memes

Try to follow through and develop that logic past that empty and ultimately inconsequential "everyone's human!" state. Because yes, even complete monsters usually care about someone, they can be personally affable or charismatic or nice to someone they personally like or even just as a matter of professional decorum, but the important thing is that this changes nothing. What matters is what they do, what harm they cause or prevent, and it is that which defines them as a person.

Maybe there is some natural limit to how far empathy can be extended in a vacuum, or how earnest and innate empathy spread past that limit is, but that doesn't matter either because it is the place of ethics and political education to fix that limitation, to ensure that even if someone doesn't really feel for a stranger across the globe the same way they do for their family or friends, they're still making choices and decisions with a fundamental regard for that stranger's wellbeing, they're not saying "oh well it's not that big a deal if people over there are enslaved to make my treats, yim yum tasty treats love those treats!" or "oh well as long as Lockheed Martin's stock goes up it's fine for bombs to fall over there."

A callous disregard for the wellbeing and humanity of innocent people, for the humanity of the subjugated and downtrodden, that may not be a psychiatric disorder but it is ethically abhorrent and something that must be corrected with ethical and political education. Making sure to rhetorically center the humanity of actual power figures who are actually causing real material harm to countless innocent people to cynically defuse outrage against them is also ethically and politically abhorrent, because it is inherently placing them above their victims, because it is intended to place them above their victims whether consciously or not.

I'm sure he was a nice guy in private. So I'll be as sad about his dead as I am about the death of all others I don't know in private. In public he was a piece of shit, so as long as I'm a member of the public I'll be glad he's dead.

I can't really figure out what point you're making, are you saying that while this guy deserved it, we should acknowledge he's part of a systemic issue, or are you just trying to say "everyones human and pobodys nerfect"? I'm sorry that I am antagonistic towards you, it's just that db0 is full of dumbasses that think their average takes are novel, so my base reaction is to assume the worst, which isn't fair, but it is what it is.

Either way I don't really agree with your "certain amount of empathy". Each mans' death diminishes me, when someone is washed away I am the lesser. The bell tolls for thee. I get immensely sad when I learn about atrocities or deaths of regular people. I don't get sad when I learn about righteous justice.