Do You Feel The Madness All Around You?

Nothing else better explains why the West is undergoing self-destruction than suicidal empathy.

It’s burdensome living life as a madman, isn’t it, Mr. Starmer? Source

Take a look at this headline. Then look at what’s written in the first sentence of the story:

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If you asked Americans who lies more, I’d imagine most people who proffer an answer would say it’s the Right. What’s actually happening is that it’s a lot easier to catch the Right in a lie, but the Left lies quite a bit, too. These falsehoods are much harder to detect, however, because the Left lies by omission. It leaves out context and critical details which would dramatically change the way a story might be perceived by the public. It works, too.

In the example above, the headline serves to poison the well, using terms like “veteran” and “4 years old” to immediately trigger an emotional response in readers. Though it doesn’t omit the fact that the individual is a criminal, by the time you start reading, you’ve been conditioned to believe the man is a victim, and for liberals, the primary audience of publications like Newsweek, any further context or details aren’t likely to alter initial impressions.

This is how the Regime wages information warfare and shapes public opinion. Again, it works, and they’re not going to stop doing it. At the center of this approach is the concept of empathy: the ability to understand the experiences of others. The people writing these headlines think that if readers’ empathy can be triggered, it’ll translate into greater public support for more liberal policies on this or that issue.

Empathy isn’t a bad thing. People without empathy tend to have anti-social, sociopathic tendencies. Without it, a society cannot function and we’d probably be killing each other a lot more than we already do. The problem is suicidal empathy.

Dr. Jabra Ghneim explains what suicidal empathy is:

At its core, suicidal empathy critiques actions or policies motivated by compassion that, when implemented, harm the very societies enacting them. It describes a phenomenon where empathy becomes so expansive and uncritical that it blinds decisionmakers to potential negative consequences. To visualize the concept, consider this analogy: opening your home to help someone in need, a noble act on its face, but doing so without any regard for the safety or stability of your own household. Such a choice might bring immediate comfort to the person you're helping but at a potential cost to those already dependent on the structure and security of your home.

Nothing else better explains why the West is undergoing self-destruction than suicidal empathy. Nearly everything our regimes are doing, even at the risk of inducing civil war, is done in the name of some greater moral purpose. At the same time, no such reciprocal demands are made of those who are the intended beneficiaries of our empathy. That’s what makes it suicidal.

The more the crisis in the West intensifies, the more the Regime will appeal to our empathetic impulses to get its way. This is emotional blackmail, and it’s powerful. It’s how abusers get their way. I’ve always described the relationship between the Regime and their citizens as abusive, so engaging in emotional blackmail is perfectly in line with the nature of the relationship.

However, the less emotional blackmail works, the more the Regime will engage in physical abuse. This is how the risk of civil war increases. You see it in Britain, which is much further along the timeline than the U.S. is. Since emotional blackmail is failing to appeal to native, mostly White Britons, they’re now resorting to things like using a fictional story to fabricate a mandate for even more oppressive, two-tiered policies which will only lead to a complete fracturing of the country.

Building resistance to emotional blackmail isn’t just about thinking about the issues in a certain way. It’s also about simply being aware of when we are being emotionally blackmailed and to not allow it to influence your judgment.

Suicidal Forgiveness

In the wake of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf’s death at the hands of 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony, much has been made of how quickly the victim’s father not only downplayed the role race played in the killing, but also forgave his son’s killer. I strongly suggest everyone watch and listen to the interviews with the father, Jeff Metcalf, and draw your own conclusions, because not everything reported by your favorite social media accounts is entirely accurate. However, he very clearly does say he’s forgiven his son’s killer, that’s not in dispute.

The father’s comments have met a divisive responsive, with many commentators offering critiques on a theological basis. But I’m not a theological guy. I’m a practical guy, and I’m about to make a practical argument against so easily forgiving transgressors, the way Mr. Metcalf did.

They’ve barely just buried Austin Metcalf. Karmelo Anthony is not only out of jail on bail, at an amount lower than it could’ve been, he insists he did nothing wrong, that he acted in self-defense. So, what’s Austin Metcalf’s father forgiving Anthony for? To so prematurely relieve him of any moral culpability, Mr. Metcalf is effectively apologizing, downright confessing, on behalf of his dead son, despite saying so himself that he was murdered by Anthony.

It’s never easy to judge the actions of the grieving and it’s not my place to be outraged on behalf of others. But that’s just it - our society will respond to events like these depending on how the victims’ families call upon the rest of us to do so. Black victims at the hands of Whites garner more sympathy in large part because Black families, along with the broader Black community, demands society react a certain way, and treats incidents affecting their community as the equivalent of war crimes.

Perhaps it’s not a bad thing that Whites don’t demand society turn itself upside down, inside out, every time one of their own is killed unjustly. But we can’t have a social arrangement where one group, 13 percent of the population at that, can make all sorts of demands of us every time they feel aggrieved. It’s a big part of the reason I’ve grown bolder in endorsing separation as a solution to our problems, but I think it’d take a war before people give the idea a fair due.

Moreover, there’s nothing natural about the way Mr. Metcalf or White families often outright forgive the killers of their loved ones or become preoccupied with public perceptions of the case. Most people’s only concern is to bring the killers to justice, by whatever means are available. If the killer was of the same race, there’s often no publicly-offered forgiveness, nor do they care how the case comes to be perceived in the public arena.

An incident from a few years ago was brought to my attention by someone discussing the Metcalf killing; in August 2020, a 25-year-old Black man shot and murdered a 5-year-old White boy. Though he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, no motive for the killing was ever established.

Still, the boy’s parents took the time to insist that race had nothing to do with the death of their son. Here’s what the boy’s mother said at the time:

Waddell stressed race had nothing to do with it. Cannon was white and Sessoms is black.

“This is not a race issue. This was a, I don’t even know what it was,” she said.

Remember: this was 2020. There was definitely a lot of pressure back then to toe the “Black Lives Matter” line, and the media made sure to inform the public that race had nothing to do with it. But if nobody knows why a White boy was murdered by a Black man, who is anyone to rule out racism as a possible motive?

The same thing is happening now. Jeff Metcalf says that the killing had nothing to do with race. Again, how does he know? He went on to say that nobody who knows what actually happened shouldn’t comment on the case, but guess what? He doesn’t know either. It’s not that Jeff Metcalf knows race had nothing to do with it, it’s that he doesn’t want race to have had anything to do with it. In a sane society, it’d speak well of him, but I don’t think it helps here at all.

Dr. Todd Grande, a consistent source of level-headed takes on even the hottest-button issues of the day, offered his take on the murder of Austin Metcalf:

I don’t disagree with much of what Grande says. However, Grande parrots the line about how there’s no evidence racism had anything to do with the incident. He’s not wrong, but in most racially-charged cases where a Black person was victimized by a White person, there was no evidence racism played a role, either. Nobody ever conclusively established that former police officer Derek Chauvin was motivated by racism as George Floyd died under his knee. Despite being called a racist from the moment he became a household name, nobody proved that George Zimmerman had racially profiled Trayvon Martin (in fact, the media played a big role in pushing this narrative). Despite his victims all being White people, Kyle Rittenhouse was still considered a racist for shooting his assailants in self-defense.

That’s just the way it is, unfortunately. Blacks can kill Whites for just about any reason, except racism, apparently. Meanwhile, Whites can never kill Blacks for any reason, not even self-defense, except for racism. If you don’t believe these are the rules of the game, feel free to say what they really are. I have the receipts; do you?

I’ve gotten off track here, but the point is that when a White person is victimized at the hands of a Black person, society places tremendous pressure on Whites to say the right things, to ensure, above all else, that the national narrative on race is strictly maintained, in hopes of keeping the peace and so the gears of multiracial democracy can keep turning. It’s like Whites are victimized twice: first by the criminal, then by state and society, which obligates them to use their victimization as a reminder of the importance of anti-racism and to regard the deaths of their loved ones as a sacrifice made for the good of society.

The quickness to forgive assailants and murderers serves no purpose but to deepen the demoralization and reinforce the existing social order. Objectively speaking, these families gain nothing from being so quick to forgive, to deny any racial component while not knowing why their loved one had to die. Yet they do it anyway. Why? It’s almost like having your loved one killed by an authoritarian state, but you must still express loyalty to that state.

One more word about the Metcalf case before moving on: though Dr. Grande thinks Anthony will be found guilty of something, if not murder, I think we also need to start considering the fact that Anthony won’t be found guilty at all, at least not for the killing. There are going to be many eyes on this case and the money Anthony has managed to raise ensures he has access to high-quality legal representation. As I’ve said before, there’s a strong chance race will be made a central facet of Anthony’s defense, both inside and outside the courtroom.

Once that happens, denying that the incident had anything to do with race will serve no useful purpose, because to the Black community, this case is 100 percent about race.

By the way, we are already seeing how much Jeff Metcalf’s magnanimity is being reciprocated, which is about as much as you’d expect:

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Remember: one side wants justice, the other want total victory. Which side do you think is going to win?

The Left Discovers Law Enforcement

In San Francisco, crime has taken a nosedive, after changes in leadership takes the city back to enforcing the law:

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It’s a result worth celebrating. Liberals are most happy about the outcome, and I wouldn’t mind partaking in the celebrations alongside them, if they could resist the temptation to take political pot-shots and engage in self-aggrandizement in the process.

Here’s a writer from the left-wing publication Vox:

Notably SF produced a huge drop in crime and increase in city safety just by electing moderate Democrats focused on that, they did not have to resort to the extreme Trumpist measures I'm constantly told are our only choice

Everything about the leftist playbook involves forgetting. In this case, they want you to forget they were the ones who created the crime problem in San Francisco, through decades of “progressive” governance, accelerating in 2020 by succumbing to racial moral panic induced by George Floyd. They created the crime problem, not Trump, not the Right. They went as far as to vote in far-left activists into government, like the since-ousted Chesa Boudin.

Certainly, the Right does favor harder-line measures more than the Left. But the premise is still the same: enforce the law, put away criminals. This is what the Left was failing to do. Now that they discover the answer is so simple and so effective, they want everyone to believe they invented the very concept of law enforcement.

It’s hard to believe, but we can still imagine a future where the Left decides that illegal immigration is actually bad and needs to be stopped, thereby taking measures to bring it under control the next time they’re in national power. If they’re successful in doing so, we can just hear them saying, “See? We didn’t need to resort to Trumpian measures to get the border under control?”

When that happens, all we need to ask, “Why so reasonable now? Why did you create this problem in the first place? Why are you pretending like you figured out the solution all on your own, when your entire platform this whole time was that there was nothing to be done about it for this or that reason, mostly due to ‘disparate impact?’”

Never confuse those who create problems, then pat themselves on the back for fixing it, as people fit for civilized living. When it’s expedient to do so, they’ll create those same problems again, and the cycle will repeat itself. You can count on it.

Safety Isn’t An Entitlement

This tweet showed up on my X feed:

Every woman you know has taken a longer route.
Has doubled back on herself.
Has pretended to dawdle by a shop window.
Has held her keys in her hand.
Has made a fake phone call.
Has rounded a corner and run.
Every woman you know has walked home scared.
Every woman you know.

I get it. The world is dangerous for women. I’m the first to say so. It doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous for men, but women are uniquely at risk in ways men simply aren’t. That’s just an objective fact.

That said, and I’ve made note of this once or twice before, women don’t do enough to keep themselves safe, either. I agree that at some point, your efforts to stay safe exceed the point of diminishing returns. But I still don’t think most women get that far, either.

I attend a lot of personal safety courses and women are seldom present. Young women, particularly. What women are present tend to be older and accompanied by a male, suggesting that men have a big role to play in getting women to take personal safety with a more accountable mindset, if they can humble themselves to take advice from “the patriarchy.”

To be clear, by “personal safety,” I don’t mean “self-defense,” not strictly. I do see women in martial arts and shooting ranges. However, martial arts and guns don’t keep you out of trouble - they’re meant get you out of a dangerous, life-threatening situation. If the idea is to avoid getting into such a lethal encounter in the first place, training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and firing live rounds downrange isn’t going to teach you that. There’s no substitute for learning skills like avoidance, situational awareness, and verbal judo.

Of course, personal safety is a lifestyle, and it means people have to be willing to adjust their existing lifestyles to the reality of the world. If someone doesn’t want to do that, then there’s nothing to learn, which means they’re not going to attend personal safety courses.

Related:

The fact that blacks are commit around 50% of the murders is enough to make you feel some type of way about black people generally.

And yet, about 90% of murderers are men and you want to holler “men are not a monolith”?

Who takes on the murderers? Men or women? Maybe the answer isn’t to make men feel bad for being more dangerous than women, but instead to leverage that danger against the bad men out there. That, too, is apparently bridge too far, if cases like Daniel Penny are any indication. But safety isn’t an entitlement. If it were, I’m sure we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It takes men willing to do violence to keep us safe.

The fact is, men are more attuned to the dangers other men pose because violence is the province of males. It’s often women who need to be taught just how dangerous the world can really be. I’d be happy to teach anyone, as I think we’re all better off when we are all capable of keeping ourselves out of harm’s way.

If they’re willing to listen, of course.

High-Trust Societies Must Be Earned

I’m not sure why this account posted this video, as nothing really happened. But it still managed to spark a conversation worth having.

It’s a woman with her child, claiming to be a next-door neighbor, asking to borrow sugar. When nobody answers, she proceeds to further knock on the door, going as far as to say that she knows somebody’s inside:

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Here’s an example of one the many dissenting reactions to this tweet:

one thing ive noticed with very bougie suburban white people is how awkward and completely opposed they are to any collective norms, even past ones that american culture had.

this is an incredibly normal thing to do in the rest of the world

As you might’ve guessed, that’s a leftist account talking. A leftist talking about past norms American culture had is rich, but we’ll look past that.

First, this isn’t necessarily normal throughout the rest of the world. America is a low-trust society, but much of the world is even more so. There’s a tendency upon leftists, as well as among some rightists, to see America as a place where social interactions are dysfunctional, and I’ll be the first to say the same. This doesn’t mean that social interactions are perfectly benign in the rest of the world, however. A lot of this thinking stems from self-loathing, not reality.

Second, there’s no indication the woman and her child seen in the video are actually neighbors. All we have is her word to go on. This is why I’m not sure why this video was even posted; there’s not much to go on. I don’t like it when people try to build narratives out of such innocuous-on-the-surface videos, especially when void of context. But we have no idea if this woman and her child really are neighbors, or if they even live in the neighborhood. It’s not up to anyone else to say the resident should’ve opened the door to her or not.

From a personal safety perspective, if you don’t know who’s at your door, don’t open it. It’s just common sense. Again, we don’t live in a high-trust society, most of us don’t know our neighbors well, and we need live in accordance with reality. Someone you know quite well is always saying that, no?

The thing is, you can’t fake a high-trust society. It gets ruthlessly exploited if you try living by high-trust rules in a low-trust society. Social predators get their way by taking advantage of people’s inclination to not assume the worst of others. Just as important, high-trust societies all have one thing in common: strong culture. A strong culture self-policies and doesn’t need to constantly appeal to political authorities to maintain order. There are unwritten rules that everyone follows without grumbling about it like we do here.

Bottom line: don’t open doors to anyone you’re not comfortable opening the door to, and don’t let anyone judge you for it. Furthermore, never allow the people whose entire belief system undermines trust in a society to tell you what you want or don’t in a world of their own making. We live in a low-trust society because we are multicultural and we don’t like anyone other than a government official telling us how to live our lives.

We are living in the world they created. You’d think they’d be pleased with the outcome.

It Costs You Nothing. Except Your Integrity.

As we draw closer to civil war, more demands will be made of all of us. To conform, to pick a side, to show loyalty. The fact is, picking a side is unavoidable: if we don’t pick one, one will be picked for us. Don’t get mad at me; I don’t make the rules.

Rod Dreher

tells a story featured in his new documentary series adapted from his book Live Not By Lies [bold mine]:

At the end of the new LNBL episode — written, directed, and narrated by Isaiah Smallman — we see archival footage of young Kamila and Vaclav Benda debating in the 1980s whether or not to bend to their neighbors’ pressure to fly the Czech flag on the national holiday celebrating the communist takeover. It’s stunningly powerful, because you watch this mother and father trying to weigh the cost of displaying the banner — that is, to bow down to what they regarded as a lie — against the price of standing in truth. They chose truth, but you can see the fear in their faces. This was not an abstract threat to that family. All they had to do to guarantee the goodwill of the neighbors in their apartment building was to hang the flag from their windowsill. Nobody cared if they really believed it or not.

If the bolded passage sounds familiar, it should: we’ve been hearing something similar in our own societies. Call people by their preferred pronouns, it’s the decent f**king thing to do.

The other day, I saw this tweet, in reference to transgenderism:

This will forever be my most controversial essay, but the root message shouldn't be. Treat your fellow human with courtesy and respect. That’s it.

Get real - is that really it? Anyone who wasn’t born today knows that’s not the case. If you read the essay referenced in the tweet, the author makes a compelling case, backed by science, that gender is fluid. Read it if you wish, but it’s all nonsense, at the end of the day.

Not all things are useful or worthwhile in practice. Humans have operated for thousands of years off the gender binary and we are still here. In fact, it’s in a time of declining birthrates and civilizational breakdown that the male-female distinction has unraveled. There’s something to consider.

To the point, this all goes well beyond courtesy and respect. The trans movement is about getting society to validate their idea of what gender is and how it works. Not a single person was confused about what a male and female was until powerful institutions and people told us the old rules no longer applied. If it’s all just about courtesy and respect, if nobody’s being asked to do something beyond the pale, then why are people’s livelihoods under attack for fake crimes like “misgendering?”

It costs us nothing to be courteous and respectful to others. It does cost us something to validate the reality of others because we’ve been coerced and emotionally blackmailed into doing so. It costs us our integrity. I started this essay talking about suicidal empathy; it’s dangerous not only because it exposes us to violence at the hands of those predisposed to exploit the kindness of others, but it also compromises us morally. If we accept lies - yes, they’re lies - because it’s expedient to do so, where do you draw the line?

The sobering fact is, most of us will bend the knee. Sorry, that’s just what history shows. Fear is a powerful motivator. We all like to believe that there’s a bright red line that we know we are never going to allow to be crossed, but it doesn’t work that way. The fact is, you can only be compromised once. When they finally make an unspeakable demand of you, all they need to do is point out how you’ve acquiesced all the other times and say, “What’s so different about this time?” If you resist further, are you prepared to back it up, even when they threaten to take it all from you?

And that’s just it - when you sacrifice your integrity, you sacrifice everything. When forced to sacrifice everything, you succumb to madness. Go back to the story relayed by Rod Dreher: nobody cared if anyone really believed as long as they just did it. Remember that the next time someone tries to get you to engage in performative nonsense by saying that it costs you nothing, or asks why you care so much: if it’s really all that meaningless, why are they trying so hard to begin with?

If you’re not convinced, listen to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer struggle to answer a very simple question we all know the answer to. All of us who haven’t lost our minds, anyway:

A man without integrity is a madman.

I Feel The Madness

Let’s chat. What are your thoughts on suicidal empathy and the role it’s playing in the West’s destruction? What do you think of Austin Metcalf’s father prematurely forgiving his son’s killer? What are your thoughts on anything else discussed here?

Talk about it in the comments below.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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