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by cm2012 649 days ago
There's enough truly bad actors out there, not everything is shades of gray. Cartels, North Korea, ISIS, etc.
3 comments

‘Truly bad’ still relies on the perspective of the participant though. Parents point is that ‘bad’ is a matter of perspective, and that right or wrong, at lease some cartel/nk/isis operatives believe their actions are justified for some greater good, Palestine/Israel opinions and belief are obviously a more easy to understand perspective, but the point still stands.
NK operatives feel incredibly lucky they get to not starve. Unless they got to where they are at due to nepotism.
You don't know that, you've never been there or probably spoken to a north korean. Not saying you're wrong (i can admit i have no idea), but i'm annoyed you're swallowing narratives from warlords who have been known to lie to start wars as if it's assumed default true
I have no idea about nk politics, but if the media continually pumps out ‘the west is the reason we’re starving, join the military today!’ then they might feel lucky to both be fed, and to be serving their country.
Hitler thought he is a good guy. Stalin thought he is good guy. Everyone thinks he is a good guy from the own perspective.
Really? Some cartel operatives believe their actions are justified for some greater good? Well unless you count filling your own pockets a "greater good" then they are objectively extremely deranged and delusional which possibly makes them even more dangerous.

> relies on the perspective of the participant though > Parents point is that ‘bad’ is a matter of perspective, and that right or wrong,

Not really, though. Some things are just 'bad' (you or the perpetrator might not agree but that doesen't change that fact).

Nothing is inherently right or wrong, see moral nihilism. At any rate, cartel operatives may have other intentions than just simply fill their own pockets. Maybe they are selling medical marijuana to people in need because they would love to help people, and get money doing that, how about this?
You're naming things that are in the grey zone though. For example I can find polls [0] suggesting that North Korea is one of the least popular countries, but not strikingly different in absolute terms than someone like Russia or the USA. Internationally speaking they aren't unusually bad actors.

The problem with a "no shades of grey" stance is that in any large organised group there are going to be some good points and reasonable ideologies for why they have banded together to do what they do. They may be mistaken on important points, and it certainly may be necessary to put all empathy aside and try to ruthlessly crush them regardless of any good points they have - but in practice that approach almost always leads to terrible results compared to negotiating to emphasise the good and suppress the bad. Take ISIS - the reason we have groups like ISIS running around is generally because of a no-shades-of-grey approach taken to deal with their precursors. The US policy in the Middle East typically destabilises things (although they are hardly alone in doing that).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_North_Kor... - "Results of the 2017 BBC World Service poll. Views of North Korean Influence by country"