So I just lost any sympathy for the Palestinian cause and Gaza

[Igel]

160. A few disparate comments.

(1) I don't know how to define "innocent." If you picnic while celebrating a lynching (of a Jew, black, or Italian person) are you "innocent"?

(2) You shun the family of a man that your uncle unjustly accused so that in Stalin's Russia he'd get his uncle--you--a good job in a good city in the raspredelenie? Are you innocent?

(3) You train your kid to celebrate disempowering the powerful. Then your kid comes come saying, "I saw somebody rape and kill the factory owner. I cheered!" Are you innocent? Is your kid?

(4) You have a kid. He's 9. But you're wife is a member of the hated Kzinti, who slaughtered millions of humans (you're human, the Kzinti aren't; no, they're not from Earth, it's a fictional race from a Larry Niven novel). So your son is Kzinti and others find out. His race is guilty of attempted genocide--do you defend him? Is he innocent?

(5) They come for your wife, who sat out the Kzinti wars. Do you defend *her*? Is she guilty?

(6) 1 person wants your wife and son dead. Do you kill that would be murderer of two innocents--if they're innocent?

(7) 10 people want your wife and son dead? Do you kill the 10?

(8) 10,000 want your wife and son dead? Do you kill the 10,000?

Moral choices are hard.

They're especially hard when ideology declares a priori the victims and victimizers, but people can't make explicit the ideologies involved.

Stay at DU or not, there are fora and threads that most can find a 'home' in and most feel fairly alien to.