cross-posted, via Microblogs Community.
Stop trying to make simple things sound complex – either because you like hearing the sound of your own voice or because of whatever insecurities drive you. If I’m kicking a puppy in the street, it’s because I’m an asshole. You don’t need to know my motivations. You just need to know I’m an asshole. And stop me.
Yes, this is about Israel.
I used the example of the puppy getting kicked as I’m painfully aware that, at least for some people, the thought of a puppy in distress is unbearable whereas tens of thousands of murdered Brown kids is just another Wednesday. (You’d have a hard time getting a politician who regularly kicks puppies to death elected but folks who consider themselves otherwise decent have not, so far at least, had an issue with voting for people who fund and arm Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.)
I think this is a thing some people need to hear. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes what matters more is that right now a person is being an asshole and needs to be stopped.
However, psychology has shown that all behavior has a reason, and we do ourselves a disservice by not taking the time to learn what conditions lead to that behavior so we can remove them or spot the behavioral patterns earlier and prevent it from resulting in puppy kicking.
It is not just the morally supeiror option to whatever the fuck we do now (in the US anyway), it's also the more pragmatic solution. It's just also not what the person who's puppy was just kicked wants to hear.