Lifted from the comments, some thoughts on empathy – or more specifically, ostentatious pseudo-empathy, as practised by so many of Our Progressive Betters. It began with a discussion of this lady here, a triumphant, practised shoplifter, and other, likeminded beings whose proximity might not be desired:

Woman who filmed herself shoplifting from a store and paying only for two small items received over 23,000 likes and more than 1,000 comments cheering her on.

So when chain stores start shutting down and activists cry “racism,” just show them this video. pic.twitter.com/MknZYQyeQI

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 5, 2025

And Chow Bag’s subsequent comment,

The words vile beast did spring to mind. And if you wanted to radically lower your estimation of the human species, she’d be the gal to call. Likewise, I would guess, much of her social media audience, the ones applauding her habits, her predation, and clicking like.

As Wanye Burkett has often illustrated, despising such creatures, wishing them gone and bricked up in a dungeon, is not a result of some failure of empathy, as many progressives would have us believe, but of precisely the opposite. One can understand their feelings, their assumptions, their monstrously selfish worldview, and find it all degenerate, worthy only of disgust. In fact, the more you try to imagine yourself in a similar situation and how you might behave, the more alien and repugnant their behaviour is likely to seem.

Or as Mr Burkett puts it,

Understanding the mental states of others, their motives and assumptions, insofar as one can, doesn’t necessarily result in positive feelings towards them, or identification with them, or lead to a default forgiveness and willingness to excuse their behaviour. Simply put, if your “empathy” results in you being endlessly forgiving, endlessly accommodating, over and over again, then you’re almost certainly doing it wrong.

Or not doing it at all.

In the comments, Nikw211 added,

Indeed. Yet progressives, despite their claims, seem uniquely bad at it. To a degree one might regard as surreal.

And which in turn may explain the progressive dislike, often vehement dislike, of the reality series Cops, mentioned here, which revealed just how different minds can be, and which made the mentality of the criminals – the patterns of malevolence and selfishness – impossible to miss. Thereby making pretentious sympathy and indulgence much more difficult to muster.

If an illustration of progressive empathy is needed, we should perhaps revisit burglary victim and Guardian contributor Anna Spargo-Ryan. A woman whose mental processes are oddly convoluted and, shall we say, not entirely convincing:

Readers will also note Ms Spargo-Ryan’s expressed priorities – her preference for being seen by her peers as a “beautiful person,” aglow with progressive empathy and understanding, over the wellbeing of her law-abiding neighbours and other nearby residents, the people being targeted and violated by the same criminal gang that she excuses with great, if weird, enthusiasm. Neighbours and nearby residents to whom no such empathy is extended.

Likewise, as illustrated in subsequent comments, our Guardian columnist’s zeal in blocking and disdaining those who dared to demur from her affectations – and her claim that I, your gracious host, was much worse, much more scary, than the feral creatures who broke into her home in the middle of the night, and into the homes of her neighbours, while brandishing carving knives.

Because I suggested that her infinite forgiveness may not be entirely realistic, or indeed moral.

If another example of progressive empathy and its consequences is required, this one, via Mr Muldoon, seems suitably vivid.

And very much related, this trilogy of posts, which includes scenes that may challenge the progressive empathy reflex and make such affectations harder to sustain.