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Notes -
I don’t care for Cenk Uyger, but if a 20 year old Republican killed him in front of a crowd at a college I would be just as terrified and just as horrified if people celebrated it. I don’t think bringing up a nonviolent activist’s views is even necessary in the first 24 hours after he was publicly assassinated. They’re irrelevant.
I guess I just don’t feel burning hatred for my political opponents, even if I accept conflict theory as necessary. The main reason I’m not a mistake theorist is I don’t believe most people make decisions based on reason; you can’t make a mistake based on reason if you didn’t use reason in the first place.
Sometimes politics has serious divisions that reflect competing interests, needs, and views of the good. But even if I had to use political power to restrain someone from opposing my interests in a zero-sum game, I wouldn’t feel glee, but sorrow that they forced me to do that, that we couldn’t come to an accommodation. I would much rather turn an enemy into an ally than defeat him, but I accept the need to win and the reality of defection and evil. (I’ve also never felt the urge to cheer at a sports game, so maybe I’m just missing an element of tribal psychology that most people have.)
I don’t know. I just hate that people feel psychological glee at the death of an activist. It’s not that they’re saying it, but that they’re feeling it that hurts. I’ve said a lot of vile things in the heat of the moment, things I deeply regret. But people are doubling and tripling down on their glee like death is a game. That’s some serious desensitization to suffering. I just happen to think that schedenfreude is sadism, and it corrupts the soul.
Seriously. On raw tactics alone, my response for that first 24 hours would be telling anyone celebrating to sit down and shut the fuck up. Hold your damn peace, and hope that it's something more compicated than "one of ours wacked the guy".
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