 So anyone who's played video games, you're probably familiar with the character customization or character creation screens where you kind of select which qualities you want in your character, you know, speed, strength, stamina, magic in some instances, depending on the genre of the game you're playing. But I mean, if we could take that and put a politician in our character creation, like the types of qualities that we'd want in politicians, ideally would be intelligence, kindness. But I mean, we really want to max out that attribute when it comes to empathy, right? Because we want people in power who are making policy who have a lot of empathy for other human beings. But the one quality that Ben Shapiro doesn't want to see in a politician? Empathy. That's the one thing. So I don't have the context for this clip. I don't know why he started talking about empathy, but Ben Shapiro is going to rant in this upcoming clip about why empathy is a really bad trait for politicians to have. When I would argue it's basically the best. So we'll watch and then dissect his stupidity when we come back. There's only one problem. Okay, empathy is actually kind of bad for politics. The reason that empathy is bad for politics is because it leads you to empathize with people that you are more likely to like, as opposed to people you don't like. Okay, so first of all, the pitch for empathy is actually, there have been several books that are written on this, social science books, talking about how empathy is not actually the best thing for politics. It actually almost deactivates the reasoning centers of your brain, because when you're empathetic, you don't actually create good policy. This doesn't mean that feeling sympathy for people is a bad thing. It means that if empathy is what drives your policymaking, you're probably not acting in a rational fashion. But the real goal here is of course not to generate empathy. The real goal here is to suggest that if you disagree with the idea that America is systemically and institutionally racist, you're not an empathetic person, and therefore you're a bad, cruel and callous person. The idea is that empathy is really about, it's really a moral statement about what kind of good person you are. And you can't watch baseball until you say it along with Morgan Freeman. You can't. You can't just watch a game and be distracted, which is the goal of sports. Okay, so where he's going wrong is he is projecting his own tribalistic mentality onto everyone else. And he's thinking, well, because I'm tribalistic and I can't possibly empathize with someone who is unlike me, like a poor person, for example, nobody else will be able to do the same thing. Now, really, you could say that's sympathy versus empathy. But I mean, when we talk about empathy in politics, for me, at least what I'm talking about is empathy on a human level. Sure, you can say empathy with regard to relatability, right? Like, I really relate to someone who experienced the same thing that I did. But really, you don't have to look at it only from that social in-group perspective. When we're talking about empathy in politics, ideally, we're talking about empathy for the human condition. Like, I'm not just empathetic towards socialists, for example, because like me, they're also against capitalism, so I can relate. Like, I'm also empathetic towards people like Ben Shapiro, who I disagree with on basically everything, because as a human being, I can relate to his experience. So because I don't like pain and suffering, I can logically deduce using empathy that Ben Shapiro also doesn't like pain and suffering because we're both similarly situated human beings, right? But to him, that's bad. Like, if you, for some reason, can relate to someone that makes you worse at creating public policy, sympathy is fine. He's fine with sympathy, but empathy is where that starts to cloud your judgment. Like, he literally says, it deactivates the reasoning centers of your brain because when you're empathetic, you don't actually create good policy. That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard Ben Shapiro say, and this is the same guy who says that if climate change leads to the point where, you know, your house is flooded, you just sell your house and move. This is one of the stupidest things he said. No. Empathy is good because empathy is a form of reason. Empathy isn't a lack of reason. It is an important part of the reasoning process. We want people with empathy. We want people with different experiences because they can craft public policy with that experience and expertise in mind, right? So what he's saying here, it really doesn't make any sense because if you remove empathy from the equation when it comes to public policymaking, what's left is, you know, a bunch of sociopaths creating public policy, not taking into account the human toll on their policies. So then you get people, you know, supporting wars and regime change in other countries for the purposes of economic benefits. I mean, it speaks to your value system because if empathy, like improving the condition for human beings isn't your goal, then you have some other value that you're using to judge, you know, good policy. So then it must be the economy, for example, but then you're removing human beings. So I mean, what he's saying here, it's really, it's weird, like it's short-sighted and it doesn't make sense. Now, the example that he kind of uses, like what he's moving towards here is race, right? Because he talks about race and baseball and I don't know what conversation he gets into and I don't know anything about baseball. So I don't know whatever controversy people are talking about. But what I will say is that so according to him, if you apply this to a real-world example, ideally, a black lawmaker isn't the best person to create policy about black issues that affects the black community because, you know, it's just emotion. Empathy is nothing more than emotion according to Ben Shapiro. So because they relate so much with people who have the same experience as them, a black lawmaker will just create public policy based on emotion. When the opposite is true, someone with that experience is crucial. Their input is needed the most because if you know what someone needs based on their experience, then you can speak to those exact needs. Like because I was poor, I can speak to what is needed from poor people, housing insecurity, food insecurity. Like I could speak to that specifically because I empathize with people in poverty, not being able to empathize, simply trying to be sympathetic towards them isn't going to work because we see how that plays out in practice. I mean, look at the oligarchs like Steve Mnuchin. He's the Treasury Secretary and we are dealing with an unprecedented economic crisis. We are about to see an unprecedented eviction crisis and what is he concerned with right now? Not the fact that poor people are going to be evicted in huge numbers across the country, but that if we increase our social safety and stop these evictions, stop people who are losing their money, losing their jobs and, you know, their unemployment insurance as the $600 benefit expires, he's worried that that's going to make them lazy. So you are detached from reality, like sympathy is important, but sympathy is a level of ignorance. If you have empathy, then that's different. It makes your experience more valuable because if Steve Mnuchin ever struggled to make money, ever felt like he couldn't pay his rent in his life, his philosophy on governing would be entirely different. In fact, I guarantee he wouldn't be a Republican. That experience is crucial. It's why descriptive representation is important. Now, if you took this and you applied it to anyone else, it'd be deeply offensive, right? If you say actually, well, black people aren't the best at crafting black policy because of empathy, that would sound pretty racist, right? If you said that I couldn't craft public policy with regard to LGBTQ people because I have that same experience and therefore I can relate so much that emotions would cloud by judgment that would be bigoted, right? If you say the same thing to Ben Shapiro that based on his identity, if you talk to him about Jewish policy and policy with regard to Israel and how he's not necessarily qualified because of empathy and that's a bad thing, he would find it deeply offensive. He'd call you anti-Semitic and rightfully so, rightfully so because that experience is the key to good public policy. So the point that he's trying to make, like all you have to do is apply it to any real world example and immediately it becomes completely idiotic. Like you see why it doesn't make sense because in practice, empathy is the best thing for public policy because sympathy is a guess, right? You can only sympathize with people based on what you think they're feeling, but if you can empathize with them, then you know what they're feeling. So I mean, I just, I don't understand why he chose to go off on this weird tangent, I'm assuming based on something somebody said, maybe a caller called in, but it was really weird and deeply stupid and nonsensical. And I'm sorry, but if we are choosing between people who are empathetic and the sociopaths that we have governing us currently, I'm going with people who are empathetic because I think that's a quality that's lacking in government. Not that there's too much of it, but that there's not enough empathy. And when we talk about empathy, again, I'm not just talking about empathy for people in your same social group, but empathy on a human level, empathy for the pain and suffering of other human beings. Like we empathize with each other because we have the same experience as human beings. We all know pain is bad, so we can logically deduce as a society that murder should be outlawed because we wouldn't want to be murdered, right? That's why empathy is important. But Ben Shapiro, I mean, it's such a weird point that he made. I don't think he thought too deeply about this. I think he just went on a random rant and now, um, yeah, we're making fun of him for it. So I don't know what else to say. This is a deeply stupid point and Ben Shapiro needs to think more deeper about things like this because like, no, that's just everything you're saying is so weird and nonsensical that if anyone takes you seriously about policy and politics, they should stop after seeing this clip.