ELON MUSK: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. And I think empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot.
JOE ROGAN: Understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.
ELON MUSK: Yes. Like it’s weaponized. Empathy is the issue. Yeah, weaponized empathy.
The Pain that Does Not Reach Us (Yet)
As a direct result of DOGE’s dismantlement of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), tens of thousands of people around the world are dying, or will die shortly, from starvation, malaria, tuberculosis, Ebola and other preventable things.
Yet even Ben Rhodes, Democratic consultant and former Obama speechwriter said this recently:
“You’ve seen Democrats protesting outside of U.S.A.I.D., when it was shuttered. That shouldn’t happen …. They should protest at a Veterans Affairs center in somebody’s congressional district out in the country. They should be protesting where the services that are being removed hit people’s lives.”
(from the New York Times: “Obama’s Not Going to Save Democrats, but This Might”)
The point being, of course, that the pain we don’t see, the pain we can ignore completely, is not going to motivate us to do anything. USAID’s abrupt demolishment made a seismic impact on untold masses of people in far flung corners of the world and will have gigantic ripple impacts in years to come. But the American public, by and large, does not feel it (at least not yet) in any tangible way.
So – let’s face it – Trump gets away with that. (Marco Rubio claims that USAID’s lifesaving humanitarian programs continue under the auspices of his State Department, but all the reporting says that that’s horseshit.)
I Just Have to Own This
In this news clip from CNN last week, Musk says “Basically almost no one has gotten fired [from federal agencies, as a result of DOGE cuts].”
Okay, so we know that, like Trump, Musk lies as easily as he breathes. (According to the New York Times, at least 49,000 people so far have been suspended or fired, with more to come.)
And then, with respect to Social Security (which he has referred to as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” and which DOGE is targeting for office closures and workforce reductions), Musk goes on to say, “What we’re doing will help with better benefits. Legitimate people, as a result of the work of DOGE will receive more social security, not less.”
And for a fraction of a second, I thought: Gosh, maybe that means my own checks will get a little bigger!
I was aware, of course, that a lot of people were going through hell now trying to get their rightful hard-earned benefits; that phone waiting times have doubled when people call Social Security; and that the Social Security website has been crashing, but my first reflexive thought was: “Legitimate beneficiary — that’s me!”
It gets worse. I read the other day that Trump is ordering an end to non-electronic Social Security payments – that is, he wants to stop the paper checks that about 456,000 people receive in the mail. It’s unclear how disruptive this will be for that unfortunate demographic – that is, whether they’ll somehow get paid in a timely fashion some other way or not (I doubt it; the Social Security Administration is running far less efficiently now due to the reduction in personnel.) Still, the number of people who receive “hard copy” Social Security checks represent less than 1% of all Social Security recipients so, if they are (so to speak) inconvenienced, it’s a crapshoot as to whether there will be any public outcry, or any cost to Trump politically because, again, most people won’t be feeling the pain.
My own first instinctive reaction to that news story was, Well, thank God I get electronic payments.
And my next thought was: Wow. They’re so good at divide-and-conquer, these guys are.
Indeed. They are so good at evoking that primal egocentric “At least it’s not me” reaction.
And if you step back, it is all so chillingly cynical.
Will cynical self-interest win the soul of America? (If so, we’re done for.)
The Arrests
When they arrest and imprison and deport foreign students or legal immigrants with no due process, and for specious reasons, does this also evoke the same sort of response in millions of people, the implicit attitude of “Well, at least that’s not me. These people are not like me. I don’t feel connected to them. This is not a threat to me personally.”
I wouldn’t be surprised.
As for me, the arrests and disappearances have been frightening. My mom was a Holocaust survivor, so I know in my bones what this sort of shit portends.
A lot of us have been waiting for, hoping for, the Democrats to unite as one and ROAR about some unconstitutional outrage that’s being perpetrated by this administration. This seems as at least as critical as any of them.
Hence I wrote the following open letter to Senator Chuck Schumer. If you like it, you can copy it and adapt for yourself. (For example, if you’re not Jewish, take out the part where it says “I’m Jewish like you.”)
My Open Letter to Senator Schumer (feel free to copy and/or share)
Dear Senator Schumer,
As you know, last week, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student attending Tufts University, was abruptly seized and detained (and do we even know where?) from right off a public street by ICE agents, physically forced into an unmarked car and whisked away. Her “crime” apparently was having co-authored an opinion piece in the school newspaper that may have been construed as “anti-Israel.”
Similarly, as you know, Mahmoud Khalil has been arrested and detained in an unknown location for leading a pro-Gazan protest at Columbia University. He was not given a trial either.
And then there were the young Venezuelan men who were seized in the middle of the night and deported, again with no due process, to a hellish El Salvadoran prison on the basis of their tattoos. The Trump administration alleges they were gang members but there was no evidence of this.
I’m sure you see the pattern here. This is what the Nazis did. They began picking people off just like this, with no due process, while others simply stood by.
My question, Senator, particularly as a Jewish person (that is, you’re Jewish, and so am I) is:
Why aren’t you – and all of the Democrats – screaming bloody murder about this?
Your personal silence about this up until now, and the muted response of the Democratic caucus, has been deafening and devastating.
Please – you must understand – if this can be allowed to pass without an uproar so long as only a small number of targeted individuals (including those of questionable or even antagonistic political views to your own) are the unjust victims of this type of “law enforcement” it’s a very slippery slope before the next such “security threat” arrested is YOU, the Senate opposition leader who would stand in the way of Trump’s agenda.
Do you think I’m exaggerating? If so, that worries me too, very very much.
NOW is the time to go absolutely ballistic about these unjust, brutal arrests and detentions, before we “get used to them” for God’s sake. Nip it in the bud, Senator.
And actually, since two of the prominent recent arrestees have been Palestinian or Palestine-affiliated, this could even help the Democrats recover some of the disaffected Arab-American vote that we lost in the last election. (I mention this because I understand that, in your position, you are required to think strategically, and I respect this.) In any event, CLEARLY, every moment we fail to make common cause where it is natural and obvious to do so, our democracy erodes away a bit more.
But all strategic and utilitarian considerations aside, I know you to be a decent and honorable man. I have followed your career since 1988, when you unseated Alfonse D’Amato in a relatively close New York senate race, and you haven’t looked back since. Today, you OWN that seat, and I will tell you that, as an American Jew, you have made me proud over the years.
So what is restraining you now, I wonder? What fear, political or personal, has gained a controlling influence over your heart at this moment?
Please, Senator Schumer, I know you know it’s the right thing to do. Please speak up NOW forcefully, and bring your caucus to speak forcefully for the fundamental Constitutional rights guaranteed to ANYONE legally on our soil.
Sincerely,
Marc Polonsky
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