They say if you sit still long enough in Moscow, the cold starts talking to you. Not in whispers—just the slow, cracking language of old bones breaking under history. I’d been there five days. Window facing east. Four floors up. Crosswind out of Saint Petersburg. The rifle case slept under the sink like a dog that knew its purpose. All I had to do was wait for the old tyrant to walk into the light.
I watched him every morning—same routine, same pair of gloves, same smirk like he knew the world was too spineless to stop him. I didn’t hate him. That’s what makes this kind of work possible. Hate makes your hands shake. I respected the efficiency, even admired the conviction. But a blade’s a blade, and this one had cut too deep, for too long.
I sipped stale coffee, black as the thoughts in my head. The file said 9:43 a.m. He’d step out for air like clockwork, believing in his own myth. Thinking the devil doesn’t get shot in daylight.
He wore the coat. The one the dissidents talked about in whispers. I could see the fur collar through the scope. Two guards. Useless. Just shapes in suits. I exhaled slow. The city was a whisper behind glass. I wasn’t there for revenge or revolution. I was there because some men don’t get to die of old age.
The crosshairs found his temple like it was always meant to be there. I’d rehearsed this moment ten thousand times. Breath in. Silence. Breath out. Stillness.
The trigger didn’t click. It sighed.
And just like that, the world had a new scar.
I zipped the case. Washed the cup. Stepped out into the crowd like I’d never existed. That’s the part no one understands—the kill is the quietest moment in your life. What comes after is noise.
And in that noise, somewhere deep in the pit of power, a ghost started walking.
The floor is cold under my feet when I step from the quilt, thin as memory. My husband’s breath is slow beside me, my son curled up like a comma at the far end of the mat. The air tastes of dust and cabbage. I dress quietly—brown jacket, skirt, socks I sewed myself—and smooth my hair. In the mirror, my face looks older than I remember. Maybe it’s the hunger, or maybe it’s just how time clings to women here.
I boil water from the pump outside, watching my breath puff like a ghost above the pot. Breakfast is rice porridge, mostly water. If we’re lucky, there’s a hint of kimchi, cabbage fermented in old glass jars beneath the stairs. I don’t speak while we eat. Speaking wastes energy. My son eats slowly, watching me with his big dark eyes. He doesn’t ask why I only take a few spoonfuls. He knows.
We leave together—he for the school, me for the textile factory. The streets are gray veins through the city, lined with murals of the Great Leader smiling above us, his hand outstretched as if to catch the sky. We bow when we pass them. A woman was beaten last month for forgetting. The snow is dirty, pressed down by boots and cart wheels. Music plays from loudspeakers hidden in the trees—national hymns, songs of labor and love.
In the factory, the air is thick with fiber dust and the scent of grease. I take my seat behind the sewing machine, same one I’ve worked since I was nineteen. I’m thirty-six now, though I sometimes feel much older. My hands move automatically. Thread, pedal, fold. We make uniforms. We make them always.
There is little talk on the line. We whisper sometimes, short things about children or old dreams, but even that can feel dangerous. I remember once, two years ago, I laughed too loudly and the manager stared at me for the rest of the week. I never laughed again in that room.
When I sew, I sometimes imagine I am somewhere else. Paris. Tokyo. Even Seoul. I imagine food in markets so bright with color it hurts to look. I imagine books, and music without speeches in them. Sometimes, I imagine myself as a girl again, before the flood took our home and we were sent here to the city, before my father died building the dam.
Lunch is more porridge, with pickled radish today—rare. Someone must have done well in the quotas. I feel guilty for thinking it, but I am thankful. My stomach feels full for once, which only reminds me how long it has been.
After work, I walk the long road home. The factories release steam into the sky like wounded animals. The cold bites through my coat. I stop by the community board to read the news—a poster of the Supreme Leader visiting a hospital, a new slogan: “Work is Glory, Obedience is Freedom.” I say it aloud, just loud enough that a passerby hears me. It’s safer that way.
My son is home before me. He’s studying. I kneel beside him and correct his strokes. His calligraphy must be perfect if he ever wants to leave this neighborhood. He tells me they sang a song about unity today, and I smile. I do not ask how he feels. Feelings are too dangerous to name.
Dinner is more of the same, though we add a few wild greens I found on the way home. We eat slowly. We talk even less.
At night, when the electricity is out—which is most nights—I sit by the window, watching the moon drift through smoke. I imagine someone watching me from the other side of that sky. I imagine telling them my name. I imagine telling them I am tired, but I am still here.
In the United States, a country built on individualism and self-reliance, there exists a paradox—one where empathy, in its most extreme form, becomes suicidal. This isn’t just about personal sacrifice or selflessness; it’s about a systemic cultural force that demands individuals, and sometimes entire groups, destroy themselves in service of others—even when those others do not reciprocate or even acknowledge the sacrifice.
This concept of suicidal empathy manifests in multiple ways:
1. Suicidal Empathy at the Cultural Level: The American Martyr Complex
The United States has a history of self-sacrificial ideologies, where entire populations are expected to bear suffering for the sake of a greater good that never seems to materialize for them.
• The Working Class Martyr: A factory worker who toils for decades, destroying his body and health, not because he believes in the corporation but because he believes that hard work is inherently noble, even when it yields nothing but exhaustion and medical debt.
• The Parent Who Gives Everything: Mothers and fathers who burn themselves out trying to provide every possible opportunity for their children, often at the cost of their own dreams, only to watch their children move far away and embrace completely different values.
• The Veteran Betrayed by His Country: A soldier who enlists, believing in the ideal of national service, only to return home broken—physically, mentally, and financially—realizing that the same country he fought for now sees him as an inconvenience.
Each of these figures engages in a form of cultural suicide—not in the literal sense, but in the way they allow themselves to be consumed by an ideal that never protects them in return.
2. Suicidal Empathy and Politics: The Endless Cycle of Appeasement
America’s political landscape is riddled with ideological self-destruction masquerading as empathy.
• The Middle Class Funding Its Own Erasure: The backbone of the economy, the middle class, is constantly expected to pay higher taxes, bail out corporations, and fund welfare programs, all while watching their own quality of life deteriorate. They are told they must sacrifice for the less fortunate, yet they themselves are never saved when they fall.
• The American Guilt Complex: Entire demographics—be they racial, economic, or historical—are expected to take responsibility for past sins that were often committed before they were even born. This guilt is weaponized, creating a culture of self-destruction where people feel obligated to give up their own stability, future, and even identity in the name of “atonement.”
• The Weakness of Over-Accommodation: In an era of mass immigration and globalism, suicidal empathy manifests in policies where America prioritizes helping the world before helping its own citizens—sending billions in aid overseas while homelessness, drug addiction, and economic decline ravage its own cities.
This is not an argument against empathy itself, but against empathy without limits—where a nation and its people are expected to give and give until they have nothing left.
3. The Psychological Toll: Individual Suicidal Empathy
At the personal level, suicidal empathy plays out in how Americans internalize suffering as a virtue.
• The Empath Who Absorbs Everyone’s Pain: There is a growing culture of emotional exhaustion, where individuals are told they must understand and absorb the suffering of others, even when it destroys them. This is seen in activism burnout, caregiver fatigue, and the rise of extreme guilt-based anxiety.
• The Man Who Must Be Strong Until He Breaks: Men are expected to sacrifice their mental and emotional well-being for their families, their communities, and their country—often without any emotional support in return. The result? Skyrocketing male suicide rates, as they are told that to struggle is weakness, but to give up is cowardice.
• The People-Pleaser Who Becomes Invisible: Many Americans, especially women, are conditioned to prioritize everyone else’s needs over their own, leading to cycles of emotional depletion, depression, and, in extreme cases, suicidal ideation.
The core issue here is that there is no reciprocity—empathy should be an exchange, yet in America, it is often a one-way sacrifice.
4. Suicidal Empathy in the Global Order: The World’s Caretaker with No Healer of Its Own
America, as a superpower, engages in suicidal empathy on an international scale.
• Policing the World at the Expense of Its Own Stability: The U.S. spends trillions intervening in foreign wars, defending allies, and promoting democracy abroad, while its own infrastructure collapses and its people go without healthcare or security.
• Open Borders and National Self-Destruction: While most countries fiercely protect their identity, language, and culture, the U.S. is told that to enforce its own boundaries is immoral, even as unchecked migration strains resources and reshapes entire communities.
• The Debt of Generosity: The U.S. forgives debt, funds international projects, and absorbs global economic crises, yet receives little to no gratitude or assistance when it struggles. Other nations expect America to be the perpetual provider, even as it drowns in its own debt.
There is a limit to how much a nation, a people, or an individual can give before they collapse.
5. The Solution: Limits to Empathy, Not the Erasure of It
The problem is not empathy itself, but empathy without boundaries.
• Reciprocity Must Be Required: Empathy should not be a one-way transaction. If people, communities, and nations expect to receive, they must also be expected to give.
• Strength Is Not Cruelty: Americans must learn that setting limits is not cold-hearted—it is necessary for survival.
• Redefining Nobility: True nobility is not self-destruction, but the ability to thrive while still helping others in a sustainable way.
• Empathy Must Be Earned: Blindly sacrificing for those who would never do the same in return is not virtue—it’s self-destruction.
Suicidal empathy is not a virtue—it’s a weapon used against those who refuse to see it for what it is. If America does not learn to set limits, both as a nation and as individuals, then the cycle of self-destruction will continue, until there is nothing left to give.
