Where's that kind of life that you would want to stay awake for?

[sovay]

Terminal onlignity was reached at the point in the night where I encountered a take so bad, I was left misquoting Robert Bolt's Thomas More to spatch. A Man for All Seasons (1960) falls in a class with Anouilh's Becket (1959) where my distance from the Christian conscience of their protagonists has never prevented me from loving the arguments of the plays, so that fragments of their language have been shot through my own for decades and thus when I see the claim on the internet that not visibly rejoicing in the murder of a CEO is flashing a red flag of complicity with the incoming administration, apparently my brain responds with its best approximation of "And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?"

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Wow, that is quite the claim there.

I'm glad I don't seem to be frequenting those parts of the internet. It would make me say, "Get off my team; you are not helping."

[phi]

the claim on the internet that not visibly rejoicing in the murder of a CEO is flashing a red flag of complicity with the incoming administration

I'm sorry what?

My own feelings are entirely too complex to express in full in a blog comment, but I do not believe it ever appropriate to rejoice in a death, no matter how much evil the deceased has perpetrated.

[thisbluespirit]

thus when I see the claim on the internet that not visibly rejoicing in the murder of a CEO is flashing a red flag of complicity

Oh, I hate running into that kind of hyperbole on the internet. It happens on tumblr from time to time, even via reblogs by perfectly reasonable mutuals. I have to remind myself that, at least in my corner of tumblr, it so often is hyperbole and venting only, but I never like it. Not wanting to rejoice specifically in the death of anyone, no matter how vile, is not a marker of evil in itself, indeed.

"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?"

*hugs*

[asakiyume]

On the internet there's always someone who, if you fail to vocalize a full-throated love of oranges, will say you're obviously in favor of cutting down all orange trees and salting the earth, or who say that you ought to block people if they say they like ice cream, as obviously they don't care about climate change, and if you don't see the link there, well YOU should probably be blocked too.

I'm not interested in trying to find this out, but I imagine if you could somehow divine who felt sympathy for the assassin's act and who felt appalled by it--and who fell in between--you'd find an equal mix of people of all political persuasions.

[davidgillon]

not visibly rejoicing in the murder of a CEO is flashing a red flag of complicity with the incoming administration

*Boggle*

[a_reasonable_man]

You make an excellent point. I'd love to hear your approximation of this line! I'll bet it's highly quotable on its own.

I personally can't rejoice in this man's murder, even though he made lots of money for his shareholders with a new AI system to review health claims--one apparently designed to favor denial, harming countless families. He may also have been personally corrupt, making millions off insider trading. Still, he was a husband and the father of young children. I remind myself of the drops of wine removed from the glass at Passover.

I not only see assassination as morally wrong, I see it as a political mistake. Here I'm looking at it from the perspective of a historian and supporter of democracy. When a radical assassinates a reactionary, the result is typically increased political support for repression. Assassination has generally only been an effective political tool in the hands of reactionaries, because the murder of charismatic reform leaders can disrupt their movements. And at a fundamental level, assassination is an anti-democratic form of political action.

[vass]

Clearly the most important political act is to be seen performing the appropriate emotions to a situation. How else can we effect change, if not by looking like we're feeling the right thing?

[movingfinger]

(There's a particular kind of Reply Guy who, out of immaturity (mental age around eleven in some key areas) or egotism never pauses to think before typing, "Is my contrary take on this needed here and now?" And the existence of the Reply Guy Bot has done absolutely nothing to clue the human Reply Guys in on how little their takes are needed...)

I haven't rewatched A Man for All Seasons in absolutely ages and this winter feels like his winter...

[selkie]

You know I’m a little morally wobblier than many of my good-hearted peers, and gosh I have enjoyed the Keystone Koppery of the whole affair’s investigation, but that moral-equivalency dog is too false to hunt. I hope you tore a face off, Gentlethem.

[gwynnega]

Not that I would ever quit social media, but it's bad takes like this that make me understand why some people do.

[cmcmck]

As a Quaker, I think my distance from the style of Christian conscience here is equally huge, but I also love these plays.