This isn’t a bleeding heart, can’t we all just get along speech. And I understand the concept of hyperbole.
Here’s the thing. People who claim to be morally superior (at least superior to their targets of ire) and on the right side of the argument, or whatever … seem to get awful gleeful in hoping that a wrong-doer of some sort suffer’s horribly.
This thread is just a slight example. Whether or not the animal torture story is true, what’s with the rooting for a guy to get beaten with a bat. Wouldn’t it be better to have this guy under custody? Does beating him solve anything, except making the beater feel cool?
Now, I’ve said shit like, “Dude took my parking spot, he needs to die.”
And lord knows what I’d do to someone I caught red-handed harming my children or something.
But then there are others who hear of some evil shit happening and right off the bat go off on how much they’d like to personally have a hand in reciprocating that suffering. Does nobody see the irony here?
“What? He raped and murdered someone?
That’s horrible.
How could anybody do something like that to another fellow human being?
Why I’d like to take a fondue fork and jab it in his eye until it pops and oozes down his face and then use a pair of needle nose pliers to yank his pancreas out through his belly-button and then shove my arm down his gullet, grab a hold of his sphincter and yank it up around his throat like a turtle neck, and I’d like to personally slice his body into forty peices with a chainsaw, but I’d have to do it in a bath tub because that would make a mess … because I’m so moral and all.”
It is simple vengence. A does something to B, B wants to kick the shit out of him. C identifies with B, and feels the same way. The thing is, the rape victim didn’t do anything to justify the violence that she suffered. The rapist, on the other hand, did, and therefor we want to carve his heart out with a spoon. Or something like that.
“my friend went out back took a baseball bat and whacked the psycho in the leg and damn near broke it. i thought it was the funniest thing”
“Hooray for the guy with the bat,”
But, like I said, that thread is a minor instance. I haven’t been around lately and I was thinking of instances in the past, that would take me a week to dig out of Search … but I know hyperbole when I hear it.
And I know self-righteous glee in a wish for revenge when I hear it too.
What the hell is the point of being morally superior if you can’t use it as justification for violence? You goddam liberal want to take the fun out of everything!
It’s bad form to cite the reaction to obvious trolls to prove your point. Other than that, I couldn’t agree more. Hyperbole gets tired when that is the only club in your bag. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be made to eat their own deep fried genitals.
And just for the record, and to be certain people understand how truly twisted I am, there are people I would literally like to see beaten with a heavy wooden club. I’m not squeamish that way.
