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Notes -
Not super invested in this argument, but --
This only makes sense if you extend care to all humans equally as part of an internationalist humanitarian ethos. Many people don't, so they don't really care if 1 or 100 or 100,000 Somalians get killed in reaction to bothering us. If you ask them directly they would probably mumble something about how terrible it is because it's socially expected, but if you asked them to e.g. pay 5% higher taxes to Stop the Nuking of Somalians I doubt you would get much support.
Internationalist humanitarian true-believers are only (somewhat) common in U.S., Europe, and maybe Japan, countries so rich that luxury beliefs have become widespread. Most other nations' peoples still posses the tribal mindset I outlined above, and so to them the value of Somalian lives is approximately zero. Belgium and France might whine about it, but they increasingly irrelevant. Russia and China, who are relevant, would not care, though they would certainly cynically posture and feign outrage (just like the U.S. often does).
I don't really think maximum brutality is as beyond the pale as many (including myself) hope. There is a lot of room for American nastiness before Russia and China seem like more trustworthy and reliable allies, IMO.
Governments are so prone to lying, or at best motivated reasoning , about taxes that there's a certain base level of "if you tell us we need 5% taxes we won't believe you, no matter what it's for".
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No doubt Saudi Arabia would see this as ‘just what happens. FAFO’. But the Latin American elites do not differ in worldview(or complexion) from Anglosphere and Western European elites, and there’s a butload of unstable countries with serious crime problems that really don’t want to set that precedent.
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