Empathy Without Curiosity Is Toxic

Plus: the Venezuelan boat strikes

It’s retrospective season. Time to look back on our work, think it over, try to distill some lessons from whatever 2025 was. We have two episodes planned to intentionally process this year and think about 2026.

This is not one of those episodes, but I felt myself in that mode. The vehicles for discussion are new: Congressional Democrats want video footage of a September military attack on an alleged drug boat released, and conservative influencers have decided that empathy is toxic. The themes are familiar: what do we value? Who is included and excluded? Where does care contribute to our understanding and policy? Where does care limit us?

I’ve been frustrated a lot this year. We all have, best I can tell. Following politics, attempting to make sense and do good and have some kind of positive impact — it’s all felt like trudging through an endless field of mud and manure. In this conversation, I felt like I might have taken a real step forward into some clarity. My boots are still disgusting, and there’s still a long way to go. But this one helped me. I hope you might find something here, too. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Venezuelan Boat Strikes

• The Empathy Debate

• Outside of Politics: Our Favorite Movies & TV of 2025

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

• Send your Pantsuit Politics Bestie a Personalized Video Message from Sarah and Beth (save 10% with code HOLIDAYCHEER through the end of December)

Episode Resources:

• How empathy can harm — and how it can help (Vox)

• Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy (The New York Times)

• Joe Rogan Experience #2281 - Elon Musk (YouTube)

Movies & Shows Referenced in Outside of Politics:

• K Pop Demon Hunters

• One Battle After Another

• Hamnet

• Black Bag

• The Pitt

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:08] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:11] You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’re going to talk about Pete Hegseth. We’re going to talk about the boat strikes. And we think it’s related to a conversation we’ve been wanting to have for a while about empathy and whether or not it is toxic, as some would have us believe. Outside of Politics, we will be discussing our favorite movies and TV of the year after we completely shit on the entertainment industry in the last episode.

Beth [00:00:36] It’s perfect. If you are still holiday shopping, this weekend is the last chance to get a personal video message from us for the Pantsuit Politics fan in your life. We love doing this. And we offer them through our own store now, which lets you tell us a lot more about the beloved people in your life and exactly what kind of message that you hope will send them. So you can find that link in our show notes. Get those orders in this weekend. We’ll make sure the video is back to you next week in time for the holidays.

Sarah [00:01:14] Back in September, one of the many strikes US military have carried out against what they describe as narco-terrorist, a term I do not like, that I do not find accurate or legally relevant. But one of these strikes in September has come under a large amount of scrutiny because it is what is called a double tap strike. So they struck the vessel, survivors were spotted in the water, and they went back and killed the survivors, which is considered a war crime under the Geneva Convention and International law. This has led to a lot of congressional questioning. High-ranking members of the intelligence committee saw the film of this double strike. Pete Heggseth has declined to release the film publicly. Donald Trump has said sure I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know.

Beth [00:02:27] Comforting from the commander-in-chief.

Sarah [00:02:29] Correct. He does a lot of I don’t know, which I don’t know why he’s allowed to get away with that. But so they’ve gone back and forth on whether the American public can see this video. But this has brought a large amount of attention to these strikes in the Caribbean generally, which we have been concerned about for months. We here at Pantsuit Politics. The fact that over 80 people have been killed extrajudicially. They’re not receiving any sort of trial charges. We say they’re bad, so we’re going to kill them. Seems to be the position of the Trump administration. This has gotten a lot of media attention. I’m not sure it’s bubbling up into the general American population because this is a tough time of year, for one thing. And I think it’s complicated. These strikes have existed as an option within our military for a while. President Obama came under a lot of criticism for his use of drones and strikes like this. But I think it is the meeting of so many different issues, which is criticism of Pete Head Hegseth and his overall approach to this job, criticism of the Trump administration and its approach to the military, including the continued expansion of these extrajudicial killings. And an overall understanding or debate of what our role is and what our military’s role is around the globe.

Beth [00:04:08] I parked a little bit when you said I don’t know why he’s allowed to get away with it, because I feel like that’s the defining question of 2025. And I think the defining question of 2026 is who’s going to stop him? I have no expectation whatsoever that the Supreme Court is going to get involved on this topic. We can talk about what is extrajudicial, what is illegal, what is unconstitutional, what is a war crime. I don’t think the Supreme Court is going to answer those questions for us. I think the Supreme Court is going to say these are questions for the commander-in-chief, and the commander-in-chief will answer them as the commander-in-chief answers them. I think even if the Supreme Court, in its heart of hearts, believes that Trump has effectively declared war here without congressional authorization, there’s almost no chance that it will intervene in any particular way. So the question is who’s going to stop him? And I think that congressional Democrats who are advocating for the public to see this video from September 6th are correct in that you will have to have public outrage about this for there to be any breaks on it. I think getting that public outrage is going to be really challenging too. Not just because of the time of year. I’ve realized that I’ve lived in an echo chamber on this because I’ve been thinking professionally and as a student about due process for 20 years, pretty much every day. So I’ve really been seeking out voices of people-- not pundits, but people on these strikes to see what I’m missing. And the most compelling thing that I hear is I am so angry that I lost my mother, brother, uncle, child to drugs that I just can’t muster sympathy for anyone involved in the process that gets those drugs here. And it doesn’t matter what the drug is, if it’s fentanyl versus cocaine. The details of that don’t matter. There are evil people selling poison in our country, creating enormous grief and pain that is so present. And, look, I feel it too. The saddest funerals I’ve ever been to have been for very young people, very, very young men who overdosed. It’s horrific. If there were something that could bring peace and justice for those families, I would be for it. And I understand thinking you’re visiting your child’s grave, and there’s someone who lives like a king in a foreign country who’s created tens of thousands of deaths like this and just sees it as the cost of doing business. Like that’s awful. So I want to challenge myself to meet people in that field of like that field past right and wrong, whatever they’re saying is. To understand that.

Sarah [00:07:07] Look, my brother died a terrible death of alcohol addiction. Who should I demand be publicly executed without a trial? What is this? I don’t know. It doesn’t bring a single person back. I don’t think this sort of mob justice serves anyone. It’s not like they’re executing the kingpins. These are poor people running the drugs. You know who runs the most drugs between the Mexico and American border? Americans. They go and exploit people in debt and they get them to run the drugs across the border. I’m so disturbed by people’s shrugging about this. The presence of grief or exploitation or oppression does not justify mob justice.

Beth [00:08:07] A hundred percent.

Sarah [00:08:07] It’s just so frustrating to me that that people can’t see. Like there’s a lot of people that die horrible deaths because of greed or any number of societal ills. We don’t demand public executions as a result.

Beth [00:08:24] So that’s part one of my thought process, just trying to understand why people aren’t so outraged about this.

Sarah [00:08:28] No, I’ve heard the same thing. But I don’t even think that’s it, honestly. I don’t think it’s that people feel like this is justified in the face of the fentanyl crisis. I think it just feels so far away. There’s a reason they don’t want this video out there. It just feels like text on a screen. It doesn’t feel like a real thing happening to real human beings.

Beth [00:08:53] Well, and I think that’s why it’s hard to get people to care about due process. Because that also feels far away from your experience. And mostly it feels like if somebody got arrested they probably did something wrong. If somebody’s being punished, they probably deserve it. You and I have a lot of conversations that we don’t record about what we share on the show and what is appropriate for us to share on the show because our lives involve lots of other people. But I think I can say this carefully enough to be respectful. The other story that I just have been holding in my mind as I try to think about this is about a young man who I just adore, who came from a family that really, really needed money. And he worked two jobs every day, an office job where he put on a tie and came in and busted it for minimum wage. And worked in this setting where very few people looked like him. And the people who did were kind of like, hey, watch yourself here. You’re the help. You got to remember that you’re the help. I mean, just really tough as he was trying to move forward in life. And then another job in a restaurant, and so he’s exhausted all the time. And somebody offered him, I don’t know, $500, $1000 to put a box in his trunk and drive it to Illinois. And he got pulled over, and that box had marijuana in it, and it ruined that chapter of his life. And so I keep thinking about, as you said, we’re not getting to the monsters who sit on thrones essentially without any care for whose lives they disrupted. We’re probably getting the people who, desperate for money, said, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” And so I’m trying to think about do you try to change the public’s hearts about that? Or do you try to make a more effective political argument alongside that video? And if I try to come up with a more effective political argument, the best I can do is say, you know what, if this were about drugs for real, why wouldn’t you catch these people and say, where’d these come from? Who paid you? How much did they pay you? Where are you supposed to dock in the United States? Who’s your contact there? Give us every shred of information you have. Because what we’re doing, this way, this approach is whack-a-mole in the most lethal, I think, unethical, immoral, again, extrajudicial. I can’t use enough words about how bad I think this is. But also it is ineffective because there will be more boats. It is not a deterrent, clearly. There are more boats. They keep getting more boats. And they will because it’s a big ocean and a big world, and there’s a lot of money to be made. And the people who live like kings see so many people as disposable that it’s worth the risk to them to send somebody else on a boat on and see if they get through or not. I know that the real and very concerning constitutional issue here, they did this double tap because they don’t want survivors, because they don’t want to bring anybody into the jurisdiction of American courts and have to put up any evidence here. Because every time this administration goes to court and has to put up evidence, they don’t have the goods. When they win in the Supreme Court, it’s because the Supreme Court is on board for almost unlimited executive power. Not because they’re right, not because they were able to prove a case. And so I get that they don’t want them in America to do that questioning because then there are rights and there’s a process and there’s someone to oversee it. There’s reporting that they considered taking survivors to some prison in El Salvador. And I bet that’s what they’ll do if they get enough heat about this. But I think the real public outrage here is going to have to be generated by something connected to the goal of ending the influx of drugs, because I think that they are hitting on a felt need in the American populace to see someone pay for that and to see some big scale effort to combat it.

Sarah [00:13:07] I mean, it doesn’t have to be public outrage. It could also be Congress doing its damn job. Barack Obama used an enormous amount of lethal force. There’s a famous quote where he reportedly told his aides, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people.” I don’t think he was celebrating that. But the difference is he had congressional authorization. Now it is congressional authorization under 9/11 that I think should have been removed decades before it was, which is also what Donald Trump ran on. Don’t have these never-ending conflicts. What do you think he’s getting us into right now with Venezuela with these strikes? And meanwhile releasing the Honduran former president who let our country be flooded with cocaine. And I’m supposed to think you care about drug addiction? Give me a freaking break, man. Congress should grow a pair. Clearly me and Nancy Mace are on the same page. And if that’s happening, something’s really going on. And it does seem like there is some attention and concern that they’ve all woken up to the fact that they gave away all their power. That’s why they’re leaving Congress. They could demand some of this back. They could say, “No, absolutely not. Congress is still a power. People vote for president, yes, but they also vote for us. And so we are also given constitutional power from the voters.” Maybe they could use some of it. This would be a really good place.

Beth [00:14:41] It would be. I think you are naming a step in between my thought process, which is we got to have public outrage or Congress won’t do anything. I am distraught that the most that Democrats in Congress even have made of this is that video from Senator Slotkin, Senator Kelly saying you don’t have to obey illegal orders. Really, we’re going to put this on the members of the military to decide what’s a legal order and what’s an illegal order? That’s totally unfair. Completely unfair to me. So I’m 100% with you that Congress should intervene here. And I think this gets to another like big picture theme of this year where people say, like, why are you occasionally talking about cultural stuff or not homing in always on the most egregious actions of this administration? And part of the answer to that is because it wears people out and it causes them to look away and stop paying attention altogether. And honestly, this year, there’s not much we can personally do about it. If I could personally do something about these attacks on boats, I would absolutely do it. But there’s just not much. Next year, there are things we can do about it, at least in the form of campaigns and elections and saying to people this matters to me, and I need it to matter to you, and I need to know what you’re going to do about it.

Sarah [00:16:03] I also want to say I think what I’ve really tried to put in my bones-- I did just speak flippantly about Congress. However, listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene on 60 Minutes, reading Nancy Mace’s piece, thinking about this, I don’t think I’ve taken seriously enough the way that this president abuses-- I think an abused wife is the right metaphor that Marjorie Taylor Greene... Abuses members of his own party. I don’t think any of us understand what it must be like to be shouted at on Truth Social by President Trump and then get swatted, get death threats, people feel like people are following you, people are calling you, saying you deserve to die. I just don’t think we have really grappled with that. I will use the word brave. I think what Marjorie Taylor Green and Nancy Mace are doing now is brave. That they are saying these people make fun of him behind his back, but they are terrified because when he speaks your name, it increases the threat of violence. And this is a political ideology that watched Charlie Kirk the way the rest of us did get murdered this year. It’s horrifying. So this extrajudicial disregard for human life is contained in the way that he treats members of his own party. And I think it’s easy to just make them all the villains and they’re all Nazis and they’re all fascist and they’re all boohoo. Who cares? But if I center the humanity of people running drugs, which some of these people are, let’s not dress it up-- I’m not saying they deserve to die for it, but that’s probably what some of them are doing. Then I have to center the humanity of these members of Congress that have to listen to people threaten to kill their own children because they did something Donald Trump didn’t like. And I just don’t know. Maybe that’s something that we could call out and pay attention to and take seriously, even as Democrats, even as progressives, even as people who felt threatened by those exact same members of Congress over the years. This is a road to nowhere when people get swatted, when members of his own administration are moving to military bases because they’re worried about their security. But again, this is what he wanted. This is what he wants. This is how he operates. They’re the only tools in his tool belt- are threats that create really dangerous situations for people. So, yeah, he doesn’t treat members of his own party with any basic dignity. So what’s to stop him from dropping bombs on people trying to swim to safety?

Beth [00:19:03] Yeah, and when that happens at the state level, I look at Indiana and think, really, how much is one potential more congressional seat worth? Like this is wild to me. He pardons Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat accused of corruption. Cuellar writes him a letter about weaponized justice and we’re the same, you and me, right? And so he gets the pardon. Cuellar is very grateful. Cuellar is also running again for Congress next year as a Democrat, because he is a Democrat. He’s a conservative Democrat. He’s a border Democrat. He’s with this administration and willing to work with this administration on a number of things, but he’s a Democrat. And the president is so, so angry about that. And went on this tirade about how disloyal he is. Because in his mind, I pardoned you, now you’re a Republican and you’ll vote for Mike Johnson for speaker, and you keep us in the majority and in control. And to do otherwise is unthinkable to the president. And that to me is so illustrative of how easy everything has been for him. How much power he has wielded over so many people in so many different sectors, not just Congress, but in industry all over the place. I want this. I have this. You want it. Here’s what I want. We trade. The end. And I think you’re right. That’s a road to nowhere, and it’s a dangerous road to nowhere.

Sarah [00:20:37] I mean you can see it this week with his first rally in a really long time about affordability, which he does not believe is a problem.

Donald Trump [00:20:44] And I said it the other day and a lot of people misinterpreted. They say, “Oh, he doesn’t realize prices are high.” Prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word. They always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, “This election is all about affordability.”

Sarah [00:21:04] People are telling them that, shockingly. But he doesn’t care and he doesn’t think it’s real and he is pissed off that he’s having to do these rallies. You can tell he doesn’t want to be there. He’s mad. He thought he was going to get to rest. And Susie Wells is like, no, you have to go campaign. And he’s like campaign--

Beth [00:21:22] Sir. [Inaudible].

Sarah [00:21:22] Sir. And he has to do it for a party he does not care about, that he cares only about as far as it maintains his own ability to enrich himself and his family members. And it’s just obvious. This year has made him more of himself, more monstrous. Just the desire. Now, some of it is comically monstrous like his desire to just be a builder and renovate buildings and tear them down and put his marble Trump stamp on everything.

Beth [00:21:55] Gold everywhere.

Sarah [00:21:57] Gold everywhere. And some of them are monstrous and that he’s dead inside. I don’t think he sees the humanity in anyone. And it’s just so obvious. And I hope that it is becoming more and more obvious to Americans. I think the problem, which we can get into with our conversation about empathy, is that because of the economic strain, because of the strain by new technology like artificial intelligence, people are in such a scarcity place, they feel threatened, rightfully so. Who would come out of 2025 without feeling a little bit threatened? This is how he operates. Threats are his one and only approach. And so if the president of the United States threatens immigrants, threatens the media, threatens academia, threatens foreign countries, threatens our longtime allies like Europe, threatens members of his own party, we are just in a soup of threat and fear. And that makes it very difficult for people to stop and think, wait, this is a human being that was just trying to get on a boat and survive. And we, the most powerful military in the world, circled back around and dropped a bomb on them. And I think until we get people out of that mindset and out of that threat mentality, which I don’t know how you do with him still in charge, I think that’s really difficult. Then I think we’re going to be stuck here. Relevant to people’s inability to empathize is an increasing conversation about empathy itself. Elon Musk recently told Joe Rogan:

Elon Musk [00:23:57] The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in western civilization which is the empathy response. I think empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot. Understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool. Yes

Sarah [00:24:27] Then you have many, many Christian influencers on the right, including my favorite and yours, Beth, Allie Besducky, or Allie B.S., as I like to call her, talking about empathy. Allie wrote a book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. She said they’ll use emotional, compassionate, kind sounding language in order to get a woman to think, well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro open borders. I have to be pro LGBTQ. I have to be pro-choice. And then, of course, we have J.D. Vance.

J.D Vance [00:25:07] But there’s this old school, and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.

Sarah [00:25:34] That’s not theology, that’s just basic human psychology. That is how humans operate. And so if we’re striving for better, if we’re striving for different, then of course we would extend empathy in difficult situations. But apparently not Beth. That’s toxic.

Beth [00:25:50] I would like to submit toxic for the list of overused words that maybe need to be retired for a while because I’m not sure what we’re talking about. I understand the reason that this is caught fire on the right. I do think it is a reaction to an attempt to shame people into agreeing with a political agenda. Like well-intended sometimes. I mean, sometimes I agree, right? I do it too. But I have to kind of--

Sarah [00:26:20] I don’t know how to teach you to care. Remember that.

Beth [00:26:24] Yeah. I mean, this didn’t come from nowhere. And so I want to acknowledge that. I think this is tough because there is a religious component for sure. There is a component of what do I think we’re doing here as human beings, and what does that require of me. And I think there is a political component. What aids me in making policy and what inhibits me. And that’s what I would say about empathy, that it both aids and inhibits. There is a level of extending care for others that is needed, and I can’t imagine another reason to go into public service. And there is a level where at some point you decide because you care, you know best for everyone. Or you pursue a bad idea because you think it will be helpful and you aren’t interested in whether it actually is helpful. So I think it is both additive and subtractive, and good politicians have to figure out the line between those things.

Sarah [00:27:29] I think there’s a real gendered component. I think empathy and kindness is female-coded as a value. And I do think that it has become a sort of Trump card for lack of a better word. I said this in our conversation on our pilgrimage to Frankenstein, that just like the Victorians thought that their values were like the end of the road, we bust on them a lot, right? We’re reading Frankenstein and we’re like, oh, they thought that this was such an important value, and weren’t they so silly at the time. If they just had adopted our values, and this was a primarily female space of empathy and kindness and understanding the monster, that would have fixed it all. And I think I want to push on that a little bit because I do think that there is an undercurrent in a lot of conversations around politics and culture that says, well, if everybody just was empathetic and kind, that would fix it. And it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t fix it. No single virtue fixes it. It is a interchange. It is a conversation around virtues. And be that Christian theology, be that stoic philosophy, be that Islamic values or Judaism or the enlightenment, it doesn’t matter. There has to be a balance. And I do think the balance has shifted to empathy in a way that if we’re being empathetic, then we step in the person’s shoes and we do what the person thinks is best. The oppressed person, the abused person, the victimized person, that is the only voice that matters. And empathy demands that we center them and meet their request. That’s the kind of empathetic thing to do. And if you have quibble with their argument, then that’s not empathetic. Like that’s no go. So you just have to do what they say and not have a debate within society. And I think that has led us to some really bad places. I think that that is a lot of what happened. I reported on the Minnesota fraud case that’s got the far right fully energized this week on the News Brief. And I think that’s a lot of what happened there. I think it was we’re going to center empathy and social equity, and we’re just going to get as much care and money into these oppressed communities as quickly as possible. And people exploited that. And they used this sort of like, well, if you question me, you’re not being responsive to my oppressed community, in this case the Somali American community, as a shield. As a sort of don’t question me. Empathy becomes this sort of end of debate. And to that I am sympathetic to the critique. It shuts down conversation when empathy should invite conversation. But I think it became-- I read a really good thing on Vox about sort of breaking down this empathy debate. And they talked about like empathy without action can be really toxic. I think it leads us to a place where we’re spinning, where we’re anxious, where we shut down debate, where we think that if we’re empathetic, there’s one answer. But in a complex society, particularly around policy, there always has to be debate. There has to be what you’re talking about. There has to be data gathering and the data can’t just be people’s experiences. There has to be measurable outcomes. There has to be something that we’re looking to and I think empathy and kindness just became this like if you put those on the table then everything shut down. And I do think that there is some fair critique underneath this, but I also think there’s just a lot of sexism because I think empathy and kindness through this lens became female coded and back to our old girls from the last section Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace like there’s a lot of racism. There’s a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment, but there’s a lot of misogyny right now on the far right and their critiques of culture and their critiques of policy and their critiques of DEI initiatives. And I think all that is present as well.

Beth [00:32:08] Well, and I think there is a lot of money on the line. The evangelical subculture spends a lot of money and is really organized. And so keeping that subculture rallied around your voice and your ideas and making sure that there is no pushback on those ideas that cuts to the bone of the thing is incentivized financially. So holding all that together, if I just try to describe what I think I’ve learned-- and we’ve had so many conversations about this this year, and that’s necessary. You can’t ever really understand the history that you’ve lived, and you definitely can’t understand it in one tidy conversation. So if I try to just describe what I think has transpired in the past five, six years, I think because of some horrifically obvious examples of injustice in our society with George Floid killing being the most obvious because of some horrific exposure of things [inaudible], a lot of people who were really good on empathy felt like they had to extend that capacity in themselves to whole world for all time. In the way that things are complicated for people goes, that flattened empathy because when you decide that you have to center the experience of an oppressed person, because oppressed people are not a monolith, you necessarily have to adopt a rubric of who counts as that oppressed person and then listen to them. And so you have this weird situation where there are like, I guess, good black people and bad black people to listen to if you’re a white person who is trying to lean in to empathy about structural racism and the way that it manifests every day. And so that’s been really toxic. And I think that’s why you have seen, as we’ve discussed, ad nauseum, a lot of movement of Latinos to conservative political parties, to conservative political candidates. Why you’ve seen a lot of black men supporting the president. I mean, in that weird rally he just had, he went on a little tirade about how he’s done so great with black people. Nobody’s ever done as well as he has with black people. But that movement is real, and I think some of that is because the form of empathy that many of us felt called to channel over the past five or six years is a thin form of it and is an overwhelming form of it. And so it got real reductive. It got real reductive and reductive in a way that made us good neither in our relationships nor our policy. And that’s what we got to figure out now.

Sarah [00:35:09] Yeah, because like empathy is not one thing, and there’s not one answer. But that’s what it became. It just became like there’s one right answer to the XYZ problem. And filter through the lens of sort of like empathy and kindness. I don’t know. I hated that. I hated that piece. I think about it all the time. I don’t know how to teach you how to care. So offensive. If Ali Beth Stuckey came out and said, look, you can be an empathetic person and be pro-life. And you can be an empathetic person and be, I guess, anti-immigrant. I don’t really think. I mean you could, I guess. I don’t know. But do you see what I’m saying, like, if she was just saying, like, there is more than one way to be empathetic, that’s not what these people are arguing. I do want to just say, like, this is a political show, and I’m not a theologian. But to argue this is why they twist themselves in knots around wealth. Jesus is real clear on wealth. It’s just this is not a parable that’s hard to interpret. This is not an issue of the original Greek. Wealth is toxic for your soul. Full stop. Very clear. And Jesus is also incredibly consistent on the least of these. The people who society looks down upon, the people who society turns away. And even at that time, the immigrant was one of the top of the list. And so that’s why they have to go after something that seems so obvious to everyone, like empathy, because they have to tie themselves in knots to find a Christian path to support the cruelty of this administration and its approach to immigration. They have to find a way, they have to twist themselves in knots to continue to give fealty to a president that stands up and says, I know we’re supposed to love our enemies, but I hate mine. I don’t envy them their task to find a theological justification for the approach of this administration. It’s tough times. It’s tough times. Listen, you know what, it’s a testament to Ali Beth Stucky intelligence that she can twist herself in knots trying to do this, man.

Beth [00:37:29] Well, look, maybe what we’re circling around is something like empathy without curiosity. I think that’s been the strain that is pretty toxic in our politics. When you decide that it’s one thing, all my questions are answered, I’m done, I’ve done it. I always default to this particular position because it sounds empathetic to me. Yeah, that’s bad. That’s not good. I think you can have real concerns about immigration and still be a very empathetic person. I welcome immigrants to our nation. I think immigrants are the backbone of our country. I could wax poetic about that for a long time. I will spare you. You can imagine. And there are things about immigration under our current policies, under the Biden policies, that are extremely hard. And if I am being both empathetic and curious, I can see how they are hard in a 360 degree way. If people are coming across the border in a non-orderly fashion, they are subjected to a lot. They are subjected to a lot of violence. They are subjected to a lot of disease. They come to a country to cities that are not equipped to help them, to greet them, to welcome them in any way. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people about public school this year having a huge influx of students who don’t speak English, of families that are in precarious situations where there are tons of cultural differences about discipline and behavior and holidays, the most fundamental things. That’s really hard. And it’s not just hard on the white people in the community or the people who were in the community for decades and decades. It is also hard on the people coming into that community. If it’s hard, it’s hard for everybody, almost always. And so I think you can be a very empathetic person and have concerns about all of that. To me, it becomes unempathetic if you are unwilling to change anything about your life to meet those challenges. Anything at all. There can be a limit, there can be a range in which change is welcome or possible or you’re willing to. But from either side, if you’ve reached a point where you’re like no further questions, I’ve got it. This is where I sit on an issue as hard as the movement of people around the globe, then you’ve lost the plot in one direction or another.

Sarah [00:39:50] Well, I think empathy, like you said, it became a conversation ender. And if you insisted on debate in the face of what someone described as the empathetic position, it’s not just that you were unempathetic, it was that you were a bad person. It’s that you were a bad, heartless person if you disagreed with a position that someone justified based on empathy and kindness to a certain group of people. And that won’t work. That won’t work. I think the theology of Christ is clear. And while I think there are moments in the Bible where Christ is clear-eyed and what some might call harsh, I never see shaming. It is through the use of his own actions that he invites people in, not says, “Shame on you for not inviting them in.” And I think it just the enforcement of empathy became the action. Instead of using empathy to find an action, it was just like, well, I’m enforcing this worldview and that’s what I’m doing to make the world a better place for everyone. It’s just shaming everyone for not being empathetic in the ways that I’m empathetic. And I don’t think that worked. And I am sympathetic to a critique of that. I just think their critique is just so obvious. I just feel like it’s not about moving the conversation forward. It’s not about saying like what have we learned from this? It’s just saying the way they did it was wrong. Instead of now we are not inviting any debate. It’s not like this critique is a debate. It’s toxic. It’s bad. It’s ruining society. It’s not like what can we learn to advance our understanding of empathy so that it contributes to debate. Because I do think there was the female coded critique that’s coming up over and over again, which I don’t think is necessarily true. But I do think there was this emotion over, I don’t want to say logic, but debate. Like, if I say this is hurtful, that should be it. That’s it. We’re not going to debate anymore. And this elevation of the emotional empathy over any sort of, like you said, curiosity or cognitive empathy or debate.

Beth [00:42:21] And, look, this this conversation I’m willing to engage in good faith open heartedly with friends and family.

Sarah [00:42:30] Not Alli Beth Stuckey?

Beth [00:42:31] Well, from the conservative influence sphere, this is an awfully thin defense of the way this administration has handled immigration.

Sarah [00:42:42] Yeah.

Beth [00:42:43] If you want me to believe that policies that restrict immigration severely and that remove people from this country who are here illegally can be espoused by empathetic people, I’m with you. I think they can. I agree. If you want me to think that means they’re handling this the right way, miss me with that. That there’s any empathy in an administration that would have a strategy, an articulated strategy of building up a police force by recruiting people to come play in a real live video game where they harass and humiliate people indiscriminately and toss them out of this country as harshly as possible? No, I do not believe you can be an empathetic person and be on board with the way they’re doing this. I believe you can be on board with the goal. But the means, absolutely not. We could have a massive removal operation in this country that upholds the dignity of the people being removed. It would be hard, it would suck, it would send some people back to situations that are terrible for them. I would not support it. But I believe you could do that ethically. This is unethical.

Sarah [00:43:59] That’s why they’re not inviting an actual curious debate about this value because it’s not present in this administration. So what they have to do is reject the value. Because this virtue is not present in the Trump administration. And really anywhere. I guess actually unless you have been charged with corruption and or convicted of corruption. And then there is an enormous amount of empathy. And I can see why that is a perspective that he can actually put himself in your shoes. And it’s not funny, it’s not funny, but it is funny. Jesus, I don’t even know what to say about it. I mean, that seems enormously empathetic to people’s experience. Did you see though why just the emotional empathy of who you identify as persecuted and putting themselves in your shoe is really not exactly what we’re trying to articulate as the goal.

Beth [00:44:50] Yeah, I think it’s humor in the way that sometimes humor is not haha but super clear.

Sarah [00:44:55] Yeah.

Beth [00:44:56] This is super clear.

Sarah [00:44:57] But just because they are incapable of having a curious, open minded conversation about empathy doesn’t mean we are. So we look forward to your feedback. We want to hear what you’re thinking about empathy, where you feel like it has served you and where you feel like it hasn’t. So we’ll listen to all of your comments and feedback as usual over on Substack. Up next, let’s do the best movies and T V of 2025. Beth, do you want to do movies or TV first?

Beth [00:45:33] Let’s do movies first.

Sarah [00:45:35] Okay. I saw some movies. I had to really think about it. I didn’t see a ton of movies this year. You know that one year I kept up with it, but I didn’t keep up with this year. I’ve watched a couple recently because it’s Oscar season getting close. We just had the Golden Globe nominees. I did see Hamnet. I went out of my way to see it over Thanksgiving because I loved that book. And I was very excited for the film, and it was beautiful and heartbreaking. So that’s probably my favorite movie of the year so far. I really did like One Battle After Another, which I kept thinking we would talk about because it’s so political, but that’s probably my close runner up. And listen, I liked KPop Demon Hunter. That’s another one that got a lot of traction this year.

Beth [00:46:11] I have in January an adult slumber party coming up and one of the items on our agenda is to watch KPop Demon Hunters because none of us have seen it.

Sarah [00:46:18] How have you not seen it with Ellen? That’s insane.

Beth [00:46:20] I’ve heard the music ad nauseum. My kids have watched it, but I have not.

Sarah [00:46:23] We’ve sat down and watched it as a family. That’s great.

Beth [00:46:26] So we’re going to order pizza and watch KPop Demon Hunter and I’m excited. I think I’ll like it.

Sarah [00:46:29] I don’t know. If you have adults, I would maybe watch something more adult than KPop Demon Hunter.

Beth [00:46:34] No, we just all decided this is for fun and we are going to have fun.

Sarah [00:46:37] We’re back to the art versus entertainment debate of Tuesday. I did love Hamnet and I do want you to see One Battle After Another because it has some interesting things to say. It’s an incredibly well done piece of filmmaking, for sure. But I think I liked Hamnet better because it’ll just break your heart.

Beth [00:46:56] I had a hard time with this exercise too. And I realized if I think about where my time has been this year, I have been in the car a ton with my kids. We’ve transitioned in a lot of ways as a family this year with activities and Jane’s in high school now. And so I’ve just been in the car a lot. We went to way fewer movies than we typically do this year. We’ve watched very little television compared to past years even because we’ve just been out and about. And those transitions have necessitated a lot of conversation in my house. So I have sat at a table and talked more this year than I probably ever have in any other year of my life. So I have not a lot to draw on, but I will tell you my favorite movie of the year was Black Bag. I really loved this book.

Sarah [00:47:36] I wanted to see that and I never did.

Beth [00:47:40] It’s Kate Blanchette, Michael Fassbender. It’s short. It’s just a cute little thriller. I think the dialog is sharp. I think the characters are interesting. I think it’s visually very compelling. And I just really, really enjoyed it.

Sarah [00:47:56] I also did not watch a lot of television. I don’t ever watch a lot of television. I did finish The Sopranos this year with Griffin. The main piece of like popular television I watched is I watched the entirety of The Pit when I was on the Common Ground Pilgrimage to England. And that was so good. So good. Exactly what TV should be. Exciting, provocative, incredible performances. Absent a couple. Wiley holds a piece of my heart because I grew up watching ER. So the whole time I was just thinking, like, Dr. Carter he’s turned into such a good doctor, even though different character. Doesn’t matter, not to me. And my family and I still watch Freaks and Geeks. But as far as like new TV, I watched Hacks, which was disappointing. But I didn’t watch The Bear. I think we watched like a couple episodes of the third season. What is it on the fourth? And we were like, meh, we’re good. I just didn’t watch a lot of TV. My son really, really wants me to watch Severance, but when it came down to Severance or The Pit, I picked the pit. And you know what? I feel good about that choice because that was a great TV show.

Beth [00:49:01] Yeah, this was hard too because we have most consistently watched sports. When I think about the times that the TV’s on in my house, it’s sports. The only show that we’ve really committed to has been Survivor, and I think it’s been good. I think it’s so interesting. Like you can really track through Survivor all societal trends. Like there were a couple of seasons of Survivor where racial justice, misogyny were like really central to what was going on, to the way people formed alliances, to the way they voted in the jury pool. None of that this year. None of it. Really, really fascinating. So I think it’s maintained something interesting to say about people in America. And I have enjoyed it. But it is the only TV that we’ve really prioritized that has any element of story whatsoever.

Sarah [00:49:50] Well, we look forward to hearing from you. Lord knows Norma will have a lot to say about the best movies of the year. We look forward to hearing from all of you on the best TV shows and movies you’ve watched this year. Thank you so much for listening to Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday with a new episode, and until then, have the best weekend available to you.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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