Florida Republican Representative Kat Cammack was widely criticized after opening up to reporter Tara Palmeri about having trouble accessing abortion for an ectopic pregnancy in Florida after she helped pass a six-week abortion ban in the state.
Cammack told the Wall Street Journal that she faced delays in receiving treatment for a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy shortly after Florida’s six-week abortion ban took effect in May 2025.
Cammack blamed those delays not on the law itself but on what she described as misleading messaging from abortion-rights advocates that had made healthcare workers fearful of legal repercussions, telling the Journal:
“It was absolute fearmongering at its worst. There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion.'"
Another great example of why people who show no capacity for empathy should be shunned from society until they change. She cries about her own abortion, but how many women have already died before she decided to shed a tear for herself?
Shunning people is by definition not an empathetic action, so your plan to increase the average empathy of society falls apart pretty much immediately. Ironically, building empathy requires the opposite of shunning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Empathy is part of the social contract, and when someone violates that social contract they are no longer protected by it. Empathy for the unempathetic is exactly the same as tolerating the intolerant. It leads to the death of the very principle we are trying to espouse.
Beat me to it. Good work
A Knights Tale meme? Awesome.
Lmao, did you make that? I love that movie
Found it randomly and saved it to use when appropriate.
If you don’t make people realize they are stupid and shitty, they often remain shitty (even if you literally tell them). Shunning sometimes works, and if it doesn’t affect them, then their children are less likely to behave the same way. Empathy works if all parties are open to change, which unfortunately isn’t a guarantee.
The paradox of tolerance is surprisingly easy to solve.
“Make the logic sound with one weird exception trick” ?
It’s a core part of the logic. Not some exception. The logic doesn’t work without it. If to be tolerant you must tolerate intolerance. Then there is no such thing as tolerance. Just apathy.
We do not have to coddle the intolerant, the violent, the liars and thieves. They are breaking the social contract but expecting to be protected by it still. They deserve neither succor or shelter from it.
No one is trying to make these people feel empathy. The time to be taught that was childhood by loving, kind, emotionally available parents. That ship has long sailed. At this point we have to aim for shame and embarrassment if there is any hope to make those that are ok with these fucked up policies have an ounce of self reflection that might make them realize these shitty decisions affect them too. If they are going to be selfish cunts, we can at least educate them so they aren’t dumb selfish cunts.
It’s kind of impossible to have empathy for someone who doesn’t have empathy. Once you try to put yourself in their shoes, that’s you being empathetic and, as such, failing to put yourself in their shoes. It’s like trying to “win” The Game, the act of trying to win causes you to lose.
Shunning, however, is absolutely an empathetic act when done to someone who society has deemed incompatible (which is very few people all told, most just need a hug), especially when considering all the other varied and violent methods humankind has developed for dealing with these sorts of issues over the millenia. Not only is shunning vastly more empathetic than torture, rape, dismemberment, etc., it’s also more empathetic to society as a whole to have that person removed.
Personally disagree. Empathy doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing, it can also mean understanding why the other person is thinking like that, while still disagreeing with them.
Being clear, I agree that shunning is the correct path, but it’s not because “you can’t have empathy for people who lack it”, it’s exactly because you understand that if you don’t shun them, they’re never going to change. The utopic end goal is that people understand why they’re being shunned and start rethinking their choices. Of course, if they don’t and they want to keep being shunned that’s still a positive for society, but we should still hope for them to change. It’s sort of like the (stated, unfortunately not factual) purpose of prison.
Yeah, I was referring to people who literally are incapable of empathy, the people you’re talking about just need to learn to exercise it. That’s what I meant by the parenthetical in my comment about how most people just need a hug.
I… don’t know how I missed that parentheses, sorry if I basically reiterated what you already said lol
In any case though, I still don’t believe in the existence of people physically incapable of empathy (well, outside of some mentally ill ones who lack more than just empathy), it’s just that some people are in a position where they’re never gonna realistically need to learn it in their entire lives.
No worries, you definitely added another perspective! But yeah, those mentally ill ones are the ones I’m talking about. Like the president of the United States, I simply can’t put myself in a place where I can truly understand his motives or what causes him to be the way that he is. The more I try, the less I want to. And this isn’t to say all, or even most, mentally ill people should just be locked up or completely forced from society, but there does reach for a point for a very select few where rehabilitation and societal reintegration are simply impossible, and the most empathetic thing that can be done for everyone involved is to stop trying.
Eh, in all honesty I think Trump isn’t that far off from the mindset of most corrupt politicians around the world, he’s just more blatant, less smart and has WAY more power. If you try putting yourself in the mindset of “I benefit from doing this and I have a HUGE cult of people that like that I’m doing this”, it makes sense.
The only reason I think rehabilitation is not viable for him (besides, as I said, him being in a position where it’s impossible to make him face consequences), is because he’s really old and I don’t know if his brain is still capable of completely reshaping his thoughts. But I’m convinced that all the other “younger” terrible people (Musk, Tate, Shapiro and so on) could actually change if the whole world stopped giving them attention/praise and started saying “Hey, what you’re saying is fucked up and nobody likes you. We don’t want you in our society”. Of course, that’s a gigantic “if” because unfortunately they all have their own cult of people thinking they’re the messiah which constantly boosts their ego, but one can dream.
/you’ve_been_shunned
Sorry, all out of empathy for fascists who can’t acknowledge their own faults.