If we tie it back to love of China and Uyghurs we could go with “If there’s a Uyghur genocide in China, then there’s also a Black genocide in America!”
Or maybe “How do you pose a country should respond to violent separatism and terrorist attacks?”
But then it all just pivots into Ukraine and Russia. First to accuse the other of serving Putin wins. (Or loses?)
Which then provokes a call to separate genocides into ones using bombs and bullets and ones that aren’t.
Which then circles on back to Palestine and Israel.
Have you considered genociding the genociders? Nobody ever really wants to talk about using their methods against them because it’s dark, brutal, and requires dehumanizing people even if we see their actions as inhuman. So we frame the struggle as one of righteousness, remaining noble when they do not, compassionate to the point they exploit it as a weakness. We’re up against callous, selfish, cruel people of all religions, political philosophies, and immutable traits who think one of those things makes them and their tribe superior to those not of the tribe. They infiltrate, corrupt, or bypass whatever social systems we govern ourselves with, sometimes for their personal gain, sometimes for the sake of the state over the rights of the individuals within the state. People seem to accept that fighting back is sometimes the option but want it to be cinematic underdog triumph stories, as if violence as a last resort and with deep regret is more noble than using whatever opportunity one has to eliminate an enemy that has declared themselves an enemy, knows they’re brutal, dispenses death on the daily, and wouldn’t hesitate to destroy someone they identified as an enemy or undesirable.
That’s the core of the moral dilemma. It exists because one side says to take such action is wrong but the other side has no problem doing so, and in our hesitation the most vulnerable are abused, raped, and slaughtered. They currently don’t understand any language but violence, so at what point do we respond to them on their terms? We’ll carry the burden of what we’ve done for our lifetime because we recognize that human beings are human, even one as vile as Trump. He and his kind are irredeemable because no amount of appeals to goodness will sway them from their course and every day you spend trying to reason with them is another day their hate and power has to abuse the most vulnerable. You could lock them away and prevent that individual from causing harm, but that’s a singular solution after the fact and life has shown the threat of such consequence does nothing to stop such people from acting on their impulses in the moment. At what point do people who’d prefer not to harm other people decide that violence is violent but the only means of preventing others from committing it? When does their intolerable behavior come full circle and become a solution we find tolerable? At what point do individuals start putting themselves between the victim and the victimizer but instead of self sacrificing in an effort to slow them down, meets violence with violence and ends the threat?
I guess the point of becoming like them is that we do so not for our personal satisfaction or gain, as they do, but to try and eliminate the threat to those who can’t defend themselves presently and give those who will come after us a better foundation upon which to build their version of society. My grandfather fought Nazis in WWII, and while he never shared all the details I know at some point he was forced to kill indoctrinated kids with guns because if he didn’t he and his would be killed and the regime they were seeking to topple would continue doing what they were doing. It’s a shit reality and I know he carried the burden of what he had to do for the rest of his life, but he survived, they didn’t, he came home and spent the remainder of his years being a decent human being, they forfeited their chance at that because they fought for a cruel version of society. I don’t want to have to embrace the kill or be killed mentality, but at what point do we accept it’s come to that stand our ground on the terms they’ve set?
Then we agree on a lot of things. It is true that these tyrants and fascists will only respect violence, so sometimes that is what we must use - to defend, and sometimes even to attack to prevent even worse things. I cannot see any fault in what Ukraine is doing right now for example, they have all the right to attack Russia back. But targeting schools or hospitals like Russia does? No, that would be unacceptable even as a counter.
My point is more that even the nazis still got a trials after the immediate warring was over, before they were hanged. We cannot just start random murdering, it has to be based on the moral rules we are trying to uphold, or we lose the things we are trying to defend. Where the point is when violence is needed, then, is the better question, yes
Well, you could play it out a bit from there.
If we tie it back to love of China and Uyghurs we could go with “If there’s a Uyghur genocide in China, then there’s also a Black genocide in America!”
Or maybe “How do you pose a country should respond to violent separatism and terrorist attacks?”
But then it all just pivots into Ukraine and Russia. First to accuse the other of serving Putin wins. (Or loses?)
Which then provokes a call to separate genocides into ones using bombs and bullets and ones that aren’t.
Which then circles on back to Palestine and Israel.
For true ouroubos debatelording.
Have you considered genociding the genociders? Nobody ever really wants to talk about using their methods against them because it’s dark, brutal, and requires dehumanizing people even if we see their actions as inhuman. So we frame the struggle as one of righteousness, remaining noble when they do not, compassionate to the point they exploit it as a weakness. We’re up against callous, selfish, cruel people of all religions, political philosophies, and immutable traits who think one of those things makes them and their tribe superior to those not of the tribe. They infiltrate, corrupt, or bypass whatever social systems we govern ourselves with, sometimes for their personal gain, sometimes for the sake of the state over the rights of the individuals within the state. People seem to accept that fighting back is sometimes the option but want it to be cinematic underdog triumph stories, as if violence as a last resort and with deep regret is more noble than using whatever opportunity one has to eliminate an enemy that has declared themselves an enemy, knows they’re brutal, dispenses death on the daily, and wouldn’t hesitate to destroy someone they identified as an enemy or undesirable.
But what’s the point of fighting against them, if we’re just going to become the same?
That’s the core of the moral dilemma. It exists because one side says to take such action is wrong but the other side has no problem doing so, and in our hesitation the most vulnerable are abused, raped, and slaughtered. They currently don’t understand any language but violence, so at what point do we respond to them on their terms? We’ll carry the burden of what we’ve done for our lifetime because we recognize that human beings are human, even one as vile as Trump. He and his kind are irredeemable because no amount of appeals to goodness will sway them from their course and every day you spend trying to reason with them is another day their hate and power has to abuse the most vulnerable. You could lock them away and prevent that individual from causing harm, but that’s a singular solution after the fact and life has shown the threat of such consequence does nothing to stop such people from acting on their impulses in the moment. At what point do people who’d prefer not to harm other people decide that violence is violent but the only means of preventing others from committing it? When does their intolerable behavior come full circle and become a solution we find tolerable? At what point do individuals start putting themselves between the victim and the victimizer but instead of self sacrificing in an effort to slow them down, meets violence with violence and ends the threat?
I guess the point of becoming like them is that we do so not for our personal satisfaction or gain, as they do, but to try and eliminate the threat to those who can’t defend themselves presently and give those who will come after us a better foundation upon which to build their version of society. My grandfather fought Nazis in WWII, and while he never shared all the details I know at some point he was forced to kill indoctrinated kids with guns because if he didn’t he and his would be killed and the regime they were seeking to topple would continue doing what they were doing. It’s a shit reality and I know he carried the burden of what he had to do for the rest of his life, but he survived, they didn’t, he came home and spent the remainder of his years being a decent human being, they forfeited their chance at that because they fought for a cruel version of society. I don’t want to have to embrace the kill or be killed mentality, but at what point do we accept it’s come to that stand our ground on the terms they’ve set?
Then we agree on a lot of things. It is true that these tyrants and fascists will only respect violence, so sometimes that is what we must use - to defend, and sometimes even to attack to prevent even worse things. I cannot see any fault in what Ukraine is doing right now for example, they have all the right to attack Russia back. But targeting schools or hospitals like Russia does? No, that would be unacceptable even as a counter.
My point is more that even the nazis still got a trials after the immediate warring was over, before they were hanged. We cannot just start random murdering, it has to be based on the moral rules we are trying to uphold, or we lose the things we are trying to defend. Where the point is when violence is needed, then, is the better question, yes