{"id":17918,"date":"2026-02-06T04:38:31","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=17918"},"modified":"2026-02-06T04:38:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T04:38:31","slug":"hillary-clinton-speaks-out-on-toxic-empathy-but-misses-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=17918","title":{"rendered":"Hillary Clinton speaks out on ‘toxic empathy’ but misses point"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Josue Sierra<\/span><\/span>, Op-ed contributor Wednesday, February 04, 2026<\/span>Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative, a meeting of international leaders that looks to help solve global problems, on Sept. 19, 2022, in New York City. <\/span> | Spencer Platt\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

There is a reason some modern political slogans feel impossible to challenge without sounding cruel, un-Christian, or \u201cextreme.\u201d It\u2019s not because they are true. It\u2019s because they are designed to stop you from thinking.<\/p>\n

That insight comes from James Lindsay, who recently explained a sloganeering concept most Evangelicals have never heard of but encounter every day: tifa<\/em>. The word comes from Chinese Communist political strategy and refers to short, emotionally loaded slogans engineered to hijack moral instincts and shut down critical thought.<\/p>\n

In plain English: tifa are thought-terminating clich\u00e9s<\/em>. They sound compassionate. They feel righteous. But they smuggle in falsehoods, moral confusion, and ideological commitments that most Christians would reject if stated honestly.<\/p>\n

Think of phrases like \u201ctrans women are women,\u201d \u201cabortion is healthcare,\u201d or \u201cno human being is illegal.\u201d Each is short. Each feels morally coercive. And each dares you to disagree, because disagreement is immediately reframed as hatred, cruelty, or a lack of empathy.<\/p>\n

This matters because many Christians are being told \u2014 often by other Christians \u2014 that the faithful response to cultural conflict is to find a \u201cthird way,\u201d lower the temperature, avoid \u201cpolarization,\u201d and speak with more nuance. Divorced from concrete moral questions, such responses can be entirely appropriate. But when deployed reflexively, those generic calls are often a trap.<\/p>\n

How \u201ctifa\u201d(<\/strong>\u63d0\u6cd5) works on Christians<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Lindsay explains that tifa<\/em> (\u63d0\u6cd5) works in a simple but disruptive way. It uses emotionally charged slogans to confuse moral thinking and corner people into agreement before they\u2019ve had time to think.<\/p>\n

First, these slogans blur important distinctions \u2014 between compassion and approval, love and affirmation, human dignity and moral truth. Second, these slogans rig the conversation so that disagreeing doesn\u2019t just sound wrong, but cruel or mean. Before you\u2019ve even made an argument, you\u2019re made to look heartless.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is this clearer than in The Atlantic article by Hillary Clinton, titled \u201c<\/em>MAGA\u2019s War on Empathy.\u201d<\/em> The piece is a case study in tifa<\/em> applied to Christians. Her goal is to limit your ability to discern.<\/p>\n

Clinton frames the entire moral universe this way: empathy equals Christianity, and resistance to progressive policies equals cruelty. \u201cHow can a person of conscience justify the lack of compassion and empathy,\u201d she asks, while collapsing complex moral debates about immigration, abortion, and gender ideology into a single accusation \u2014 you don\u2019t care.<\/em><\/p>\n

That is classic rhetorical entrapment. The reader is never asked whether the policies in question are true, just, or aligned with reality. We are told that to question them is to wage a \u201cwar on empathy.\u201d Disagreement becomes sin.<\/p>\n

Even more revealing is Clinton\u2019s dismissal of \u201ctoxic empathy\u201d as an oxymoron. She insists empathy \u201cdoes not overwhelm our critical thinking or blind us to moral clarity.\u201d But that assertion is precisely the point under dispute, and her assertion is calculated to avoid even discussing the obvious reality that misdirected empathy routinely produces injustice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Feeling deeply for one person while ignoring the harmed parties on the other side of a policy is not virtuous. It is a moral imbalance.<\/p>\n

A model for how to respond<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is where Allie Beth Stuckey\u2019s response matters, not because she is perfect or beyond critique, but because she refuses the spell.<\/p>\n

In her rebuttal, Stuckey does something increasingly rare: she separates empathy from love. Empathy, she explains, is feeling what someone feels<\/em>. Love, biblically understood, is seeking what is true and good for them<\/em>, even (especially) when that truth is hard.<\/p>\n

That distinction is devastating to tifa<\/em>. It exposes how slogans weaponize compassion by demanding emotional alignment while forbidding moral evaluation. Stuckey names the lie plainly: empathy becomes toxic when it leads us to affirm sin, validate falsehoods, or support destructive policies.<\/p>\n

Notice what she does not<\/em> do. She does not deny the dignity of immigrants, women, or those experiencing gender dysphoria. She refuses the false binary. Human dignity is not up for debate, but neither is reality or objective truth.<\/p>\n

That is exactly why Clinton targets her. The article is not really about Stuckey. It is about silencing a growing number of Christians \u2014 especially women \u2014 who recognize emotional manipulation and are no longer willing to surrender truth for the sake of social approval.<\/p>\n

The danger of \u201cthird-way\u201d Christianity<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is where the call for \u201cless polarization\u201d becomes spiritually and theologically dangerous. When the culture deploys tifa<\/em>, neutrality or false empathy always favors the lie. Calls for empathy on clear moral issues often function as pressure to compromise, because the slogans themselves are never morally neutral.<\/p>\n

Jesus did not avoid polarization. Truth divides by nature. The Gospel itself is a stumbling block. The problem is not that Christians are being too clear. The problem is that many have been catechized to believe clarity is cruelty and that polarization is immoral.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s command in Romans 12:2 was not to empathize harder, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind<\/em> so that you may discern what is good, pleasing, and true. Discernment is work. It requires resisting emotional shortcuts. It requires doing more research and asking uncomfortable questions about what slogans assume, what they erase, and who they ultimately harm.<\/p>\n

A Christ-follower who trades objective truth for the appearance of compassion won\u2019t be a light to the world. He\u2019ll be absorbed by it.<\/p>\n

Breaking the spell<\/strong><\/p>\n