Amanda Marcotte, Salon’s ‘senior writer’ occupying the Emily Litella chair, never misses an opportunity to be 180 degrees from rational. And nothing quite gets her to set her own hair on fire than an opportunity to wax hostile on The Other as misogynist.

Much was made in the media, for good reason, of billionaire Elon Musk’s crusade against empathy, an emotion he describes as “suicidal” and the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Musk is an atheist, but in this attitude, he is increasingly joined by the Christian right, as Julia Carrie Wong documented at the Guardian this week. A growing chorus of evangelical leaders has taken to calling empathy “sinful,” “toxic,” and “satanic.” Right-wing Catholics are going there, too, with Vice President JD Vance rejecting Jesus’s exhortations to love your neighbor and welcome the stranger, drawing a rebuke from the Pope.

Why it took Maoling Amanda over a month to lift her bonnet and notice how many other American Red Guard were screaming for Elon’s blood, is anyone’s guess. But it didn’t have a thing to do with researching the quote to find out its authenticity. Nosiree, Amanda just needed the time to gather up her Christophobia bona fides to add some SQUIRREL to her screed based on a misquote.

There is nothing innocent in Amanda’s latest exercise in throwing up a wall of bovine-excremental text. Let’s roll tape, shall we, to see how accurate her charge is about Elon’s crusade against empathy.

Note that Amanda fails even to give the setting on where Elon talked about suicidal empathy. It was on the Joe Rogan Experience video/podcast. Rogan’s format is a three-hour, unscripted conversation with guest(s). This allows for maximum exposure of the guest’s authenticity (or not) as they improv their way through free-association topics. Rather than the predigested, massaged by focus groups, rehearsed to the n-th degree pablum that passes for interviews in legacy media, Rogan’s show is raw, unfiltered, and as a consequence, allows guests a long-format chance to explore topics.

Rogan’s interview with Musk is no different, clocking in at approximately 3 hours 11 minutes. The Left’s inauthentic freak-out over a handful of words clipped out, doesn’t stand the light of context. I’ve started this a few minutes before the infamous “suicidal” remarks. Let it run to the 1:17:30 mark were both Joe and Elon talk about the weaponization of empathy that is used to control people.

Sounds quite different than the Maoling’s howl that Elon (and Christians and MAGAs and non-Leftists everywhere) are going against the only thing that makes civilization bearable.

If this sounds strangely familiar at the macro-culture level, it’s because most adults have had the misfortune of running into it at the micro-personal level at one time or another. Weaponized empathy is a favored tool of emotional manipulators.

Take domestic abuse. It doesn’t always involve fists. It can take the form of silence, of one spouse finally asking “Just tell me what’s wrong” answered with “If you really loved me, I wouldn’t have to tell you.” An abuser uses the empathy of his/her victim — whether it’s about their impoverish upbringing, over-bearing job/boss, or ‘Why do I do all the emotional labor in this relationship!’ — not as a way of communicating with their partner but as a way to control them.

That is what Amanda is really upset about

Empathy is a basic skill people need to get along with other people.

No, no it’s not. I don’t owe “empathy” to the stranger in the grocery checkout one line over. Or to the stranger playing ball with their child in the park while I read. What I owe these people, and all the strangers I encounter daily, is basic civility. Politeness, manners, honesty, and basic courtesy in daily interactions.

And Amanda’s elevation of the emotion “empathy” to cultural requirement is pretty self-serving because nowhere in her years of rending her blouse over non-leftists has she ever shown one splintered shard of empathy to our ‘lived experience.’ Amanda actually makes the case for domestic abusers, emotional manipulators everywhere. She has tried her darndest to be one of the successful ones all this time.

Chutzpah is the person who murders their parents then cries for empathy from a jury because they’re now an orphan.

We see you Mandy. We always have.

featured image original graphic by Darleen Click