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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Kayeka: I disagree. It's actually more likely to cause an upsurge of hope that the GOP would not attempt to contest the results of the election, generating more enthusiasm to vote.
@Capsase: Yeah, I'm inclined to invoke the rules on you and say that calling for someone's assassination is over the line here.
@Satoshi: Pence is a prick even by GOP standards. Nobody likes his moralizing. He was only included in the ticket to cater to evangelicals.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think the point Alley Oop is making is that what you are saying (or at least how you're expressing it) is going beyond that, and into psychologically unhealthy territory.
For reasons she already elaborated on, that you don't really seem to be acknowledging.
You might still disagree with those reasons, but there's more being said there.
Edited by LSBK on Oct 3rd 2020 at 3:12:56 AM
Pence lacks Trump's thuggish charisma, and even more importantly he only appeals to Evangelical voters and no one else. The Obama-Trump voters that played a massive role in Trump's victory? Pence doesn't have them.
The very best scenario for Pence is that he has the same (horrible) odds as Trump, alternatively, he could have even worst chances.
He's a good Vice President (practically not morally), a terrible head of a ticket.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangI didn't say both sides were equally bad. Let me try to clarify what I mean:
If there's, say, a collection of money to get homes for homeless transgender people, more people would support it with the motivation "Fuck transphobes!" than, say, "Transgender people are suffering, and they need our help." Obviously that's still a decent reason to support the collection compared to not supporting it, but still.
It's like some people can't do good if the main motivation is compassion.
I can understand if they hadn't heard it before had, but this likely exposed a lot of people.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I was wholly against the Iraq War and think the US shouldn’t have gone into Afghanistan, but I wasn’t against the bin Laden assassination. He attacked the US, killed three thousand people, was a continuing (if lesser) threat, and a mission like the one that killed him is difficult and high-risk as it is; a capture mission would be even riskier and more difficult.
I remember Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were both positively gleeful when he was killed; they’re New Yorkers and 9/11 was probably the most traumatic thing that ever happened to them, so I can’t blame them.
I’m opposed to US drone strikes overseas that frequently kill civilians, and disgusted that the Obama Administration tried to disguise civilian casualties by defining any Arab male over 15 years old as a “combatant”. But a targeted mission against the specific person responsible for 9/11? That, I can accept. If the US had gone that route from the start instead of getting themselves into a war in Afghanistan they’d be in a lot less of a mess now.
All this to say, I can also understand why people who have been harmed by Trump, or who have witnessed all the harm he has done over the last four years, would not be unhappy about this turn of events. He’s a white supremacist, and he has made white supremacist ideas mainstream in the United States; he is and has been a consistent danger to the health and lives to large numbers of innocent people.
Edited by Galadriel on Oct 3rd 2020 at 4:20:57 AM
I think the point Alley Oop is making is that what you are saying (or at least how you're expressing it) is going beyond that, and into psychologically unhealthy territory.
For reasons she already elaborated on, that you don't really seem to be acknowledging.
You might still disagree with those reasons, but there's more being said there.
No, I think that responds to her point quite adequately.
The cycle of revenge is simply one manifestation of righteous hostility, wanting the person who murdered your family member to go to jail is just as applicable. They just cherry-picked the time it can be counterproductive to demonize well-deserved hostility.
If a man hurts you, hurts your family, hurts fellow members of society, it's perfectly reasonable to want him to be harmed. That doesn't mean that every method of harm is good, but I never said it was. I haven't been calling for his assassination.
But I sure as hell will never condemn the people who in their righteous anger cheered at his sickness.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang@Redmess Technically, OBL was not assassinated by the US Military, he was more "killed in action" or "suicide by cop".
It's not like they killed him in his sleep, the guy wasn't gonna let himself be taken in. IIRC he even took a hostage before they shot him. Moreover, the guy wasn't a common crook but an enemy combatant in war.
With such actions occurring on US soil, I would not be strongly opposed actually. If there was a domestic terrorist group in the US that operated on the same scale as Al-Qaeda and killed 2000 people in a single attack, I'd totally be calling for very extreme actions to be taken.
With Trump specifically, I think indulging in the enjoyment of another's suffering too thoroughly is unhealthy for the person felling the contempt. Having said that, I will say I consider this to be good news, because it means he has a more limited capacity to harm others. Indeed, I feel God has been answering my prayers lately.
I will say I don't feel like getting too high and mighty over it, just a warning that anger is addictive and also tends to impair one's judgement. So, just be careful or you'll end up like those guys who keep saying they want certain criminals to die horrible deaths and be fed to pigs.
Leviticus 19:34To elaborate: Focusing more on the people you hate than the people you want to help can often make you less productive and less likely to do good.
Remember that naked statue of Donald Trump that was placed in public, years ago? Useless, of course. It served no real purpose, as far as effecting positive political change goes. The energy put into making it, and talking about it, could have been used in much more productive ways.
And still the statue was somehow regarded as something of value, politically, just because it enraged Trump, and enraging him was regarded as a useful thing in itself.
Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Oct 3rd 2020 at 10:21:42 AM
@ LSBK
Thank you. Trump is a particularly extreme case, enough so that I don't actually begrudge anyone who feels good about this. And while I don't feel happiness over his death, I'm an irrational enough being that I do still get some schadenfreude over Trump experiencing the symptoms he subjected so many others to through his terrible governance.
But to claim that sadism and the pursuit of vengeance are moral virtues? That people who believe this are heroes? And that they should be seen as values a society ought to strive for? That is a philosophy I find and have personally seen to be deeply harmful.
Semi-related as this was a conversation in another thread, but the rise in self-righteousness as a justifier for cruelty is one of the main reasons fandom spaces on Tumblr and Twitter have become the toxic hellscapes they are. "You drew a character dating the wrong person, and it made me genuinely angry, thus I am 100% justified in telling you to kill yourself as penance for the emotional pain you caused me". According to what Spartan and many others who have advocated for similar beliefs as his on revenge, this is completely acceptable behavior.
Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 3rd 2020 at 4:26:51 AM
@MichaelKatsuro: Trump's ego is based on his ability to feel superior to others. Those displays are direct psychological attacks designed to throw him off. They serve a legitimate purpose.
Maggie Haberman (NYT)
: "Conley has now jeopardized his own ability to be believed by the public. It is in part because he is adhering to the wishes of a patient who does not want the information about yesterday disclosed, according to people briefed on what has taken place so far.
"For his entire life, the president has been phobic about illness and extremely wary of hospitals, according to people who know him personally or have worked with him. He would not have gone to a hospital if he was feeling relatively fine.
"A key thing Conley said is that the course the virus is taking in the president will reach a critical period where it becomes clear in 7-10 days (presumably meaning from onset of symptoms). It will take some days to know the prognosis."
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 3rd 2020 at 4:24:46 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
In part that's because he's so unpredictable by nature, but we have seen direct changes in his actions based on his sense of his public image, whether it be support or humiliation. He cannot stand any direct attack on his ego.
Edited by Fighteer on Oct 3rd 2020 at 4:26:07 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Because I have enough self-awareness to know it's wrong. It's a guilty pleasure, not something that should be normalized or encouraged as virtuous and unironically desirable. There's a reason An Eye For Our Eye is now understood to be barbaric.
It's not like some people on these forums haven't said some incredibly toxic and hurtful things that I could and should take glee in their suffering over, or that I should be encouraged to respond with cruel statements of my own, and by that logic be totally justified, but I don't, because I realize that's immoral.
I'm not claiming that people being happy about this are necessarily wrong, because again Trump is an extreme case. But for that same reason it should not be normalized, and Spartan's implication that harboring passionate hatred for others is a sign of moral goodness and a behavior that society should encourage as virtuous, is something I find deeply unhealthy.
Edited by AlleyOop on Oct 3rd 2020 at 6:20:49 AM
Wikipedia says that while the raid on OB Ls compound wasn’t an explicit “kill no matter what” mission the exception was that they’d kill him.
Then I’d suggest having the self-awareness to recognise when is a good time to take a moralist stance on unhealthy behaviour and when it just gets people angry.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 3rd 2020 at 8:31:32 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

@Kayeka Hardly. Trump's death is going to cause chaos in the Republican campaign as various factions try to take over the empty throne, leaving the way open for Biden and the Democrats to prevent more voter suppression from happening and letting Biden's campaign reach people undisturbed by Trump screaming.
Edited by Resileafs on Oct 3rd 2020 at 4:10:32 AM