¶ The Initiative to Cultivate Empathy · 11 July 2025
I think we can all agree that the United States has a problem. Due to historical deficiencies in our moral educational system, we have suffered an internal invasion of intolerance, xenophobia and racism. These corrosive sociopathies have now reached such critical levels that they are interfering with our ability to operate a humane progressive democracy. It is time to fix this.
It will be expensive, but I believe this effort is crucial for our national survival, so I propose budgeting approximately $75 billion to create the Initiative to Cultivate Empathy. This new federal agency will recruit Americans who feel, or performatively claim to feel, racism or intolerance towards other human beings. In order to help them overcome these handicaps, it will temporarily employ them, on a paid full-time basis, to seek out immigrants or people who look like they believe immigrants look. When they find such people, these agents will use the full power of federal authority to give them sandwiches, fresh fruit and low-calorie probiotic soda, and to talk to them to learn about their cultural identities, life challenges and traditional preferences in hip hop.
The Initiative will also take inspiration from the current administration's laudable willingness to spend money to house immigrants, or people who look like they believe immigrants look, or graduate students with opinions, and will build and operate a set of federal shelters, located where most needed, to provide comfortable transitional housing for newly arrived immigrants or other people in temporary need. These facilities will also run supportive services, such as classes so that agents who only speak English have the opportunity to learn another language, or dinner groups in which they can experience food that contains spices, or quiet rooms that contain large-print books about world history.
The goal of this Initiative is to produce a meaningful increase in the average level of compassion among those involved, and thus to strengthen all of American Society. You could think of this as the Mean New Deal.
But the official name will, again, be the
Initiative to
Cultivate
Empathy.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
It will be expensive, but I believe this effort is crucial for our national survival, so I propose budgeting approximately $75 billion to create the Initiative to Cultivate Empathy. This new federal agency will recruit Americans who feel, or performatively claim to feel, racism or intolerance towards other human beings. In order to help them overcome these handicaps, it will temporarily employ them, on a paid full-time basis, to seek out immigrants or people who look like they believe immigrants look. When they find such people, these agents will use the full power of federal authority to give them sandwiches, fresh fruit and low-calorie probiotic soda, and to talk to them to learn about their cultural identities, life challenges and traditional preferences in hip hop.
The Initiative will also take inspiration from the current administration's laudable willingness to spend money to house immigrants, or people who look like they believe immigrants look, or graduate students with opinions, and will build and operate a set of federal shelters, located where most needed, to provide comfortable transitional housing for newly arrived immigrants or other people in temporary need. These facilities will also run supportive services, such as classes so that agents who only speak English have the opportunity to learn another language, or dinner groups in which they can experience food that contains spices, or quiet rooms that contain large-print books about world history.
The goal of this Initiative is to produce a meaningful increase in the average level of compassion among those involved, and thus to strengthen all of American Society. You could think of this as the Mean New Deal.
But the official name will, again, be the
Initiative to
Cultivate
Empathy.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.