“Is this to be an empathy test?” – Blade Runner
An MS-13 sociopath that was incapable of understanding the feeling of others was diagnosed with empanada.
Empathy.
I first heard that word when I was five. I asked Grandma McWilder what empathy was, and was told that “Empathy is what bleeding heart GloboLeftist women do while their men do the dishes. Now get to work resizing that brass – this ammunition won’t reload itself.”
That’s supposed to be good, right? We’re supposed to feel good about ourselves when we care about others enough to mentally put ourselves in the position of another to share what they’re feeling.
Empathy really is part of what makes us human. Empathy allows us to model other humans and understand how they’re feeling. And, in some cases, anticipate how they’re going to feel. Like asleep. Or perspiring. Or sticky. You know, emotions.
Empathy is important.
If he sold weed from Ireland, would he be Ma’am O’gram?
But the problem starts to occur when empathy becomes our sole guide for how we conduct our world. One example are the transgender people. I still recall when the blonde gentleman with longish hair who was larping as a woman in a store back in 2019. He got famously irate because a flustered clerk couldn’t process that Macho Ma’am Trandy Savage was pretending to be a woman.
Because he was in this very weird place, his brain short circuited. He had been taught at a very young age that it was polite to call an older man sir. Confronted with the cognitive dissonance of what was obviously a man in makeup, his synapses fried by adrenaline, he did what he had learned as a babe. He called the dude, “sir.”
I doubt Trandy Savage would like this song.
While demanding empathy, the dude showed none himself. Empathy on the part of this brittle freakshow would have solved the situation, but the reason that it felt itself privileged enough with his lipstick and five o’clock shadow is because society has shown far too much empathy for people like him for far too long. Misplaced empathy has turned him into a sociopath.
You want to play pretend? Fine. Keep away from children, and don’t expect me to participate in the charade. And don’t yell at some minimum wage clerk who is really just trying to help.
We also show empathy for the wrong things. Who was the worst person in the movie Titanic?
You know, if you think the sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy, remember about the lobsters in the kitchen.
Rose. She was the villain. She’s married, but cheats on her fiancé with a random Chad urchin and then spends the next 84 years pining for Chad, all while being married to someone she didn’t love nearly as much and then drops a necklace worth (according to the Internets – it’s fictional) $3.5 million dollars into the ocean. This could have been a life-changing inheritance for her great-grandchildren. But no.
Everything is about her.
The audience is supposed to feel empathy for her? Hell, she could have jumped in and let Chad live, or died with him. No. She’s awful. But she’s not alone. Hollywood loves trying to make people feel empathy for the bad guy.
And don’t get me started on Dead Poets Society where the teacher played by Robin Williams (who is the walking, talking essence of the French Revolution) removes all the value systems from his students while giving them nothing to take their place.
The real bad guy in this movie is the teacher. But you’re supposed to feel bad for him because he got fired, but not bad because his removal of a belief systems without replacement caused a kid to commit suicide.
Because the teacher convinced the kid to throw everything away and become an actor.
Kirk couldn’t sing, though. He had trouble with trebles.
You don’t hate Hollywood enough, but let’s move to hospital beds.
And don’t get me started on the misplaced empathy in health care, where literal titanic efforts (no necklace) and tons of treasure go into the last, miserable year of the lives of most people.
We also have addled ourselves with empathy via the Internet.
There are those that share so much online, that I honestly believe that they cease to exist if they’re not posting. Who cares what other people think of your lunch? Who cares what other people that you’ve never met think about you?
As found.
This weird, parasitical empathy where people feel good about themselves only because others think well of them is the sympathy of a society where values and laws are being replaced by the feels. Look at the way the GloboLeft work to keep a criminal illegal in this country, and whine and cry to keep him from being returned to his own country.
It’s misplaced empathy.
This also has implications with race. People felt badly for black people, having empathy for discrimination. Now? Black entitlement is so strong that they feel that a killer is the actual victim, rather than the person he stabbed, and expect people to feel their pain.
This is at least in part because of the way misplaced empathy has let blacks act in violent fashion and subsidized their lifestyle through welfare. Misplaced empathy tells people they don’t have to conform to societal norms. The GloboLeft can’t wait to knit them sweaters and sacrifice their children to them.
Enough is enough. Empathy is not a blank check.
The good news is that people are finally waking up, and realizing that it is far past the time when we as a society need to end our misplaced empathy.
That’s good. After all, that ammunition won’t reload itself.
Elon was in the spotlight just a few weeks ago on just this topic…
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html
Empathy has taken Western Civilization from this…
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2018/07/18/islams-largest-army-came-siege-vienna-1683/
…to this…
https://www.thelocal.at/20250416/muslim-pupils-now-largest-group-in-vienna-schools-as-city-debates-civic-education
Since Fridays are movie discussion days around here, leading to a newfound deeper insight on Titanic and DPS, here’s a list of 100 movies to strengthen your kid’s sense of empathy…
https://micheleborba.com/building-moral-intelligence-and-character/100-movies-for-kids-5-to-17-that-teach-9-crucial-empathy-habits/
Enjoy them all with a good cigar!
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/jk-rowling-celebrates-with-a-cigar-after-uk-supreme-court-rules-trans-women-are-not-legally-women-101744898391917.html
Don’t forget about the villain in Top Gun. That’d be Maverick.
Selfish
Not a team player
Gets his best friend killed (although Goose was telling him to get in there)
Almost gets the Iceman killed ‘cuz he’s just not feeling like a fight right now?
Villain.
For the record, a lack of empathy was on display at the recent FSU shooting…
https://x.com/Jniner69/status/1913014520915869863
Misplaced empathy –> weaponized altruism
I suggest everyone watch HIGH NOON and SGT. YORK no globohomo antiheroes
Weaponized empathy was codified with 19A and won’t end – will only get worse – until 19A is repealed. We can have civilization OR suffrage. It’s a binary choice.
Tell me about it. Next time you gentlemen have the option don’t pull a Samson and give in, please.
Just like this week, when a murderer gets close to $1MM from Go Fund Me, then his mother leases a $900K house in a gated community and buys 3 cars. And we’re supposed to believe that the boy he killed was the problem.
And bail gets dropped from $1MM to $250K. Hung jury, anyone???
he’ll walk and get a book deal
My boss man would say: “I can sure feel for you, but I just can’t reach you.”
Sorry about this, but Point Of Order, Slick:
Rose was not married to anyone.
Engaged, yes. Decided she didn’t want to be the prize in the crackerjack box.
Which is what an engagement period is for.
And for which she was verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by her fiance. Seems like she made the right call there, but YMMV.
So all that Roseish analysis owes mainly to the first four letters of the word.
Sorry, but there it is.
Couldn’t have gotten it more wrong if it had been burped out by the coven on The Spew.
The villains in Titanic were
1) Bruce Ismay, pushing the captain to “go faster, set a record”.
2) Captain Brown, for doing just that.
3) Cal Hockley, for treating his fiancee like a trinket, to be bought and paid for.
4) Spicer Lovejoy, Hockley’s manservant/cronie, for trying to frame Jack Dawson and get him killled.
5) Ruth Dewitt Bukater, for whoring out her daughter, and judging Jack based on his income.
Rose was guilty only of wanting a free choice in whom she loved and married, rather than being whored out for a meal ticket. She learned she could have that freedom, but at the expense of her true love the night of her sinking. Disposing of her own property as she wished at the end of her life is exactly what we fought a revolution to protect. The selfish entitlement of her grandchildren had they known of that would have bought them the 6th place in the listing above.
The empathy in that movie should have been directed at Jack, and everyone else on that doomed voyage, who had no choices that would allow them to live, because stupid and selfish people didn’t think they mattered, in the long run. That it killed as many milliionaires as it did, along with the steerage class passengers hauled as cattle, was the only good thing about the entire incident.
You scored 0% in that outing.
This was not the example you wished it were.
Bummer.
And I’m giving you a pass on Dead Poets’ Society out of sheer pity.
No, really.
Go sit in the corner, and ponder the reality of an actor who, in real life, was nominated for an Oscar for this role, and later won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (back before it was a race-based award), whose actual father told him when he entered acting that he should pursue a back-up career, like welding.
I’m going to guess his performance was a wee bit informed by that sage advice, perspective, and life experience.
I don’t know what perspective you wrote this essay from, but my earnest advice is that you hike back through the brambles until you find the path again.
First time I saw RW was on “Fernwood 2Night”, where Martin Mull interviewed him as a gigolo. Same episode showed that polyester leisure suits caused cancer in mice, as I remember.
Robin William’s performances were mostly guided by his cocaine addiction as he used it to help “maintain focus”. It also sounds like Robin’s father gave him good advice. Only around 2% of actors earn enough to live on with most doing alternate work and/or waiting tables to pay the bills.
My parent’s gave me similar advice for which I am thankful because it allowed me to retire early. I had wanted to play college baseball but wasn’t good enough to really make a career of it (but it is hard to convince a teenager of that just as it is hard to convince a would-be actor that the odds are not in their favor). They were supportive of me playing but wanted to make sure I understood the risks and to have a backup plan. Based on their advice, I opted to focus on school, graduated early and started putting away savings in my early 20’s which allowed me to be financially secure very early in life.
J Bird
RW acknowledged his early-career addictions. The only performances so enhanced were while he was on TV as Mork. As he said himself, “I was on everything but skates.”
If you’re going to casually slander someone, you probably want to do your homework.
He was also a star stand-up comedian within a couple of years, headlining in a very short time, so his father’s advice was idiotically short-sighted and patently wrong, which is why Williams brought it up throughout his phenomenally successful entertainment career.
It shows his dad was too busy generalizing, and too little aware of how bright his son’s star was going to shine. If most actors had his talent, they wouldn’t be waiting tables and parking cars. The ones who are generally belong there. The ones who make a living is closer to 10%, btw, not 2%. But I only pissed away 20 years behind the cameras on sets in Hollywood, so what would I know about the industry?
Fortunately for the world, Williams completely ignored dear old dad’s stupid advice, went out into his chosen field of endeavor, and kicked its ass. His faults and foibles were tragic, but he ruled his mediums for 40 years, and the bigger tragedy would’ve been if he’d chosen welding steel for that time period, and only amusing his co-workers. Considering his absolute dominance of entertainment from his 20s into his 60s, he’s probably not a good example for anyone to use for sweeping generalizations, unless they were doing a “Say No To Drugs” PSA, which he probably would have appeared in for free.
Anon-
A guy played JUCO BB one year, then was invited to try out at Mississippi State. Couldn’t hit a college curveball or slider, so the HC advised him just get his degree. So, he quit but got an accounting degree and went on to law school.
Name? John Grisham. He’s done OK.
The Bulldogs seem to have a knack for redirecting people’s careers. I also wanted to play at Mississippi State as they had such a great baseball program….and even visited the campus my senior year in HS. That was the “Thunder and Lightning” years when Rafael Palmeiro, Will Clark, Thigpen and Brantley were all on the same roster. No one knew at the time that those guys would all go on to be MLB superstars, and so I just assumed that level of talent was typical for all college players.
If I had opted to tour a different school with “average” college players, I might have mistakenly thought I still had a chance at a baseball career. But after seeing Jeff Brantley pitch, I knew deep down that baseball just wasn’t in the cards for me.
J-Bird
He’s right about Dead Poet’s Society, too.
Well-crafted, highly attractive poison is still poison.
Agree on all of your points.
Bear in Indy
who cares when were you right last?
“Disposing of her own property as she wished at the end of her life is exactly what we fought a revolution to protect”
The case for the first half is tired Hollywood tropes: manipulative dishonest justification for MeMeMe women. But given the forced premises, and cardboard characters, Rose was reasonable to prefer to take her chances as a poor (but honest) man’s donkey rather than an old man’s plaything.
Screwing him in an automobile. Not so much.
It’s understandable that Hollywood effectively sold Rose’s freedom to be selfish, self-absorbed, self-justifying narcissists. Pirates of the Caribbean did the same thing with pirates. Pirates are vile. Hang them all and let God sort it out. But yes, if you have monster undead ZOMBIE pirates the regular ones aren’t so bad.
Rose’s final choice was rubbish. Her betrayal of her husband and family was rubbish. Selfish, stupid, bint.
https://gab.com/Zaklog/posts/114361384747620576
Misplaced empathy is also behind the immigration crisis. But it is notable that the people who empathize with the invaders don’t care about their fellow Americans who are losing job opportunities or facing unaffordable housing as a result. I guess that is why their empathy is misplaced.
As for the Rose character, she reminds me of the line from “As Good As It Gets “ where the romance writer is asked “How do you write women so well” to which he responds, “I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability”.
Totally on point.
Bear in Indy
Kindly illustrate Rose’s lack of reason or accountability with examples.
Nicholson’s line is a great one, but you can’t slap it on her if you can’t back it up.
You also missed the irony that in As Good As It Gets, Nicholson’s character was the biggest woman in the film, who lacked “reason, and a sense of accountability” from start to finish.
Start with explaining whom Rose harmed by her choices, and which ones were unreasonable, and how she avoided any consequences for them.
I’ll just wait over here while you flail around trying to find any support for your position.
Cue the crickets chirping.
File this under Telling Me You Didn’t Watch The Movie Without Telling Me You Didn’t Watch The Movie.
If you want to tell me the whole thing was a stupid fictional subplot within a greater historical tragedy, go on ahead. That gets you nothing for nor against her character but the observation that she was totally fictional. But it’s internally consistent, and her character was anything but what’s been cobbled up hereabouts. She was definitely uppity and unconventional, but she was anything but unreasonable and unaccountable.
So when someone can’t land anything that sticks, probably best not to enter the ring in the first place.
it’s a movie bozo
https://1drv.ms/v/c/0e4bab95e31b8178/EUnnsSJ25fZGtWgOfWRFWmoBeYNpH-aSD59JCsvSyy5AHQ?e=MYX5SJ
fatigue is saying it gently and it shouldn’t be