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When I talk about empathy, people sometimes think I mean kindness/support/emotional labor. No. If you try on those shoes and they don’t fit/hurt/set the world on fire, take them off. And if that person didn’t ask to try yours on too? GTFO. Nothing more is required of you.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Dems/liberals/progressives need to stop trying to empathize and get dirty. I think it’s more that we need to stop trying to empathize with people who have no concept of what that word it means and no intention of trying it themselves.
The people whose job it is to teach/encourage empathy (parents, teachers, therapists) should keep doing it. But I’m done - & I know a lot of us are - being an empathy vending machine for people who are angry or sad and only want to dump that on others. Get help. But not from me.
We cannot fix people. We cannot make anyone change. We can find common ground - yes, through empathy - but empathy cannot make that common ground magically appear. So many of these issues are not about politics, they’re about emotional trauma. No more unpaid therapy.
Alllll of this to say - let’s not be gaslit or guilted into spending MORE hours coddling the feelings of people who could not care less about us. Ignore the claims of hypocrisy/intolerance/whatever. Let’s not let the word empathy lose its meaning.
Trump and many of his supporters put us through hell. Now they’ll ask us to be gentle. I’m not saying be vengeful. But if you can’t muster empathy right now, that seems pretty valid to me 
