10 Comments
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Thorsten Claus's avatar

This was very thoughtful — an analysis with good examples that made it easy to transfer to all other biases and opinions and global events. Interesting and useful.

John Duffner's avatar

I want #2 to be an extreme outlier, but what makes that harder to believe is that multiple people I know in real life, including an immediate family member, have been acting that way. A week later some haven’t even stopped. From what I gather this is sadly not an uncommon experience. However one of the worst offenders (“karma is a fickle bitch” was his post) had the sense to apologize, and a left of center friend reached out unprompted to express his horror at the whole thing. I truly hope the latter is more common, even as I have trouble getting past the revelation of ghoulishness in my personal meatspace.

Open Source Defense's avatar

There's a spectrum within #2 of people, where one end is people who genuinely believe that and the other is people who (like many people) say violent things when it all feels abstract/impersonal to them.

Khal Spencer, Ph.D.'s avatar

You got that about right, as Thorsten says.

Chuck Turtleman's avatar

Damn near exactly my thoughts. I was working on my own substack about this, but I think I'll just delete it and share this one. Bravo!

David Yamane's avatar

Appreciate your thoughtful reflections and analysis as always.