good post

https://twitter.com/BadEmpanada/status/1661212920938737665

  • aaro [they/them, she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I get that you're not being serious here but this is exactly what I mean. They had a different mommy. Maybe they were abused and only learned to influence their surroundings through violence. Maybe the truest love they'd ever felt was the pride of their parents for believing the same lies. Almost certainly they had the un-humanity of the Other drilled into their head harder than it was drilled in to yours or mine.

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I will simply not be excusing genocide.

      If you are going to reply to this with further sob story hypotheticals, simply do not, fuck off instead.

      • aaro [they/them, she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        look comrade, I have literally already - in a reply to you, not elsewhere that you might have missed - stated that a just system would put bullets in these people's heads yesterday. All I'm saying is we need to understand what made them like this in order to keep more of them from existing.

          • aaro [they/them, she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Friend. Pal. Buddy. You're making shit up about what I said. I'm not excusing genocide and to accuse me of such is either deliberate bad faith or a straight-out lie. I have genocide victims in my family and I don't want to let you win by knowing that you're pissing me off, but you're pissing me off.

            I'll read your hour long essay when you demonstrate to me that you have read the thirty seconds of conversation that we're literally having with each other. Until then, I'm reading the other essay I was linked by a person who is far more effective at communicating and coherent than you are.

        • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          the point is that you can recognize both the bad conditions and traumas that would make a person want to accept brainwashing while also understanding their own conscious acquiescence to the material benefits of that situation, and often an integration of the accompanying propaganda. it's not a carrot and a stick, it's popcorn and a movie, but i don't think we have to care per se about which factor is potentially more dominant in making a person a genocide supporter: they're helping do global murder.

          • EngineerGaming [none/use name]
            ·
            2 years ago

            This comment doesn't actually disagree with the person at all, though. You're right, and they're right. We should be distrustful of veterans, but not because we're mystically superior beings who are just built different. We should be distrustful of them because they have a provably dangerous mindset, given all the murder.

            So why does the distinction matter? Well, it wouldn't, if people wouldn't also keep bringing morality in the conversation. Once we start talking about some sort of abstract moral judge of character, the distinction becomes very important, because of ethical implications I'm too burnt out right now to explain.