On so many different news items, threads, etc. People are the first to claim pretty much anyone who has made a mistake, or does something they disagree with deserves to die.
Like, do some people not have the capability to empathise and realise they might have been in a similar place if they were born in a different environment…
I genuinely understand, you think a politician who has lead to countless deaths, a war criminal, or a mass rapists deserves to die.
But here people say it for stuff that falls way below the bar.
A contracted logger of a rainforest (who knows if they have the money / opportunity to support their family another way). Deserves to die.
A civilian of Nazi germany of whom we know nothing about their collaboration/agreement with the regime. Deserves to die.
Some person who was a drug dealer and then served their time. Deserves to die.
Like I don’t get it? Are people not able to imagine the kind of situations that create these people, and that it’s not impossible to imagine the large majority of people in these positions if born in a different environment?
It’s the result of the “bombastic” mix of false dichotomy, assumptions, and social media dynamics.
False dichotomy prevents you from noticing nuances, complexities, third sides, or gradations. Under a false dichotomy, there’s no such thing as “Alice and Bob are bad, but Alice is worse than Bob”; no, either they’re equally bad (thus both deserve to die), or one of them is good.
In the meantime, assumptions prevent you from handling uncertainties, as the person “fills the blanks” of the missing info with whatever crap supports their conclusion. For example you don’t know if Bob kills puppies or not, but you do know that he jaywalks, right? So you assume that he kills puppies too, thus deserving death.
I’m from the firm belief that people who consistent and egregiously engage in discourse showing both things are muppets causing harm to society, and deserve to be treated as such. (Note: “consistent and egregiously” are key words here. A brainfart or two is fine, as long as there’s at least the attempt of handling additional bits of info and/or complexity.)
Then there are the social media dynamics. I feel like a lot of users here already addressed them really well, but to keep it short: social media gives undue exposure to idiots doing the above due to anonymity, detachment from the situation, self-reinforcing loops (“circlejerks”), so goes on.
“AOC slams Trump.”
They may as well be writing articles that say:
“Trump fucking body slams Biden.”
The rhetorical devices are out of control.
True that. And you reminded me a tidbit of human nature, that interferes in this situation:
If you mince words to make something look stronger, weaker, better, worse than it is, plenty people fall for it. Because they care too much about how something is said (the words) and too little about what is being said (the discourse).
What’s really crazy to me is that it’s not impossible to use a rhetorical device but still have it be rooted in reality. Like you can say “AOC doles out biting critique to GOP leadership” or something and it still allows the use of “biting” but is still living in the reality of that referring to a critique she made with words and ideas.
Possible? Yes. Desirable? No; at least, not for most news sources - the extreme sells better than the simply informative, and often this lack of precision is how they manipulate your views towards a certain subject.
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That’s because you’re a textbook example of the infantile minds infecting areas where actual discourse has a chance to happen.