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You are debating someone who said they were saints, which I didn't, or with someone who fits some strawperson profile in your mind. > it's not nearly as obviou

• vba616 4y ago
  I didn't write, think, or imply anyone was a saint! Literally nobody used the word in this thread until you! I responded to you, and you seemed to have two categories: 1) sociopath (Putin, Hussein) 2) not-a-sociopath (Washington, Gandhi, Churchill, Zelenskyy) That's fine. I am not debating what a sociopath is, we can agree it's some kind of bad thing and if you would like to define it better be my guest. My point is and was, that you didn't list Stalin, and putting him in either list is...problematic, as they say, when you consider Churchill and the Bengal famine. Now I am not making any straw man or putting words in your mouth. I am interested in how you fit Stalin into your framework, not in telling you how to. I'm not pushing the moral equivalence of Stalin and Churchill. Not at all. I'm just saying that there are well known facts that could support the opinion they are similar, and I'm fairly confident there are a lot of people (maybe millions) with that opinion. That doesn't mean you or I need to accept it, but it does suggest to me that, from a global perspective, it should be considered respectable or at least not shocking. There is a Wikipedia page on Washington-and-slavery, and while this is a tangent I don't want to discuss here and now, being aware of it makes the question of how to define a sociopath very complex in my mind.