through deregulation faced massive downsizing for almost two decades. In the beginning, great packages, compassion, and care. In the end the guards came to their cubicle and walked them out on the spot, no package. The system had gained maximum efficiency and effectiveness and the effect on the individual was cruelty. I stood up for my 22-year veteran employee and got her her two weeks —– it most certainly hurt my career as “they” made me pay. IMO, that’s how our culture falls. It falls when we acquiesce to the kind of cruelty that Larry does not call for, but will be the result of his theories. If we listen. If we act.
Deaths from Islamic terrorism in the US represent a fraction of one percent of homicides. Far-right domestic terrorism kills more. Mass shootings by native-born Americans tower over immigrant attacks. Immigrant crime is unambiguous: large-scale studies across both the U.S. and Europe show immigrants commit violent crime at lower rates than native-born populations. This isn’t cherry-picking.
How about: 45,000 Americans die yearly without healthcare access because healthcare is rationed by ability to pay. Wage theft by employers exceeds all other property crimes combined. Preventable workplace deaths from unenforced safety violations, environmental contamination cancer clusters near industrial sites, the opioid epidemic, fueled by pharmaceutical companies; all this shit is invisible because our system hides it as “unfortunate outcomes” of a free, working, capitalistic, economy. A Muslim knifes a college girl hits page one; 100 women with miscarriages, birth defects, does not. Massive deaths at the Love Canals of America barely hit the news. We attack the sensational while we ignore our systemic crimes as “the way it is.” We see a mask as a threat to our culture while covid is just the flu and should be treated such.
The trans grooming gang becomes a civilizational threat; the insurance company denying cancer treatment to boost quarterly earnings is just business. The anecdotes aren’t wrong , they’re misleading because they’re decontextualized. The context is wrong.
Lastly, Saad and the Larrys needs you to hate. “Suicidal empathy” depends on dehumanization. We cull out those different, the powerless, easy targets like: immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, blacks, brown, liberals, are all seen as inherently threatening. If we let them go unchecked, we are bringing the wolf into the chicken coop. Old trick of demagoguery: create “us” and “them.” Blame them, then shame the people calling for unity, understanding, and compassion as weak, naïve, or even pathological. It’s a disease after all. And they probably have TDS too. Once we make cruelty the answer, next we normalize it. We get cages at the border, ICE raids on working-class families, bombs on civilian protestors. We shave, shackle, and hobble our captives in funny-colored jumpsuits as we perp walk them on video for effect. We shoot those in our way and don’t even investigate the shootings. We put military in our neighborhoods because of imagined dangers.
The actual death spiral we should be worried about is turning away from Jesus and Christianity and towards cruelty to our neighbors. That is weakness, that is not strength.
Frank Danger … There you go again … proving you have problems comprehending or are just lying. I have indicate the difference between empathy — or kindness, as you put it — for people who deserve it and those who do not deserve it — such as the criminal class. Yet you persist in making your argument against your own misstatement. I think you know better. Your straw man argument is untrue. So, you are either hopelessly ignorant or a liar. Or both.
Larry, once again, you say a lot while proving nothing. I used your own words to show how you said criminals and then extended that definition to the downtrodden, undocumented for a misdemeanor, welfare recipients, rioting protesters like the pardoned 1/6ers, and some bs about national harm. You support it with anecdotes not statistics as you often do. Your own words are what you are now calling hopelessly ignorant, a lie, or both. In that we agree that you and Saad are ignorant liars in this unproven theory without any quantitative statistical evidence. Trope science.
It’s a made up disease by demagogues.
Dunger is lying again And rooting against America
Roger; why do you folks continue to piss into the wind? You’re all wet until you actually have the balls to prove a lie that was told. As well as rooting against America, your new taunt created by the drunk Hegseth to cover his ass on the Iran War of Choice. Prove it asshole or STFU. Patriots talk, chickenshit fuckfaces balk. I am betting you be a balker, not a talker.
My goodness how you people whine.
Dunger we read your posts and draw our own conclusions. You would have America fall forever to get Trump.
Odd Roger: please don’t admit reading my posts; it depresses Larry.
And how, pray tell, would I have America fall?
Now, read some PBP stories, have a critical eye, and draw your own conclusions. That’s what I attempt. And yes. my opinions are liberal on the social issues but actually conservative on the financials.
In re-reading, this story, can you not see that Larry is pushing a fake disease, an illusion, a fake theory that is only supported by anecdotes and myths, and not scientific evidence.
IOW, where’s the causal relationship evidence that proves this bullshit.
And the name is Danger, show some class. Otherwise. Kma.
Larry, One size does not fit all.
John T. … I totally agree. To be very clear, I do not apply my criticisms to Democrat voters. My criticisms are directed at specific Democrat policies and leaders — those who create the policies and the culture. I have a great respect for the American people on all sides. I have family and friends who are Democrats … and we get along fine. I have also been critical of the politics of hate on all sides. I do believe that conservative policies are better for the nation than radical left-wing policies … although the GOP also has fringe folks I condemn — Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon an others. On the other hand, the most vehement critics on PBP have no objectivity, I have challenged them to give me five things Trump has done that they like — and its cricket. In the past, i have written commentaries praising things Clinton and Obama did as presidents. But those who are blinded by hatred — folks like Frank Danger and Mike f — never see or absorb that. Like the vast majority of the American people, I look at issues and political leaders based on what they say or do — and not by the label. I do not hate anyone… and I do not stereotype. What I write is based on my conservative beliefs — and not always one one side or the other. In recent commentaries, i have strongly criticized Trump on Ukraine, his personality, his naming things, etc. I have criticized the indictment of Comey, I have written favorably of Senator Fetterman.
John T. … I totally agree. To be very clear, I do not apply my criticisms to Democrat voters. My criticisms are directed at specific Democrat policies and leaders — those who create the policies and the culture. I have a great respect for the American people on all sides. I have family and friends who are Democrats … and we get along fine. I have also been critical of the politics of hate on all sides. I do believe that conservative policies are better for the nation than radical left-wing policies … although the GOP also has fringe folks I condemn — Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon an others. On the other hand, the most vehement critics on PBP have no objectivity, I have challenged them to give me five things Trump has done that they like — and its cricket. In the past, i have written commentaries praising things Clinton and Obama did as presidents. But those who are blinded by hatred — folks like Frank Danger and Mike f — never see or absorb that. Like the vast majority of the American people, I look at issues and political leaders based on what they say or do — and not by the label. I do not hate anyone… and I do not stereotype. What I write is based on my conservative beliefs — and not always one one side or the other. In recent commentaries, i have strongly criticized Trump on Ukraine, his personality, his naming things, etc. I have criticized the indictment of Comey, I have written favorably of Senator Fetterman.