> If somebody is doing something destructive and the stakes are high, wasting time being nice about their feelings seems thoroughly counterproductive Playing

> If somebody is doing something destructive and the stakes are high, wasting time being nice about their feelings seems thoroughly counterproductive Playing devil's advocate here let's imagine that someone from a political party that is probably not yours (just guessing!) might use your same logic and apply it. Abortions. They're killing people. High stakes? Check. Abortions. They're killing defenseless humans. Destructive? Check? You don't have to agree with these definitions for people on the political right to define things this way. And were they to take their definitions and use your logical template and then react in the way you're suggesting might be OK with your definitions, what you're left with is something that looks an awful lot like the Texas abortion ban right now. The point I'm trying to make isn't that you're wrong and bad and should feel bad. The point I'm trying to make is that a person needs to think very long and very hard about situations in which polite deference isn't warranted. Because with the team sports politics we've got going on right now it's super easy for one side to look at the template the other side is using and reappropriate it for their pet issues and then things which are "settled" suddenly get very exciting indeed.