Shinzo Abe murdered

[Loren Pechtel]

Assassinations are generally the acts of nuts.

Yeah, being ignored by people you are appealing to to stop treating you like shit can drive you nuts.

Of course, they might be ignoring you because you believe irrationally that they are able to help, but refusing to; But then again, they might just be uncaring of your plight.

Understanding that assassins usually believe themselves to have a genuine grievance against their targets is a great deal more helpful in preventing future assassinations than simply declaring them to be “nuts”, particularly as such dismissiveness is often a major contributing factor in their escalating from merely angry, to murderously angry.

They think they have genuine grievances but very often it's not even sound logic.

 

[bilby]

Assassinations are generally the acts of nuts.

Yeah, being ignored by people you are appealing to to stop treating you like shit can drive you nuts.

Of course, they might be ignoring you because you believe irrationally that they are able to help, but refusing to; But then again, they might just be uncaring of your plight.

Understanding that assassins usually believe themselves to have a genuine grievance against their targets is a great deal more helpful in preventing future assassinations than simply declaring them to be “nuts”, particularly as such dismissiveness is often a major contributing factor in their escalating from merely angry, to murderously angry.

They think they have genuine grievances but very often it's not even sound logic.

Often ≠ Always

And motives are always about what people think.

Simply dismissing assassins as “nuts” doesn’t help in any way to prevent future assassinations, or to understand past ones; It’s a placeholder for knowing anything about them, that feels informative to you without actually saying anything. An excuse for you to stop thinking about the issue, because you can persuade yourself that you reached a conclusion. The atheist equivalent of ‘god made them do it’.

All it achieved was to take away the discomfort you felt at having to consider the possibility that assassins might sometimes or in some ways be justified in their actions. But the point of this forum isn’t to make people comfortable with their prejudices and preconceptions; It’s to have serious discussions about reality, even if that reality is messy and unpleasant.

 

[Politesse]

Assassinations are generally the acts of nuts.

Yeah, being ignored by people you are appealing to to stop treating you like shit can drive you nuts.

Of course, they might be ignoring you because you believe irrationally that they are able to help, but refusing to; But then again, they might just be uncaring of your plight.

Understanding that assassins usually believe themselves to have a genuine grievance against their targets is a great deal more helpful in preventing future assassinations than simply declaring them to be “nuts”, particularly as such dismissiveness is often a major contributing factor in their escalating from merely angry, to murderously angry.

They think they have genuine grievances but very often it's not even sound logic.

Often ≠ Always

And motives are always about what people think.

Simply dismissing assassins as “nuts” doesn’t help in any way to prevent future assassinations, or to understand past ones; It’s a placeholder for knowing anything about them, that feels informative to you without actually saying anything. An excuse for you to stop thinking about the issue, because you can persuade yourself that you reached a conclusion. The atheist equivalent of ‘god made them do it’.

All it achieved was to take away the discomfort you felt at having to consider the possibility that assassins might sometimes or in some ways be justified in their actions. But the point of this forum isn’t to make people comfortable with their prejudices and preconceptions; It’s to have serious discussions about reality, even if that reality is messy and unpleasant.

I think these issues are important, but are you willing to own up to the position you're intimating, at least for the purposes of discussion. The "just asking questions" trope blocks the very conversations it starts, by design; we can't really have the resulting discussion about the questions raised, because if I take your implied stance literally, suddenly we're having an argument about whether or not you advocated murder, rather than about the (to my mind) much more important question of whether it is either morally permissible or pragmatically effective to shoot someone in the chest for being "associated" with an unpopular religious organization. I just went through a whole round of nonsense with Copernicus, I'm not going to do it all again with you. Even though I think these are in fact very important questions to raise in an age where, quite frankly, I think we will see more high profile political assassinations quite soon. These things have an iterative cycle.

 

[Copernicus]

...
Often ≠ Always

And motives are always about what people think.

Simply dismissing assassins as “nuts” doesn’t help in any way to prevent future assassinations, or to understand past ones; It’s a placeholder for knowing anything about them, that feels informative to you without actually saying anything. An excuse for you to stop thinking about the issue, because you can persuade yourself that you reached a conclusion. The atheist equivalent of ‘god made them do it’.

All it achieved was to take away the discomfort you felt at having to consider the possibility that assassins might sometimes or in some ways be justified in their actions. But the point of this forum isn’t to make people comfortable with their prejudices and preconceptions; It’s to have serious discussions about reality, even if that reality is messy and unpleasant.

I think these issues are important, but are you willing to own up to the position you're intimating, at least for the purposes of discussion. The "just asking questions" trope blocks the very conversations it starts, by design; we can't really have the resulting discussion about the questions raised, because if I take your implied stance literally, suddenly we're having an argument about whether or not you advocated murder, rather than about the (to my mind) much more important question of whether it is either morally permissible or pragmatically effective to shoot someone in the chest for being "associated" with an unpopular religious organization. I just went through a whole round of nonsense with Copernicus, I'm not going to do it all again with you. Even though I think these are in fact very important questions to raise in an age where, quite frankly, I think we will see more high profile political assassinations quite soon. These things have an iterative cycle.

Poli, nobody here believes that it is "morally permissible or pragmatically effective to shoot someone in the chest for being 'associated' with an unpopular religious organization. " Absolutely nobody. And nobody has even implied it. If you want to argue against a position that nobody is taking, please allow us to agree with you. It will make for fewer rounds of nonsense.

Abe's assassin achieved his objective of exposing Abe's connection to the Moonies, something that surprised a lot of Japanese. However, his act also resulted in a popular surge of politicians from Abe's party getting elected, i.e. a sympathy vote. He did the Moonies a favor. That is not in any way a "pragmatically effective" outcome for the assassin. I suspect he would have preferred the opposite effect.

 

[Politesse]

Fine. If you're "just asking questions", then I'm "just giving an answer". If everyone agrees, then there's nothing to talk about.

 

[Bomb#20]

This is in fact the first instance of anti-religious terrorism I've ever seen, so it's pretty significant. Doesn't mean I'm fine with it.

Should chat with a Falun Dafa missionary some time.

And maybe with Mehmet Ali Agca.

 

[Politesse]

This is in fact the first instance of anti-religious terrorism I've ever seen, so it's pretty significant. Doesn't mean I'm fine with it.

Should chat with a Falun Dafa missionary some time.

And maybe with Mehmet Ali Agca.

He was very religious himself, to my recollection. Albeit in that fascististic sort of way. Ended up switching teams before his death.