[ModernMech]

> are slippery slopes to moral absolution of any reaction.

Calling these arguments slippery slope doesn't really do much here. We are in fact at an absolute circumstance, so the slope doesn't really have much room to slip. I think the actions of the Russians are quite extreme, and we are allowed to make some moral judgements of these actions given how horrific they are. If we can't, then morality loses a lot of meaning. To say that we can't make a moral judgement is to say that the images we are seeing are not real or are not horrific, and that's a different discussion entirely.

> The US is shipping weapons to Ukraine to kill Russian soldiers. I support this and believe it to be the best action possible, but I also deeply and resolutely believe it's evil.

If you're going to take something that can be together just, right, practical, the best option, and yet still evil, we need to have a deeper discussion of what exactly your perception of evil is, because it seems to encompass quite a lot. If everything is evil then nothing is. Because since you're using such extreme words, you really have to take your argument to the extreme. And like I said, just because it's the extreme doesn't mean that's not where we currently are, so it's appropriate to analyze the extreme. Your argument taken to its conclusion would be that the allies freeing prisoners at Nazi death camps during WWII was a justified act of evil. I don't see any other way to interpret your argument.

[ethbr0]

> We are in fact at an absolute circumstance, so the slope doesn't really have much room to slip.

E.g. "Nuking Moscow isn't evil because it will end the war in Ukraine."

> deeper discussion of what exactly your perception of evil is

The opposite of good. By my calculus, killing humans is evil.

It may be effective, in that it produces a desired outcome, and it may be just, in that the outcome promotes greater justice or lessens injustice, but those are both orthogonal measurements.

If the Red Army had murdered every guard at the Auschwitz camps in January 1945, that would have been evil. It also would have probably been just.