Comment by SpicyLemonZest
7 hours ago
Understanding, absolutely. None of us are immune from propaganda, and most of us have at one time or another been swayed by selective arguments and echo chambers to behave poorly.
I don’t like that you have empathy for people who are right this second steering the government in a project of performative cruelty against me. I think you should withhold your empathy until they’ve been stopped and appropriately punished for their misdeeds.
To be very clear: there's a difference between the people shaping/benefiting from/profiting from this system, and those being shaped by it. And, without sharing too much personal info, I am very much one of those being attacked by such a project of performative cruelty, and far too many people I know and love have suffered - and the architects of these projects must not escape accountability.
But I have to believe that a sizable number of people exist out there: the ones who have not carpetbagged on the ragebait economy, but who have been the ones taken down an algorithmic video-feed rabbit hole primed because of the news channel playing at their workplace or words of hatred shared by a community leader... that this person has been taught to fear rather than understand, that that person still has the innate capacity to understand, and that a future can be built on that capacity.
Surely punishing the people will make them vote for us!
Do you think justice should only be dealt out when you think it'll generate a positive outcome for you personally on the other side?
Seems to me that people who have committed crimes should be punished for those crimes. Call it "LAW AND ORDER!!!!" or something
I think that winning (and retaining political advantage over time) is probably a prerequisite for enacting any punishments, much less correcting other issues.
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Increasing gas prices seems very well correlated with people not voting for the incumbent party, and I can't imagine these people not feeling they're being punished by the price, so ...
... yeah I'd say punishing the people can make them vote for us, or at least not vote for not-us, which is basically equivalent.
I don't accept the idea that e.g. Greg Bovino should be allowed to have brownshirts murder people in my city as long as enough voters support him. I reject the legitimacy of any political system that can't or won't punish him for his crimes.
I do have a lot of faith in democracy, so I'm optimistic that most people can be persuaded to accept his punishment if the argument is presented well. I'm sure some number of people who called for him to murder people will pretend they were never on his side, and that'll frustrate me to no end, but such is life.
There’s a difference between wanting to punish the officials responsible, and wanting to punish the people who elected them. In the context of the broader discussion it sounded like you were advocating for the latter, which isn’t a winning strategy. But even if you only mean the officials, punishment is a bad centerpiece of a campaign; it’s something that one should do quietly after you have already won.
(The exception is right wing politicians, who seem to be allowed to win elections while openly calling for punishment of their opponents. Call it a quirk of the US electorate, or a flaw in human nature, who knows. It is what it is.)
Are you perhaps mixing up empathy and sympathy?
No, it's the idea of "getting in their minds" and understanding what their perspective must be from the inside that I object to. It's not the right time for that. If a bully starts punching the guy who lives one house north of me, I need you to help get the bully off of him, not start theorizing about why bullies act this way and why people might support them.