As if sharks have inherited the earth

Imagine living in a world without empathy and compassion: A dog-eat-dog world in which we are all predators.

Actually I’m not being fair to dogs, because as many of us know, dogs are very empathetic creatures. They sense our moods and lick our faces when we are sad.

So we would have to imagine another, less compassionate creature — a shark for example.

Imagine it’s "shark week” forever. We are told that Donald Trump doesn’t like sharks. Perhaps even he recognizes the horror of the remorseless predator.

Yet he has surrounded himself with a man — Elon Musk — who thinks too much empathy leads to “civilizational suicide.” In his view, we must not let our compassion for individuals prevent us from making the decisions society requires.

Presumably, if we listen, for example, to the screams of thousands of women and children killed in the Gaza war, we might not so willingly continue the bombing (which we are always told, of course, is necessary to prevent “civilizational suicide”).

Similarly, if Musk listened to their anguish, he might not so gleefully take a chain saw to the livelihoods of thousands of people.

How did we get to such a place? Hard as it might be to believe, there are people who think that there can be too much empathy and compassion. Among them is a Canadian marketing professor as well as some Christian theologians.

While I wouldn’t imagine ethics to be within the purview of a marketing professor, I do expect so with theologians. How can one read “Love your neighbor as yourself” and conclude that compassion has run amok?

At what point does Jesus, who also said “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,” suggest compassion has gone too far?

Well apparently he didn’t. Using a similar tortured methodology, some take the phrase “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” to mean we are Christian nation.

One might think they envision a Puritan “City on a Hill” — a “model of Christian charity.” Or perhaps a “kinder, gentler” nation, in the words of George H.W. Bush.

But no, we are talking of a new type of Christian nationalism — version 2.0, if you will. This is the chain saw wielding, DOGE-eating, immigrant-blaming kind. It is — like the crusaders or inquisitors of the past — more political than spiritual.

This can be disorienting to those of us who grew up with more traditional, perhaps less politically-skewed, Christian values. We were taught to think that Christian values offered a counterpoint to the predatory tendencies of the powerful, the greedy and the self-serving.

For many that no longer seems true. “Trumpism,” according to conservative writer David Brooks, is a “multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men … and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.”

It is, sadly enough, as if the sharks have inherited the earth.

Curt Johnson,

Williamsburg