[sethrin]

I think that the actual issue is the collective desire for punishment, and our inability to forgive others. From what I can see, forgiveness is something that we should strive to achieve as soon as possible after an offense. It's far too easy to hold people in public contempt, or prison, far longer than their just deserts.

[overgard]

I think forgiveness assumes that most of these “righteous“ crusaders are actually personally angry though, which is rarely the case. It’s frequently just virtue signalling in a way that sociopathically ignores that a real human beings’ reputation is at stake and the massive consequences of that.

[sethrin]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure how you could know that, or why it would be a precondition to forgiveness. Assuming that large numbers of people are dishonest and sociopathic may not be incorrect, but acting as if that were true seems pretty misguided.

The problem of forgiveness is forgiving atrocity. Yeshua bar Youssif suggested that one should "turn the other cheek," that is, not just to immediately forgive the offense, but to immediately give the perpetrator the opportunity to commit the same offense again. The application of this precept to persons such as Robert Bowers is a sickening thought -- clearly we must not condone atrocity in the name of forgiveness. Yet we must come in time to forgive, and indeed, sooner than our wont. The matter is a frequent and weighty concern for me; I don't have any answers.