Suicidal Empathy, a book with a jacket summary so absolutely unhinged that I honestly struggle to understand how it ever got published, is #11 on the New York Times bestseller list. I’d like to think that it’s primarily being read by people with morbid curiosity, but the state of the country at the moment doesn’t give me much hope of that. There are simply too many people (or too loud a small group of people? it’s hard to tell) who, for reasons I can only attribute to their own insecurity, honestly do believe that empathy is a flaw.

Rather, they believe that empathy is a flaw when it is directed toward anyone they disagree with. If called on their immense stores of hatred and barely bridled (often unbridled) violence, they become insistent on empathy. How dare anyone call them racist or misogynistic or bigoted, they’re good people. They have good families and they work hard and they just want their efforts to be judged fairly. All appeals to the empathy they insist is so dangerous.