How To Recognize Weaponized Empathy

Weaponized empathy aims to control, manipulate, and ultimately shut people up. That's the bottom line. It's an emotional plea. And it works, most of the time.

Transcript

Will Loconto: I'm Will Loconto. I'm here today with my partner Cindy Bass.

Cindy Bass: Hey, Will do you support law enforcement?

Will Loconto: Yes.

Cindy Bass: So you're okay with the police beating and killing people?

Will Loconto: No, but that's a perfect example of a forced morality binary. So what is a forced morality binary? Well, it's a disingenuous attempt to avoid discussion by forcing an issue to be seen as a binary choice one way or the other. One is considered good, one is considered bad. One of the things that this morality binary technique allows is to create a perceived consensus where if you are on the wrong side, there's a huge group of people on the right side that will let you know, will try to shut you up, will condemn you. It's spread across dozens of subjects, and you can see it in current media, current government, almost every day. This forced morality binary is used to try to manipulate opinion.

Cindy Bass: You said the right side, but that's just because they think they're right.

Will Loconto: Correct. It's kind of like a thought police in a way. And one of the reasons that they use this force, morality binary, is to try to control your thoughts. You're not even allowed to ask questions if you're on the perceived wrong side. And it's really crazy because "the thing" seamlessly moves from one issue to another and it's kind of a way to get people to comply. It's a cancel culture tactic,

Cindy Bass: An easy way for them to get their way. It's easy.

Will Loconto: Yes. Well, it involves bullying. Of course. It's bullying. It silences people. And somebody that's doing it would tell you that they're doing it for a noble reason. They're on the right side. They're the hero, and you're the bad guy.

Cindy Bass: Just like on my Facebook the other day, I posted about a young man that stands on the street in a grim reaper costume. Obviously he's got some issues, but he is in his thirties and he's been doing,

Will Loconto: He's not a young man, by the way.

Cindy Bass: Not a young man. He's been doing this for years. And it's a small town and I believe everyone knows him or of him and new people that come in town or people that come through the town or visit the town, see him and are, call the police, make posts, call him a creeper, are alarmed and scared. It scares kids and I don't believe to my knowledge that he's ever touched anyone or lunged at anyone. But it's such a weird thing to just randomly set up in town on a street corner and stand there like the grim reaper and scare people.

Will Loconto: In a grim reaper costume year round, not near Halloween.

Cindy Bass: And there's really no reason to go in depth of what his problems are or why, because I don't see it as this. I just see it as this guy needs to stop doing that and stop scaring kids. Period. And so I put it on my Facebook and I got bashed and bashed and bashed.

Will Loconto: And you didn't bash and make fun of him. You didn't.

Cindy Bass: No.

Will Loconto: You questioned. You didn't even criticize, as a matter of fact. You just questioned if it was okay that he was scaring children and old people.

Cindy Bass: But I saw the post on the little town page and saw it was a grandmother that posted this picture and then it got so bad that she had to delete the post because people bashed her so bad. Well then I reposted the picture and asked that question, is this okay? I really had a lot of people saying that I was, me, that I'm really bad. And one of 'em even said washing people's feet with the Jesus thing. And I was just such a horrible person for bringing that up. Well, I don't want children scared and I'm not worried about one man that has issues. I'm worried about a whole town full of kids and everyone says he's sweet and nice and that's okay too. I'm glad he is. But at some point he could turn and not be. All I'm bringing this up for is I got bashed and it is absolutely not okay to scare children.

Will Loconto: Well, that's what happened to you.

Cindy Bass: Yes.

Will Loconto: On Facebook was a perfect example of weaponized empathy.

Cindy Bass: Yes.

Will Loconto: And I get a lot of responses when I talk about weaponized empathy that are like, well, "how can empathy be anything but good? Empathy is always good, compassion is always good." And "how could it possibly be weaponized?" Well, empathy being used as a weapon basically takes advantage and exploits somebody's kindness to manipulate them or silence them. What they were trying to do to you is to say you have no right to question him because he's in a so-called protected group because of mental issues. So there's no room for criticism, no room for discussion, no room for anything other than you just accept who he is, what he does, how he behaves, and you shut up. That's really the message that they were trying to give you.

Cindy Bass: That is the message,

Will Loconto: And that's not a healthy thing.

Cindy Bass: And tried to make me feel bad, and they can't because I'm just not the type of person that it works on.

Will Loconto: So, interestingly, I was doing some research online and I had seen an article recently, Andrew Sweeney wrote an article in 2018 about a concept called idiot compassion. And what he says is "the one who practices idiot compassion, also practices victimology and loves to define other people and themselves, especially as victims. They play the game of identifying and propping up victims, victimhood absolves one from responsibility and at worst conjures up the dark power of the mob. The greatest monsters of the world have known this power of idiot compassion to bend people to their will and to create a world defined by oppressors and victims." And then somebody named Pema Chodron also wrote, "it refers to something we all do a lot of and call it compassion. In some ways it's called enabling. It's the general tendency to give people what they want because you can't bear to see them suffering. Basically, you're not giving them what they need. You're trying to get away from your feeling of I can't bear to see them suffering. In other words, you're doing it for yourself. You're not really doing it for them." So the idiot compassion is a narcissistic virtue signaling that feeds a savior complex where people think they're doing good. Those people on Facebook felt like they were in a morally superior position to you because they're calling you out as a bad person. And the tactics are simply to control and manipulate while also having the narcissistic payoff of telling themselves that they're a savior to somebody.

Cindy Bass: It doesn't work on me. And they can go 50,000 comments deep and at the end of the comments I'll say, "he still doesn't need to scare children."

Will Loconto: Through the weaponized empathy, which ends up being mob rule, cancel culture. They're using the morality binary to say things are either this way or this way and there's nothing in between. And if you're not on our side, you're against us and you're the evil one

Cindy Bass: And you're wrong.

Will Loconto: And you're wrong. And by extension it also is you shouldn't be listened to. You shouldn't have a platform. You shouldn't have the ability to say these horrific things even though most of the time they're not horrific. They're actually just questions being asked.

Cindy Bass: The recent thing with the United Methodist Church, what do you feel about that?

Will Loconto: The United Methodist Church is splitting and they are having discussions about progressive policies and bringing progressive policies into the church. The morality binary part of that is that progressives are trying to say, this is all about inclusion, all about LGBTQ+ inclusion and "what would Jesus do?" and how everybody should be allowed to be a part of these things. There actually are a lot of other progressive elements that are being hidden under this morality binary. The question that you're being asked is, "don't you care about people as a Christian?" And the answer is not just simply yes or no, but they want you to believe the answer is yes or no. Even outside of the church, the whole diversity, equity, inclusion initiative is couched in that moral binary.

Cindy Bass: Yes. Basically all of this is don't you care about people? I mean, almost every one of these can go all the way back to don't you care about people?

Will Loconto: And that's the easiest way to dismiss somebody's opinion.

Cindy Bass: That's right.

Will Loconto: Because guess what? Just to give examples, if you want the government to be tough on crime, you don't care about the welfare of criminals or people that may be unjustly sentenced or unjustly charged and generally supporting law enforcement, more often than not, you don't care about victims of police brutality. Now, neither of those is true, gets simply a way to avoid any sort of nuanced discussion.

Cindy Bass: Another thing they do is they use photos like in articles or on TV, video and photos of one woman with a child at the border

Will Loconto: Or kids in cages, illegal aliens crossing the border were being whipped by the border patrol. And it turns out that no, they weren't and there wasn't a whip and he wasn't hitting them with anything.

Cindy Bass: So the photo is used to then say, "don't you care about illegals?"

Will Loconto: Yes. And the idea of expecting people to come in legally through proper channels is somehow against immigrants, which is crazy. My family is a family of immigrants and not at all against immigrants, not at all against immigration. It just should be done properly and vetted and done right.

Cindy Bass: What about the Ukraine?

Will Loconto: Well, even questioning that has become a morality binary. You're not allowed to even ask, "where's the money going? How's the money being spent? What's the end game? What's the reality of it?" If you ask any questions, you're labeled as a Putin apologist or a Russia supporter, which is insane. These are questions that not only we should, as citizens, be asking, but our lawmakers should be asking these questions too and

Cindy Bass: Accountability.

Will Loconto: Well, and we can't just pour money down a pit for a proxy war in Europe,

Cindy Bass: But they get away with all this by saying, don't you care? And then the virtues of,

Will Loconto: Good vs. Evil,

Cindy Bass: Flags of Ukraine, which I'm not opposed to anyone supporting anything, it's just,

Will Loconto: But it's funny because it is like a mob mentality.

Cindy Bass: It is.

Will Loconto: The whole thing of a black square or a Ukraine flag or your vaccination status or whatever it is, has become part of that manipulation,

Cindy Bass: Signaling,

Will Loconto: virtue, signaling. And then on the other side is if you don't even have to oppose it, if you just ask a question, you're labeled as a problem, problematic.

Cindy Bass: But you know what? This is conditioning the public to not ask questions

Will Loconto: And to shut up.

Cindy Bass: And to shut up.

Will Loconto: That's really what the intent is.

Cindy Bass: This is what it is.

Will Loconto: That's what I believe the intent is

Cindy Bass: I do too.

Will Loconto: To get you to shut up.

Cindy Bass: They see so many examples of it happening. So why would I question and get bashed? And then the saddest part of this is not being able to say anything for fear of losing your job or

Will Loconto: Or your bank.

Cindy Bass: Your bank. I mean, this is ridiculous and you can't even speak out because of your job.

Will Loconto: It's essentially an attempt to be the thought police to try to say, you're not allowed to think this, and if you do think this, you need to shut up and not tell anyone that you feel this way. And that's bad for everybody.

Cindy Bass: People have moral standards and they get put into these situations where they're basically hijacked. They let things change, they let things seem different when they know they're not just because they can't engage in a conversation or make a stand.

Will Loconto: Let's go through some of the examples and discuss some of them. So, the gender theory, gender ideology, the idea that if you're questioning the wisdom of giving children so-called "gender affirming treatments," puberty blockers, surgery, if you question any of that, you're labeled as a transphobe and want to erase trans people.

Cindy Bass: That's a really big stretch.

Will Loconto: You get labeled as a transphobe and seen as if you are a Nazi that wants to exterminate people

Cindy Bass: When it's child abuse, and that's a fact. And somehow they get away with doing this to people. Normal everyday people will actually go with this because

Will Loconto: They want to appear kind

Cindy Bass: Because they are kind.

Will Loconto: Yes. Yeah.

Cindy Bass: I mean at the end of the day, people's pure intention is to be kind.

Will Loconto: Right

Cindy Bass: or mannerly

Will Loconto: Another example is abortion. If you even ask questions about unborn children and the proliferation of abortion, you are labeled as somebody that hates women and doesn't want women to have rights.

Cindy Bass: Yeah, I see that.

Will Loconto: Another good example is the family, the family unit,

Cindy Bass: The nuclear family?

Will Loconto: Yeah. If you're worrying about the decay of the nuclear family and the rise of fatherless homes and all these problems with children that don't have two parents, and you're seen as saying you don't care about alternative type families

Cindy Bass: Or that you don't care about single moms,

Will Loconto: Right. You can simultaneously acknowledge that there are single parents and same sex parents that do a good job and raise good kids. You can believe that and simultaneously believe that a nuclear family with a mom and a dad is the optimal family for children.

Cindy Bass: It is.

Will Loconto: And then there's the individual rights, first and Second Amendment. Both are treated kind of the same way. If you are pro Second Amendment, pro owning guns, believe in the right to own guns, you are painted as somebody that doesn't care if somebody shoots up a school.

Cindy Bass: Right.

Will Loconto: And the First Amendment, if you care about freedom of speech and freedom of association, you don't care about "hate speech" and victims of hatred because there's been this crazy push to limit speech in order to protect people's feelings. The fundamental truth about the First Amendment is that freedom of speech always outweighs feelings. We talk about intersectionality. Some groups are more "protected" than others, and there are examples everywhere around that you cannot criticize or even ask questions about any of these protected groups because

Cindy Bass: They're protected?

Will Loconto: Yeah, actually, I was just going to say that there's not even a real reason why you can't. It's just mean, that it's seen as mean. It's funny because there's a lot of hypocrisy about it, but the idea that during the Black Lives Matter protests destroying statues was fine, but if you paint a pride flag on a street and somebody drives over it and believes tire marks on it, that that's crossing a line.

Cindy Bass: Yeah. Isn't that something?

Will Loconto: Yes. The idea of that these groups deserve to be more protected than other groups is very bizarre, but it's also very unhealthy for society.

Cindy Bass: I don't know how we got this far. We're at such an extreme with all of this.

Will Loconto: It's very weird. I saw the news story where there's some illegal aliens from Honduras that killed a bald eagle.

Cindy Bass: Do what?

Will Loconto: They killed a bald eagle to eat.

Cindy Bass: Oh my Goodness.

Will Loconto: And the government is talking about not prosecuting them for killing the bald eagle. The only reason they wouldn't prosecute them is because of who they are, because if I killed a bald eagle, they would prosecute me, a hundred percent.

Cindy Bass: And you said illegal aliens.

Will Loconto: Illegal aliens from Honduras killed a bald eagle in the United States,

Cindy Bass: But they might not have known that that was against the law. That would be the only thing I could say.

Will Loconto: But ignorance of the law is never a defense.

Cindy Bass: No, it's not. That would be a weird

Will Loconto: One. And if I was in another country, I would be very conscious of the laws.

Cindy Bass: And why are they killing a bald eagle to eat? Where are they at? Out in the woods?

Will Loconto: So another interesting one on Twitter, I saw a Canadian health official posted about how she and her friends still wear masks and they test themselves for COVID before they have their gatherings. And then she got a lot of criticism in the replies. She came back and characterized the responses as, of course, transphobic, anti-Semitic, and ableist, dismissing any sort of criticism or discussion. She's right. Anyone who criticize her is

Cindy Bass: She just used them all and just,

Will Loconto: Just throw all that out there to make you

Cindy Bass: Just to make everything go away. Just give it everything.

Will Loconto: Right

Cindy Bass: And the kitchen sink.

Will Loconto: Basically, you're transphobic, ableist, and anti-Semitic, so nobody's going to listen to you. The stupidity of this is beyond what you would ever believe.

Cindy Bass: What was it that you were just telling me about? Was it Stanford Law School?

Will Loconto: Oh, yes. Stanford where the judge came to speak and the students shouted him down. And not only did the students shout him down, the administrators came and gave him a lecture. And I saw today that Stanford wrote an apology letter to him.

Cindy Bass: Oh, they did?

Will Loconto: Yes. My response to it would be that the only just apology would be to allow him to come back and speak again.

Cindy Bass: And listen.

Will Loconto: And they would have to listen, and they would have to enforce their policies.

Cindy Bass: I agree.

Will Loconto: That's what should happen. And if he has an agent or has somebody, they ought to be right on top of that and say, I'm coming back as soon as I can because I'm going to force you to enforce your policies of allowing me to speak because it's important to

Cindy Bass: Future lawyers, future judges, Supreme Court judges.

Will Loconto: Well, the saddest part is that the future lawyers and judges that are shouting down speech are not emotionally equipped to be future lawyers and judges.

Cindy Bass: That's right.

Will Loconto: Period.

Cindy Bass: And they are supposed to be the protectors of us.

Will Loconto: That's the scariest thing for our future.

Cindy Bass: Free speech.

Will Loconto: But you get a lot of things today where younger people are saying, we may need to limit free speech in order to protect people from hate. Obviously, they're missing the point of freedom of speech because the easiest test for me, and people should always do this, is the shoe on the other foot. If you're going to have somebody determining what is "hate speech," I'm asking somebody on the left to tell me how comfortable they would be if Donald Trump was the one deciding what was "hate speech." But that ends the hypocrisy right there, because if they look at that and they have to lie to themselves,

Cindy Bass: Trump is an example too.

Will Loconto: Well, Trump's a perfect example of how this perceived consensus, forced morality crap pushes false narratives. The whole Russia collusion thing has now been shown to mostly have fallen apart. The whole Steele dossier that the FBI based their investigation on ends up to have been a bullshit thing. The whole Russian thing now definitely has links back to the Hillary Clinton campaign. And that's not a conspiracy theory, that's proven by different links that have been published.

Cindy Bass: And on the other side, we're always talking about the left. It's not only on the left, it's on the right. And with Trump,

Will Loconto: You have the "Only Trump" contingent of Trump supporters where if Trump's not the nominee, they're not going to vote for the GOP nominee. And they're basically saying that Trump is the only solution. In a way, it's their own morality binary,

Cindy Bass: Because that's what I'm saying.

Yeah. They're basically saying that Trump is the only one uniquely equipped to,

It's either him or not.

Will Loconto: And the crazy part about that is if he ends up not being the nominee, if they're actually saying they wouldn't vote, they don't really care about the country.

Cindy Bass: No. If you're a conservative, you vote for whoever is nominated,

Will Loconto: And I'm somebody who voted for Trump multiple times. But I can also simultaneously, like some things Trump does and dislike some things that Trump does. Everything is not a morality binary. Everything does not correlate. Human beings are complex.

Cindy Bass: Very.

Will Loconto: One person can say something that's very profound. And then in the next phrase, say the stupidest thing in the world, and the dumbest person in the world can say something profound. It makes sense to pay attention and critically think about everything you see and hear.

Cindy Bass: What about homelessness?

Will Loconto: Well, I believe it's inhumane to allow and enable people to live on the streets, period. Cities allowing and enabling that, it's inhumane. Now, somebody will tell me that, that means I want to erase homeless people,

Cindy Bass: Or you just don't care at all about them as a person.

Will Loconto: I believe the solutions are mandatory treatment for drug addicts, mandatory treatment for mental illness, which means compulsory, which means that they do get taken off the street and put into treatment whether they want to or not. I believe in mandatory shelters as well. Now, that doesn't mean giving someone a house, it means a shelter. At the shelter, you have to follow rules, and it should be breaking the law if you don't follow the rules.

Cindy Bass: But just saying that you don't want homeless people on the street, they take it as you don't care about people or you're cruel.

Will Loconto: Well, right. Or believing that everyone that is not disabled should be expected to participate in society and try. And the idea that there's some right to exist where you should just be taken care of by the government is insane. That's not what this country was built on. That's not how the world is going to flourish in the future. But the morality binary of saying that if you want to put homeless people, mandatory, force them into shelters, somehow that is inhumane is a disingenuous argument. That makes no sense.

Cindy Bass: Well, the whole thing that we're talking about is like a progressive steamroller, steamrolling all this stuff through and it's toxic.

Will Loconto: Well, it's the idea, I guess that everything's okay, shut up and mind your own business.

Cindy Bass: Right, but if you ask,

Will Loconto: Shutting up and minding your own business is not a path for society to thrive.

Cindy Bass: That's right. Just like I was saying earlier about somebody being on the stand and being cross-examined, a great trial attorney will spin you around and say, "when did you stop beating your wife?" Or a question that's yes or no, and,

Will Loconto: That doesn't actually have a yes or no answer.

Cindy Bass: That's right. But that's the question you were asked. Just like these morality binaries, do you care about people or not? Well, of course the answer would be yes.

Will Loconto: Right? Or are you going to

Cindy Bass: Which puts you in the wrong category.

Will Loconto: Yes.

Cindy Bass: And there they go.

Will Loconto: Right. You obviously don't care about people because you're actually asking questions about mental illness and not just accepting it.

Cindy Bass: The gender stuff, that's one of the most heated ones around. And that is, you don't care about kids that have gender problems. Well, first of all, I'm a person that believes that they should work that out throughout their young life till they're 18.

Will Loconto: Well, right, and most kids that have gender dysphoria get through it.

Cindy Bass: Yes. My personal opinion is, it's all this talk all on TV, on social media at school, everywhere we go, people are talking about it. And when you give kids information like that, it goes in their brain, they go home and they're in hormonal times and,

Will Loconto: And girls, teenage girls are identifying as non-binary when they're not non-binary.

Cindy Bass: And some of this is attention seeking and stuff, but getting back to our points, asked if you care about these people or not, just because you have a stance on it. The opposite is, oh, well, you truly don't care about these people. That's not true. The trans people, I care about trans people, but I believe they have a mental problem and they need help. And I hope they get help.

Will Loconto: And the help is not surgery cutting off their breasts.

Cindy Bass: That's right. But I do wish them help and wish that they would get better. So you can't tell me, I don't care for the people. I just don't believe in all this mumbo jumbo that's going on with all this stuff.

Will Loconto: Well, and there are a couple other good ones too. January 6th. That's a good one. It is morality binary because narrative versus reality. The narrative is that it was a huge armed violent insurrection that almost overturned our democracy. You can't even ask questions about it because otherwise you're on the side of the "election deniers" and you're evil.

Cindy Bass: Yes.

Will Loconto: Extremists, terrorists, whatever they want to call.

Cindy Bass: The problem with that one though, Will is people don't even want to get involved in making a comment, or they have to watch everything they say because they don't want to slide into having to be in that position to make a comment. I think that's one of the biggest issues right now is people's fear of speaking.

Will Loconto: Well, it's weird too, because Tucker Carlson put out the videos and you can argue on both sides that the video is cherry-picked. The January 6th committee, obviously cherry-picked video to show the most abhorrent footage that they could find to make it look as bad as possible. Because, like it or not, the purpose of that January 6th committee was to try to make this so Trump can't run for President again. I mean, that was their entire goal. And even Chuck Schumer hasn't disputed the validity of the video that Tucker Carlson showed. He just says that it was wrong for you to be able to see that video. And to me, there's a big distinction there. He's saying that Tucker Carlson was doing something that damages democracy by allowing the public to see the video, parts of the video that were not shown by the committee. And it's very telling to me that they're not disputing the validity of it. They're just saying that this was stuff you shouldn't have been able to see, which is a dangerous road to go down, I believe.

Cindy Bass: No transparency.

Will Loconto: No transparency at all. And another one was the John Fetterman campaign, and just the idea that a stroke survivor running for office slows down his campaign, doesn't make public appearances, everybody that questions his recovery and his ability is called an ableist. I'm sorry, but yeah, you can call me ableist, but I want our Senators and Congresspeople to be capable and able. It's not a job for a mentally disabled, cognitively disabled person. It's just not a job for that,

Cindy Bass: For either side.

Will Loconto: For anybody.

Cindy Bass: For anybody, for anything,

Will Loconto: If it was a Republican, I'd say the same thing.

Cindy Bass: That's right.

Will Loconto: It's not all about the power that you get just by having it.

Cindy Bass: Look what they did to Trump.

Will Loconto: Well,

Cindy Bass: Go after him and he went and took,

Will Loconto: Took the cognitive test. The crazy part, they went after him about drinking water with two hands. And Joe Biden can't even walk without being held up. The hypocrisy is amazing to me. The hypocrisy would be funny if it wasn't so damn dangerous.

Cindy Bass: It's so bad. It's just so bad.

Will Loconto: But even the Fetterman thing, now, he's being treated for depression and has been out of pocket for three weeks at least.

Cindy Bass: I think they described it as severe depression. I mean, I don't know what the categories are, but it sounded bad.

Will Loconto: Well, at what point do you become unable to do your job? Because if it was Lindsey Graham or Mitch McConnell that was in the hospital for depression, they would've already been calling for him to have his position taken away.

Cindy Bass: So how do we let this happen? How does this happen? That's what a lot of people say is this, "how is this happening?"

Will Loconto: Well, the media is complicit. That's how it happens. And you don't have to believe in an overarching centralized control position that runs this whole thing. All it takes is a lot of people with similar interests and similar desires to all be pushing in the same direction. It doesn't take a big conspiracy. All it takes is a little bit of direction. It doesn't even need to be coordinated.

And then the other one is the climate change stuff. That's another one of those morality binary where it's like, if you want to have a real discussion about fossil fuels and renewables and ask the question, "are they ready to supplant fossil fuels? "The answer is actually no. Renewable energy is not ready to sustain power grids. It won't be in 15 years or 20 years. And forcing a premature transition away from the fossil fuels is economic suicide for every country that's going to try to do it. The "net-zero" agenda is actually going to kill people. People will die.

Cindy Bass: But the forced morality binary in climate is?

Will Loconto: You don't care about the planet.

Cindy Bass: I care about logical thought. And the thought of Gavin Newsom saying that electric vehicles are going to be all of California and the grid can't handle it.

Will Loconto: Yeah, simultaneously. Simultaneously, the power grid is blacking out because of demand, and we're going to put,

Cindy Bass: All EV,

Will Loconto: Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles on the road.

Cindy Bass: Why can't people see that? Why can't people see Gavin Newsom said that and how stupid it is? It's not logical.

Will Loconto: If we're already turning off the power because the demand is too much, what happens when suddenly there's 15, 20, 30 million more electric vehicles?

Cindy Bass: You know something I never thought of? If we were all EVs, there might be some weird way that only c ertain people got power, they would shut off power.

Will Loconto: Well, they could, of course.

Cindy Bass: And it could be, just like the bank account.

Will Loconto: Actually, it is, but I don't know, on the conspiracy side, that's not any more farfetched than them cutting off the gas supply. Because if all of a sudden the gas stations didn't have gas, nobody would get to go anywhere.

Cindy Bass: True.

Will Loconto: But I also don't necessarily like the idea of a kill switch in the car where they can remotely disable your vehicles. I do think that the progressive agenda includes eliminating private vehicles eventually to where they don't want people to own their own cars and drive and make their own choices for that.

Cindy Bass: And you can't have, gas stoves.

Will Loconto: It's kind of getting off the subject, but it, it's crazy how it just seamlessly moves from one thing to another, whether it's abortion, election denial, the government slash media censorship that they work together. The idea of disinformation, that's another morality binary. If they keep telling you, we're protecting you from disinformation, there's a good side and a bad side. And watching what they actually label as disinformation is very revealing.

Even with the Ukraine thing, they attempt to force a moral imperative where there may not necessarily be one. This idea that we have to support Ukraine, we have to do this, or somehow Europe is going to fall eventually to Russia, who can't even take over Ukraine, much less going into the, they're not going to be going into Europe to take over Europe like Hitler did.

Cindy Bass: I say that this is just a bunch of spoiled children that need to get their way, and it's a mob gang mentality with this forced morality binary. And I'm not playing into it, but I see so many people across the nation just playing into it.

Will Loconto: Well, and the weaponized empathy, idiot compassion is real. I see it every single day.

Cindy Bass: Yes. Every day. And it's,

Will Loconto: It's a convenient way to shut people up.

Cindy Bass: It is. Because the people on the other side of it that have the manners and the morals, they shut up. They do shut up.

Will Loconto: Well, and that's right. And that's because you don't want to be shamed. You don't want to lose your job. You don't want to lose your bank. You don't want to lose the respect of your friends. And I know that there are plenty of people that are afraid to talk.

Cindy Bass: Oh yeah.

Will Loconto: I mean, that's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast.

Cindy Bass: I have people messaging me that say they follow what I do and say, but they can't participate in the conversation.

Will Loconto: They're even afraid to make a comment on our posts.

Cindy Bass: Yes.

Will Loconto: That's terrifying.

Cindy Bass: I know. It's happened a lot that people have told me that.

Will Loconto: Well that leads back to that Maoist thing to where the struggle sessions and you're thinking wrong, so we need to publicly make sure that you think the right way.

Cindy Bass: Yeah.

Will Loconto: It's freaking dangerous. So if we're going to ask the question, what are the primary goals of this weaponized empathy thing? It's to control and manipulate and shut people up. That's the bottom line. And it's an emotional plea. So it works. Most of the time.

Cindy Bass: That does work. It's working on people's kindness.

Will Loconto: Well, and the problem is, the only way that it stops is that people say, "I don't care what you call me. I don't care how you shame me. I don't care how you label me. I'm going to say what I believe." And that's got to be our priority. You were asking me earlier, how do people fight back against these things? And it takes courage and it takes persistence.

Cindy Bass: Maybe it's actually recognizing it. And if it's on a conversation on Facebook or Twitter that you actually type the words, "I see you're using the force morality binary, and that doesn't work with me."

Will Loconto: Or you're weaponized empathy falls flat.

Cindy Bass: Your weapon is falling flat with me. I recognize that you're using it and it doesn't work with me. That is a simple thing that people could do because you're calling them out, you're recognizing it, and then you're telling them that it doesn't work on you,

Will Loconto: Right.

Cindy Bass: And therefore they don't gain traction with you, and they move on to another one. But if another one says this too, we've learned a tool of how to say, "Hey, I see what you're doing. It doesn't work with me." I think that's it. I mean, as simple as that is.

Will Loconto: Yes. I think that's a good idea. I think that's what we need to keep telling people.

Cindy Bass: Put it in bold and say, and

Will Loconto: It's not going to work. Calling me a racist isn't going to work.

Cindy Bass: There's people that actually are doing it, and they don't even know. They jump on board with all these things.

Will Loconto: Putting the Ukraine flag in their thing.

Cindy Bass: And you don't really understand that it's a bigger thing.

Will Loconto: And a lot of the time you're just being lied to. And then people jump on board because they don't dig any deeper.

Cindy Bass: A lot of things are going to get, the slippery slope, it's going to gain traction. It's going to slide on by, and then we'll be at a certain place that some of these we're never going to be able to come back from.

Will Loconto: Right.

Cindy Bass: And they're bad. Right. They're really bad. Free speech is being able to say what you feel and not being vilified.

Will Loconto: If we lose the first amendment, you don't ever get it back.

Cindy Bass: Oh no.

Will Loconto: If you lose the second Amendment, we don't ever get it back.

Cindy Bass: No.

Will Loconto: So there's a crossroads we're at. I think.

Cindy Bass: So what we're going to say is, again, if you see someone using your kindness against you, call it out in written form, or on a phone, or wherever in conversation. I see that you're using that against me and it doesn't work. This is how I feel. As simple as that is. That's just standing your ground and calling them out on trying to manipulate you.

Will Loconto: Well, and it sounds simple.

Cindy Bass: Yeah

Will Loconto: But it's hard.

Cindy Bass: Yeah.

Will Loconto: The courage to do it is hard.

Cindy Bass: The courage to do it is hard. I have it. I've always been able to do it, but I'm a blunt person.

Will Loconto: So call it out.

Cindy Bass: Call it out.

Will Loconto: I think that's a good strategy. Yes. And I think that's it for us today.

Cindy Bass: See ya.