by kerkeslager | 2025-04-06 04:14:55+00:00
Let me ask you a direct question: what would the Republicans have to do for us to call their actions evil and it not be tribalism in your mind? Is deporting a legal immigrant to an El Salvadorean prison where he can't be recovered[1] not evil? Is denying an abortion to a 9 year old rape victim[2] not evil?

> I was mainly referring to dialogs like the one below.

Again, nothing in what you quoted is actually calling anyone evil. They're calling something someone said evil, not the person.

> Amazing example. If you got magically transported to the "literal Nazi Germany" you would discover that the popular opinion at the time was to call "evil" the communists and the jews. If you spend a long time calling someone "evil" you gradually stop seeing them as people. This is how later on you don't notice when they're relocated into ditches and furnaces. Inhumane treatment doesn't raise the alarm when applied to non-humans. Check for instance what this SS veteran has to say [1].

I was talking about the Nazis and the Stalinists being evil, but you knew that and decided to make this bad-faith argument.

I am clearly not favoring popular opinion now, either. Reminder: Trump won the popular vote.

I'll ask a direct question: what would the Republican party have to do for calling their actions evil to not be tribalism in your mind? I'm not even calling Republicans evil, I'm calling their actions evil.

> Tribalism is not whether you're allowed or not to call people evil. Tribalism is calling people evil not because they did something evil, but because they belong to the wrong group or sympathize with it.

Agreed.

Which is exactly why calling Republican actions evil isn't tribalism:

1. It's not calling people evil, it's calling people's actions evil.

2. Even if you refuse to acknowledge a distinction between a person and their actions, you'd have to admit that this is calling a person evil because they did something evil. If you are a Republican but didn't vote for Trump or any of the awful things Republicans have done in the past few years, I have no problem with you. But if you supported all of what was done, and continue to support it, you did and are doing evil things. That's why I have a problem with you, not because of your group membership.

> The original post does not advocate for "enlightened centrism", furthermore centrists are as prone to tribalism as anybody else.

You're refusing to engage with any of the reasons why it might actually not be tribalism to call someone's actions evil. That's what "enlightened centrism" refers to--the ideology which treats all ideologies as equally valid even when they're hateful, violent, or otherwise obviously harmful.

Sure, tribalism exists and is happening, and sometimes people call other people evil because of tribalism. Obviously. Nobody is arguing against that and nobody is confused about that. You can stop explaining what everyone already knows.

But evil exists too, and if we dismiss every instance of calling something evil as tribalism, then we're failing to identify and stop evil.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-deportation-maryland-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Ohio_child-rape_and_India...