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This is really not a healthy way to live. You don't need to take it from me, just pay attention to the sheer number of cliches along these lines---it's overwhelmingly accepted wisdom that keeping grudges like this is not good for you. "Living well is the best revenge", "don't let them live rent-free in your head", "you're just letting them hurt you even more", etc.
Even beyond that, revealing this kind of mindset dramatically weakens the potency of your arguments. It makes you sound like a strawman---the person who only becomes a white supremacist because they can't get over what some specific minorities did to them in their past. However many words dress it up, none of their beliefs are based on logic or correctness, just emotions they can't deal with properly.
I can literally point out this comment to people I know IRL as a way to argue "yup, racists really are what you think they are, here's some more confirmation that nothing they believe in is based on anything logical". This should tell you that something has gone terribly wrong on your end.
I think you're reading 'against the wall when I'm dictator' as an outburst of suppressed rage. It's plausible that isn't the case, though. One explanation: in some online communities, "up against the wall" is just a figure of speech used to ironically emphasize distaste - "redditors should be shot / furries should be shot". Another potential explanation is OP's moral system puts much less emphasis on the 'right to life' of antisocial individuals, so "X should be killed" doesn't require all-consuming anger, and rather is a casual observation. I think the first is a more plausible explanation here, but the second demonstrates that desire for violence or murder doesn't have to emerge from hatred per se.
I think the context missing here is that "X will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes" is typically targeted at abstract groups ("Furries" "Business majors" "Lakers fans who don't live in LA") or public figures ("Roger Gooddell" "Nancy Pelosi" "Martin Shkreli"). Presumably you don't actually know these people, your rage is directed towards what they do in the world. It's not personal, personal impotent murderous rage is a different animal.
It's very different to say "These three people I know personally, I'd really like to murder them. When I talk to them I think 'The world would be a better place if you were dead.' The things you've done to me personally are awful enough to deserve death." That's an expression of personal Animus, and when your political conclusions seem to follow from personal Animus, well FreudGPT doesn't need much more of a prompt does he?
It's also a profoundly anti-conservative attitude to want to murder your friends. I've noticed a contrast between Evangelical conservatives, who often hate abstract groups while being friendly to actual members of those groups; and Bloomberg Democrats, who often love groups in the abstract but hate or ignore the actual members of these groups they come across. As exemplars picture a putatively racist contractor who will complain about Puerto Ricans over beers while working with them every day, versus the Liberal BLM profile pic investment banker who has zero Black friends they speak to regularly.
I admire our friend Hoff for his willingness to examine his own psyche, but it's hard not to disagree with his conclusions after we see what premises he's working with.
See my reply to Hlynka. The “get the wall” comment was intended to be read as an obviously hyperbolic joke. I do not want to kill my ex-friends in the San Diego theatre community.
I do advocate political violence in a limited capacity, and you’re correct to note that in this sense I am profoundly different from the median conservative who just wants to restore some sort of détente, but I don’t believe it’s in any way necessary or morally right to extend that violence to individuals whose “power” was ultimately nothing more than hyper-localized and entirely social in nature.
We will ultimately need to see certain public officials killed, maimed, or permanently jailed. I truly do believe that healing in this country will need to include that. This doesn’t mean that I want the jerk who told people not to be friends with me because I’m a problematic white man to suffer this fate.
Okay, can you please explain in more detail why you are so extreme in your views and why you think violence is necessary? I actually agree with you that the identity politics and views of the modern left are insane and need to be curtailed, but I'm nowhere near justifying the awful means you endorse.
All I'm getting from these posts is that you, personally, have had a really hard time and so you think extreme, violent, measures are needed to change our society. On a societal level, why have we moved so far that we can't resolve this situation without violence?
No, I haven’t! My life could definitely be a lot better, but a huge amount of that is because of poor choices I’ve made! Apparently my posts have given people the impression that I’m some sad-sack burnout with no prospects or something like that. My income is nothing like what most of the people on this sub make, but I’m not struggling to make rent or pay bills or anything like that. I even have some discretionary income that I use for frivolous things! My love life is a mess right now, but there was a period where it wasn’t, and a lot of why it is now is, again, due to things I’m doing wrong and choices that I’m making. I don’t feel “oppressed” or anything like that.
As for why my views are “extreme”, I don’t think that’s actually true when you look at the full scope of human history. In fact the norm historically has always been that major regime changes have been incredibly bloody affairs. This was true long before Robespierre and Cromwell. When the ruling class of a country fails spectacularly, and especially when those failures seem not only avoidable but to actually be the result of specific bad ideas or corrupt motives which that ruling class actively chose, then usually blood has been spilled.
Liberal democracy was supposed to “fix” this. It was supposed to structure society in such a way that this bloodletting would no longer be necessary, nor even desirable. And for some length of time, in some countries, it even accomplished this for real! That was no mean feat, and I’m not going to pretend like it wasn’t an improvement over a lot of what came before it. The problem now is that I think the Gods of the Copybook Headings have begun to reassert themselves. I believe that some public officials in nearly all European and Euro-diaspora countries have failed their people so comprehensively - in fact, they haven’t merely failed the people, they’ve actively conspired against them - that the burning rage, the despair and hopeless and sense of injustice which have begun to proliferate among the common people of these countries is going to boil over at some point.
And I’m not even a populist! I think that some of the complaints that common people have about the government, and some of the things which they accuse the government of doing, are actually illegitimate and ill-considered! That doesn’t change the fact that the rage is real. I certainly feel it. When I see career criminals continually released back into the streets by DAs who are actively pro-criminal and anti-white, and when I see what used to be actual borders reduced to open doors, I feel burning rage at the people responsible, and a profound sense of injustice when I reflect on the fact that none of them will suffer any consequences or accountability whatsoever. Even if they get voted out, they’ll immediately land on the board of a non-profit, or get a show on a cable news network, or an academic sinecure, which in some cases will make them even more powerful - and certainly more wealthy - than they were when they were in formal elected office!
This cannot continue indefinitely. We are so far past the point of no return, as far as I can tell. And my reading of history is that these situations always end in bloodletting. And that this is not always a bad thing. In this case, since I’m not expecting to die myself, or for anyone I know or care about to die, as a result of the coming bloodletting, it’s especially easy for me to be comfortable with expecting it.
Do you disagree with my assessment of what’s coming? Or do you merely disagree that it will be something other than a calamity? Do you think that the targeted persecution of specific individuals responsible for catastrophic failed policies is the historical norm? Or do you think it’s “extreme”? Can it be both? What does “extreme” mean in this context?
Absolutely, and this still happens today in much of the world. I think it's bad, and I think one of the most important efforts of each person is to move away from this sort of world.
Do you think people didn't have burning rage during the Civil Rights movement? After the Great Depression? During the fight of the sufragettes? Hell, I'd say the rage back then compared to the limp, satiated populace we have today is barely comparable. I'm frankly shocked you just look at history, supposedly, then say the rage in the modern West is at a boiling point. People have endured far, far worse situations than we have without rebelling. We don't even have it that badly, and even if we did we have ample distraction. Bread and circuses orders of magnitude better than the romans.
You really see the modern world as irreparable without violence? I don't buy it.
I don't trust your reading of history. I think that as you admitted above, the miracle of modern liberal democracy is that we can make changes like this without bloodshed. I'd argue that we try and let those mechanisms work, and actively push for that sort of non violent revolution.
Yes I disagree with your assessment if it means violence is inevitable. Sure I think targeted persecution is a historical norm, but I also think that we've miraculously managed to move past that historical norm, as we've moved past other historical norms. Did we all the sudden go back to oral history after writing was invented? No. Permanent step changes in human history can happen when we find a vastly superior cultural technology. Liberal democracy is a step change.
Whether or not violent political purges are extreme, they are foolish, sub-optimal, and most importantly wrong. Whatever justification you try and make for them regarding our current state of the world is foolish. Perhaps in circumstances orders of magnitude worse than the West's current situation I could see the justification for violence, but even then I'd prefer we find our way without it.
What happens is not out of our control. Which path we go down depends on the actions individual people make, day to day. Creating a just-so story of inevitable political violence is you trying to justify your worldview by making up a narrative that makes it impossible to avoid. Again, I don't buy it.
Okay, well, to be honest I’m not really interested in getting you to buy it. I’m comfortable with the fact that a great many people on this sub, and obviously a far vaster number of people not on this sub, are fully committed to seeing this liberal democracy experiment through to the end. Maybe I’ll crack the code at some point and figure out the best method to dissuading these people, but I am humble enough to recognize that right now I’m simply not going to be able to make an effective enough case to persuade dyed-in-the-wool liberal democrats. Obviously I used to be a liberal democrat myself, so one would naïvely think it’d be as simple as reverse-engineering what arguments led me to change my mind and then deploying those to try and change your mind; however, it seems not to really work that way.
Much of my writing here is targeted toward people who are already at least part of the way along the journey away from liberal democracy the same way I am. The goal of at least trying to get people such as yourself to see people like me as somewhat palatable, or at least not obviously crazy and requiring immediate censorship and destruction, is a secondary goal.
I can't say I wish you the best, but at least you're honest about your intentions.
I hope for all of our sakes you and people like you never gain a significant amount of power. I don't think you understand the scope of the horror you will bring back into the world if you achieve your goal of widespread political violence.
It's always the naive ones that want it bloody, and ruin things for the rest of us, unfortunately.
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