The Empathy Wars

How did we become so divided? For an answer, look no further than the way that empathy has been weaponized by both the left and right.

Do you remember when politicians bemoaned the “empathy deficit” and urged voters “to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes”.

Those quotes are from Barack Obama’s 2006 book The Audacity of Hope. Today, nearly twenty years on, they seem hopelessly out-of-step with our fractious and increasingly violent times.