4 ms·

Who cares? The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not. Let them play the odds of

Who cares? The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not. Let them play the odds of life like the rest of us do. A society that depends on strongmen isn't a free society.

hotpotamus 4y ago
Oh you're singing to the choir on that stuff. Don't get me started on who we can and can't feed into the woodchipper because I'm already rate-limited. I'm just always surprised when people limit their thinking (and I'm not saying the post that spawned my response was guilty of that, though it's possible) of the powerful in society to government officials.
petsfed 4y ago
I think there's merit to at least forestalling rule-by-assassination. Like, yes, I would not mourn a lot of people who end up having protective details. But I absolutely don't want to live in a world where all it takes to change a policy is one particularly motivated sociopath. Keep in mind that John Hinckley Jr's assassination attempt on Reagan wasn't out of disagreement with Reagan's policies, it was to impress Jodi Foster. A nobody's obsession with an actress is really, REALLY not the thing we should allow to materially affect our civilization. I think there's a good argument to be made that the WWII-era Japanese government became the one capable of its atrocities in China specifically because assassination was so frequently employed to check to its power.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Reagan had an elected vice president. Bush Sr. being in charge instead of Reagan is not what I would call a material effect on our civilization. These guys are all interchangeable, as evidenced by the fact that we change them on purpose at least every eight years.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- int_19h 4y ago
  I think that was kind of OP's point - if one person has so much power that a major change in policy can be achieved solely by assassinating them, then they probably have too much power in general.

hotpotamus 4y ago

Oh you're singing to the choir on that stuff. Don't get me started on who we can and can't feed into the woodchipper because I'm already rate-limited. I'm just always surprised when people limit their thinking (and I'm not saying the post that spawned my response was guilty of that, though it's possible) of the powerful in society to government officials.

petsfed 4y ago

I think there's merit to at least forestalling rule-by-assassination. Like, yes, I would not mourn a lot of people who end up having protective details. But I absolutely don't want to live in a world where all it takes to change a policy is one particularly motivated sociopath. Keep in mind that John Hinckley Jr's assassination attempt on Reagan wasn't out of disagreement with Reagan's policies, it was to impress Jodi Foster. A nobody's obsession with an actress is really, REALLY not the thing we should allow to materially affect our civilization. I think there's a good argument to be made that the WWII-era Japanese government became the one capable of its atrocities in China specifically because assassination was so frequently employed to check to its power.

ElevenLathe 4y ago
Reagan had an elected vice president. Bush Sr. being in charge instead of Reagan is not what I would call a material effect on our civilization. These guys are all interchangeable, as evidenced by the fact that we change them on purpose at least every eight years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
int_19h 4y ago
I think that was kind of OP's point - if one person has so much power that a major change in policy can be achieved solely by assassinating them, then they probably have too much power in general.