[spencerflem]

There's plenty of policy that I can agree to disagree on.

But this is such blantant, needless, willful cruelty.

Gleeful, even.

I've talked to someone with opinions like yours IRL before and one thing we disagreed on is that he was unable to name a single person that he considered to be 'evil'. Do you feel the same way?

[CapricornNoble]

No, I've watched enough narcosicario execution videos to know that there are objectively evil people in the world. These two guys in particular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Trevi%C3%B1o_Morales

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heriberto_Lazcano_Lazcano

[spencerflem]

What would you think of people who saw the same videos and cheered it on?

Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?

I don't think there's any satisfying explanation for people who would do that other than:

- They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine. (Ie. insane. Or stupid if you prefer.)

Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice. Or don't believe they're real and that the videos must have been staged or overblown.

- They see what's happening and understand it and approve anyways because they genuinely like seeing people suffer, or greedily think that the victim's suffering will improve their own life. (Ie. evil).

- Some mix of the two

[CapricornNoble]

> What would you think of people who saw the same videos and cheered it on?

I see that all the time online, actually. I think there are a lot of broken-brained, hurt people in the world, who don't know how to channel their emotions in productive manner. I don't think cheerleading sadist edgelords are evil. Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.

> Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?

There's a big difference between "liking a strongman" and flaying people alive. Consider asking "what is the utility people are getting from the strongman?"

> - They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine.

To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?

> Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice.

Actually that sometimes happens. The infamous "Ghost Rider" video features a guy getting his face melted off. The backstory, though, is the victim in that video is a rival cartel sicario who threatened to burn alive the daughter of some other cartel boss. I suppose a minority of cartels still have an honor system where they don't go around murdering children....well, this guy got captured and they didn't take too kindly to the threats he had made, so they gave him the exact punishment he was promising to inflict on a child.

I have no sympathy for him, he got what he deserved. That's an outlier case and overall I consider sicarios of all stripes some of the worst humans on the planet....but in Mexico they somehow have some "Robin Hood" appeal in some communities, from what little I've read.

[spencerflem]

Look, cards on the table, I believe what ICE is doing is evil of the same caliber as the sicarios.

They just found a "loophole" around the Convention Against Torture [1]. And before that have been simply ignoring judges who have brought it up. They are reopening Guantanamo Bay to be used as a detention center. Beyond a shadow of any doubt these people are being tortured.

The people they're sending are given no due process. There is no trial. And not that illegal immigrants deserve torture but some of the people they're sending are not even illegal immigrants [2].

This is indiscriminat wanton gleeful torturous violence by unidentified masked goons against people whose only crime was wanting the same standard of life we happened to be born into (if even: some committed no crime at all and without trials we may never know)

> Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.

In this case at least, the supporters actions directly lead to whats happening and they continue to support it and take actions to make sure it keeps happening.

> To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?

I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power. I'm indifferent to multiculturalism and I hope that neoconservative culture is stomped out with extreme prejudice, much like was tried with Nazi culture.

1. https://www.vox.com/scotus/416163/trump-supreme-court-deport...

2. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ice-admits-administrative-er...

[CapricornNoble]

>They just found a "loophole" around the Convention Against Torture

Colonial Outcasts on YT regularly makes the point that "Techniques of Imperialism used against The Colonies eventually rebounds back domestically in the form of fascism". Snatching people and sending them to questionable countries for imprisonment/intel extraction/torture is what the CIA was doing in conjunction with the help of the Assad regime(!!!).

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/comment-when-assads-horr...

> I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power.

I can agree with this sentiment, but:

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." -- Kosh, Babylon 5

It's why I displaced to Asia, where I'm supporting high trust, reasonably well-functioning societies, and can minimize my contributions to either America's domestic insanity or America's material support (intel, munitions, diplomatic cover, etc.) for the Gaza genocide. I'm trying to distance myself from shitbag regimes for a few more years until my retirement, and then reduce my family's relationship with The West to only being a source of hopefully-ancillary passive income thereafter.

[spencerflem]

Sounds like we pretty much agree then.

(Should have been obvious :p, you have been lovely to talk to)

Its horrific what the CIA has done and continues to do. So many of the world's evils can directly be traced back to them. And the colonisation project as a whole of course.

I also agree that its very unlikely we will be able to work our way out of a system that nobody can comprehend and seems to have evolved to trap and perpetuate itself.

Penelope Scott describes it beautifully in https://penelopescott.substack.com/p/what-does-mysteries-for... imo.

But I stand by that there seems to be some percentage of the world that takes pleasure in the suffering of others and the knowledge that they have something others lack. And their influence has made things much harder for everyone.

I still feel like I have the right to be frustrated and the people who seem to be deluded as to what's actually happening, and scornful of those who actively aid & abet the crimes against humanity going on around us.

For myself, I carry no stocks as it aligns myself with the corporations and investors who are a huge factor in our evil. I refuse to work for big tech or anywhere where the user is the product. I go to protests despite the futility of it. Probably I should move, like you, or find other ways to do more.

I don't fault people for drawing a different line on what's reasonable and practical to do in a society designed to make ethical behavior impossible.

I still take flights despite it killing the environment, pay taxes to the US despite it mainly going to genocide, eat meat, buy consumer products made with slave labor, hoard wealth past the worldwide median. So I know I'm on shakey ground.

But the people actively opposed and working against peace movements I can't find any love in my heart for.