Great insights, Noah, and a great discussion here. In 1996, when my daughter was five, we went with a couple of other families to see the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians. Cruella DeVil gets thrown into a vat of hot molasses, whereupon onlooking animals (raccoons, I think) laugh and hi-five each other. The audience laughed and cheered along. Crawling into my lap, my daughter whispered to me, “We’re laughing because she’s mean, right?” I hadn’t expected that, and was trying to formulate an answer when she added, “But if she was nice we wouldn’t be laughing. Right?” It was a Disney movie. She was five.
This was a genuinely funny thing about my oldest kid--he would become extremely interested in defending, and even trying to convert--the villains at Disneyland. I don't remember how old he was...7? If we saw a villain, he'd make a beeline and spend a long time trying to talk the villain out of being a bad person. I'm sure the person in that Captain Hook costume was very confused.
He did this with all villains, in any movie or book. He would be distressed if they were 'cast off' --like made worthless --in the course of the film. The way I interpreted it was that he did not consider any person utterly worthless. Which is of course, something I wanted him to believe (but it is too complicated to explain to a child how this is true and yet some people have to be neutralized so they can't harm others). Anyway, I don't think I told him anything specific to make him believe this? It was just important to him that there be no outsiders, and he would sort of re-write the facts so that they were worthy of his empathy. But when he grew up, luckily, he did not become a pushover, and he is not confused about bad people or bullies. Maybe one thing about having this trait is that you are less likely to become vindictive. If you do not enjoy seeing even bad people harmed, you won't talk yourself into saying someone is bad so that you can harm them.
Your oldest sounds awesome! Although my one super power happens to be righteous indignation 😏, I do believe that, as we do everything possible to defeat fascism, we need compassion and empathy more than ever.
I know, right?! In the moment, I had no idea how to respond. But I’ve revisited that memory over time, and slowly recognized that while kids are naturally compassionate, we go to some lengths to train that out of them.
"We want to believe that people—everyday people, normal people—don’t just decide they want to commit evil. There has to be a more understandable, less vindictive, explanation for American fascism."
One of the more memorable online arguments I got into a couple years ago had a bunch of (white) people saying I was no better than trump voters because I refused to buy into the economic anxiety bullshit and said that his voters chose to be fascists.
One of the constant refrains was some version of "People don't CHOOSE to be evil! They're not Saturday morning cartoon villains! Grow up!"
A lot of people blocked me when I pointed out that they absolutely did choose to be evil, as you can plainly see by their fucking actions, and that they were going to be a lot harder than cartoon villains to get rid of.
"..fascism (and Trumpism) are essentially religions of sadism...."
Fitting. Trump is the political equivalent of the Marquis De Sade. Yet, in this case, rather than being locked up for life (as the Marquis was), he expresses his sadism through his political influence...
Thank you for calling out the truth! As horrible aa these times are, all of my ancestors went through much worse. I was born a crime in 15 states. My mother and father could not visit my mother’s cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents in Missouri, as they would have been arrested. My mother is Black and my father is white, and Jewish. 1963. Recent history. Which of course has never been taught in public schools. Nothing to stop teaching when it was never taught.
Millions of Americans voted for cruelty against other people. However, since the cruelty is coming from a racist South African whose family believed in Apartheid, the cruelty net includes the average person who voted for Trump. They are now begging Trump to give them back the caregiver for their child with disabilities, or veterans begging for their government job, or a single mother asking for her section 8, ebt card and medicaid. People cote against their own self interest cause cruelty feels good. They are part of a club. A club that has its own news.
My sister and I were talking and we have no sympathy or empathy for these people.
And no, don’t ask Ms. Harris or Mr. Obama for help. Black people are tired of building America for no compensation. We cannot save America from itself.
It’s going to take every one working together to finally say it out loud at the very least - to end it by teaching our children and grandchildren to not tolerate it.
I believe one of the driving impulses of people who ignorantly voted for Trump was to take us back to intolerance of anyone they perceive as ‘others’.
I agree with you. Of course the ‘apex’ maga is both racist and a Nazi. Others would object to being categorized as that but as we grandmothers say, fuck them.
Ultimately there is no contradiction between trumpism's cruelty to those who oppose it and to its own supporters. Just look at Russia or even better North Korea. These are inherently oppressive regimes that thrive on the very people they oppress by channeling their anger against each other as well as a their manufactured enemies. It's cruelty all the way down.
I have read that the Romans saw watching violence in the coliseum (whether public executions, gladiatorial combats, violent dangerous races, killing of animals or mock battles) as a public good. They believed teaching themselves to be callous aided their ability to fight in wars and furthered the aims of Roman society. Cruelty as a virtue is very old.
Perhaps in opposition we need to focus on the crime procedural. Follow the money. Greed is our enemy. It both makes for great “TV” and it’s what’s really behind all the struggles people face on a day to day basis. They’re the party of the action hero based upon fear of ghosts, while we’re the party of the crime procedural, rooting out greed and abuse based upon real life events
I agree, they do. It’s just that we need a proven dynamic which works to grab and hold attention. I was thinking that we’re just helping people see themselves in the role of a different kind of hero - detective hero rather than action star hero.
Really appreciated this essay and its insights - definitely resonated with me. However, one request would be an additional version without the current political figures / issues identified. I think this could have the added benefit of helping reach people on the periphery of the threat without setting off defenses. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the direct approach, I’m tweaking my online presence here and there as I start to appreciate the justified additional caution in this climate - especially, as I ramp up my own volume against the regime. I’m just asking because I think the two versions would both be very useful tools. Regardless, thank you for your work, education and stance on these issues.
well, if someone wanted to pay me for a reprint with alterations I wouldn't say no! I think most people reading my site are probably looking for the direct version...
I think you have really nailed a reality of our human condition. Our survival to this point has been based largely in a tribalism that is likely rooted in our DNA and the millennia in which we evolved banding together in groups for mutual aid and survivial. But I also believe that, in most societies, we have evolved some progressively more and more inclusive ‘identitarian’ social/cultural mores and understandings that we have been progressively able to institutionalize and maintain across larger and larger tribes, be they cities, states, or countries — or across trans-continental religious beliefs and so forth.
But, it still doesn’t take much to threaten and undermine such affinities and for communities, countries, religions, etc., to fall back into an existential sense of tribalism. As you point out, this is the nature of perhaps most of the stories we develop and carry with us through the ages and continue to feed and reinforce the manias that feed that not-nearly-vestigial beast within us. It’s not just James Bond film, of course. It’s the sports arena, the competitive marketplace, jealousy, the four fears, and so much more.
But just relating to our situation in the here and now, I still find the following words attributed to FDR to be a very good statement of what it still takes to keep our unique U.S. experiment in building and sustaining an ‘e pluribus unum’ moving forward:
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”
If one digs deeply enough into this seemingly simple statement, I believe one can come to a some terrifically fruitful avenues for the sorts of concrete policies that you suggest people might choose even as they remain, as we long will as a species, subject to the appeal of fascist narratives and impulses.
If you mean for it to explain the idea of 'getting the bad ones' I simply don't agree. I see how they are to--and about--children, for example. They will particularly harm children of the groups they despise. They have no empathy, no sense of mercy for the innocent. The more helpless a person, the more they revile them.
It's much darker than normal 'vengeance.' People seeking vengeance do not enjoy the torture of someone who is unconnected with anything harmful. Sure, maybe these things are connected sometimes but I think it's a tangential connection, and there is genuine sadism.
I believe fascism involves the annihilation of humanitarian or universalistic moral systems or any moral system which could trend in that direction by replacing it with a reversal of a normal moral system. I can't claim to understand the whole psychology of it. But it is not a partial reversal of normal morality where 'the guilty' must be punished and they have mistaken who the guilty are. It's a much more sweeping program.
They DO get non-fascist people to support it by presenting it under the guise of ordinary morality where 'X is unfair' or 'X is harmful' so people who care about fairness will agree with their bad ideas. But for the fascist, it runs a lot deeper. They do not believe in fairness and they do not care about harm. They seek power in a way that most of us cannot comprehend because it involves the rejection of any moral constraints.
So maybe I agree with Serwer altogether? I'm not sure. I don't disagree with you that they utilize ordinary moral feelings as a way to increase acceptance and support for their actions. But I think they reject this ordinary morality altogether in the end.
I just don't think this is how it works. Even someone like Goebbels was very motivated to explain his actions through empathy/protecting those in need of protection.
no one thinks of themselves as evil, pretty much. everyone tells a story where they're the hero. fascist stories are quite predictable—and also quite similar to pulp narratives that are popular with lots of people. I think it's too easy to say, "these people are just sadists", but they're not chortling supervillains. they think they're acting out of compassion and righteousness. a lot of it is lying to themselves for sure, but if you ask fascists why they're doing what they're doing, empathy and narratives of innocence protected are going to be a big part of it.
They do not think they are evil. They believe that they are choosing ‘the good’ in some respect. Power is good. The Aryan/master race is good. Other moral systems involve weakness. They are strong. These things are permitted of them.
What they value is not what any of us would call good. They can utilize moral arguments, and moral concepts. But they are not drawing out of the same well for those concepts when they use them as applied to their own goals.
I assume you have read Primo Levi. If not, it will help you understand them better.
People do not have the same referents for moral concepts merely because they use the same words. The Nazis dehumanized other human beings completely. They are not applying or using the same ideas that the rest of us are applying. They are working from a different normative template. In each case, the person driven by those norms thinks of them as ‘good.’ But only in one case is the person rejecting known norms of humanity, seeking to perform actions which are beyond the pale within those norms—they know that but they prefer the value of the Aryan race, the reich, etc. over the other value system people standardly hold which forbids the gassing of babies, the elderly, and a mass of defenseless naked people in concrete bunkers and becomes frustrated when the quote of murder slows because it takes a long time to kill people even with gas.
There is some overlap but it is like the difference between astronomy and astrology. Both talk about the stars but do not share the same paradigm. The stars are there. They refer to them. They are in the same physical universe. But what they seek is not the same, and they are not utilizing the same investigatory strategies. Astrologers and astronomers value different things, have different goals, different rules. Maybe the astrologers WERE the first astronomers but the paradigms have diverged far too much to regard them as overlapping projects now.
Merely offering a moral justification like Goebbels did when you are detached from the actual. moral value of people does not demonstrate you are operating from the same conceptual schema. You could not possibly but one can also tell that they are not.
It’s much more complicated even than to say ‘they believe they are moral justified, period.’ They realized there’s another powerful conception of morality in existence in which one cannot do mass torture and mass murder. They knew that they were violating it, as most people are raised within it, and so were they. They tried to cover up their actions because they knew the horror that would ensue. They recorded them for the future when they had successfully eliminated the value system but in the present, they hid everything they did because they knew it would horrify everyone who possessed their former value system.
Their schema is about power and domination. If you were correct that everyone is sincere and acting from authentic moral principles they consider rationally defensible against objections, there would be no such thing as rationalizations necessary.
E.g., right now the DOGE workers, many of whom are neo-Nazis are going against the instructions of the Secretary of State and manually deleting payments to things like Pepfar. They are doing this because they agree with the Nazis and the apartheid government of South Africa that is a good thing to kill Black Africans, and a bad thing to prevent their death, even if they are children. This has nothing to do with ‘revenge’ against these people or some larger justice they seek. They dehumanized Africans and they want them to die. There are some people who will orchestrate the killing of other people so they will no longer exist. This is their wish—for those people not to exist. Because they are inferior, and should be eliminated.
There are actual murderers in this world. Not every murderer is murdering for what we would consider justifiable reasons, wrongly conceived. No—they have entirely different reasons, that come from norms which we cannot recognize since they are the opposite of the norms we hold, that children should be protected and people should not be eliminated from the planet in the goal of wiping out those of inferior races. This is the logic of eliminativism, which some racists and all Nazis hold. It is not a version of anything that comes from the moral values we hold but a different moral system.
very true. Boils down to Cruelty Creates Camaraderie. The further question is what else can do the same, and is there a way to foster it.
I don't think we will get over "good guy taking down the villains" as part of entertainment, though it would be nice if there were more "taking down the villains via the law" than "via the knife in the eye." But I've never liked action movies. But you are right: we CAN try to foster "good guy taking down the liars" even, perhaps, if it takes a knife in the eye. Part of the problem with our culture is that lying ISN"T seen as reprehensible. And perhaps it isn't always: the white lie (what a nice hat) isn't motivated by cruelty. Perhaps if more of our reprehensible villains were not serial killers or criminal masterminds, but bullies beating up the weak? Go for it, Bond. Piranhas it is for the genocidal leader or the gay-baiting bully.
Great insights, Noah, and a great discussion here. In 1996, when my daughter was five, we went with a couple of other families to see the live-action version of 101 Dalmatians. Cruella DeVil gets thrown into a vat of hot molasses, whereupon onlooking animals (raccoons, I think) laugh and hi-five each other. The audience laughed and cheered along. Crawling into my lap, my daughter whispered to me, “We’re laughing because she’s mean, right?” I hadn’t expected that, and was trying to formulate an answer when she added, “But if she was nice we wouldn’t be laughing. Right?” It was a Disney movie. She was five.
She was figuring out how the tropes work!
This was a genuinely funny thing about my oldest kid--he would become extremely interested in defending, and even trying to convert--the villains at Disneyland. I don't remember how old he was...7? If we saw a villain, he'd make a beeline and spend a long time trying to talk the villain out of being a bad person. I'm sure the person in that Captain Hook costume was very confused.
He did this with all villains, in any movie or book. He would be distressed if they were 'cast off' --like made worthless --in the course of the film. The way I interpreted it was that he did not consider any person utterly worthless. Which is of course, something I wanted him to believe (but it is too complicated to explain to a child how this is true and yet some people have to be neutralized so they can't harm others). Anyway, I don't think I told him anything specific to make him believe this? It was just important to him that there be no outsiders, and he would sort of re-write the facts so that they were worthy of his empathy. But when he grew up, luckily, he did not become a pushover, and he is not confused about bad people or bullies. Maybe one thing about having this trait is that you are less likely to become vindictive. If you do not enjoy seeing even bad people harmed, you won't talk yourself into saying someone is bad so that you can harm them.
Your oldest sounds awesome! Although my one super power happens to be righteous indignation 😏, I do believe that, as we do everything possible to defeat fascism, we need compassion and empathy more than ever.
I know, right?! In the moment, I had no idea how to respond. But I’ve revisited that memory over time, and slowly recognized that while kids are naturally compassionate, we go to some lengths to train that out of them.
"We want to believe that people—everyday people, normal people—don’t just decide they want to commit evil. There has to be a more understandable, less vindictive, explanation for American fascism."
One of the more memorable online arguments I got into a couple years ago had a bunch of (white) people saying I was no better than trump voters because I refused to buy into the economic anxiety bullshit and said that his voters chose to be fascists.
One of the constant refrains was some version of "People don't CHOOSE to be evil! They're not Saturday morning cartoon villains! Grow up!"
A lot of people blocked me when I pointed out that they absolutely did choose to be evil, as you can plainly see by their fucking actions, and that they were going to be a lot harder than cartoon villains to get rid of.
"..fascism (and Trumpism) are essentially religions of sadism...."
Fitting. Trump is the political equivalent of the Marquis De Sade. Yet, in this case, rather than being locked up for life (as the Marquis was), he expresses his sadism through his political influence...
Thank you for calling out the truth! As horrible aa these times are, all of my ancestors went through much worse. I was born a crime in 15 states. My mother and father could not visit my mother’s cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents in Missouri, as they would have been arrested. My mother is Black and my father is white, and Jewish. 1963. Recent history. Which of course has never been taught in public schools. Nothing to stop teaching when it was never taught.
Millions of Americans voted for cruelty against other people. However, since the cruelty is coming from a racist South African whose family believed in Apartheid, the cruelty net includes the average person who voted for Trump. They are now begging Trump to give them back the caregiver for their child with disabilities, or veterans begging for their government job, or a single mother asking for her section 8, ebt card and medicaid. People cote against their own self interest cause cruelty feels good. They are part of a club. A club that has its own news.
My sister and I were talking and we have no sympathy or empathy for these people.
And no, don’t ask Ms. Harris or Mr. Obama for help. Black people are tired of building America for no compensation. We cannot save America from itself.
It’s going to take every one working together to finally say it out loud at the very least - to end it by teaching our children and grandchildren to not tolerate it.
I believe one of the driving impulses of people who ignorantly voted for Trump was to take us back to intolerance of anyone they perceive as ‘others’.
No one ignorantly voted for trump. They all knew exactly what they were doing.
I agree with you. Of course the ‘apex’ maga is both racist and a Nazi. Others would object to being categorized as that but as we grandmothers say, fuck them.
As the cool grandmothers say. 🤣
It’s true….😉
I ran out of sympathy and empathy for Trump's voters in 2016. At this point all I have left is anger and scorn.
Cruelty and revenge is also the basis for the death penalty, which is supposedly punishing evil people.
excellent analysis, Noah, thank you.
Ultimately there is no contradiction between trumpism's cruelty to those who oppose it and to its own supporters. Just look at Russia or even better North Korea. These are inherently oppressive regimes that thrive on the very people they oppress by channeling their anger against each other as well as a their manufactured enemies. It's cruelty all the way down.
I have read that the Romans saw watching violence in the coliseum (whether public executions, gladiatorial combats, violent dangerous races, killing of animals or mock battles) as a public good. They believed teaching themselves to be callous aided their ability to fight in wars and furthered the aims of Roman society. Cruelty as a virtue is very old.
Perhaps in opposition we need to focus on the crime procedural. Follow the money. Greed is our enemy. It both makes for great “TV” and it’s what’s really behind all the struggles people face on a day to day basis. They’re the party of the action hero based upon fear of ghosts, while we’re the party of the crime procedural, rooting out greed and abuse based upon real life events
I'm loathe to have us be the cops!
I think crime procedurals often fall into similar dynamics, actually....
I agree, they do. It’s just that we need a proven dynamic which works to grab and hold attention. I was thinking that we’re just helping people see themselves in the role of a different kind of hero - detective hero rather than action star hero.
Really appreciated this essay and its insights - definitely resonated with me. However, one request would be an additional version without the current political figures / issues identified. I think this could have the added benefit of helping reach people on the periphery of the threat without setting off defenses. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the direct approach, I’m tweaking my online presence here and there as I start to appreciate the justified additional caution in this climate - especially, as I ramp up my own volume against the regime. I’m just asking because I think the two versions would both be very useful tools. Regardless, thank you for your work, education and stance on these issues.
well, if someone wanted to pay me for a reprint with alterations I wouldn't say no! I think most people reading my site are probably looking for the direct version...
I think you have really nailed a reality of our human condition. Our survival to this point has been based largely in a tribalism that is likely rooted in our DNA and the millennia in which we evolved banding together in groups for mutual aid and survivial. But I also believe that, in most societies, we have evolved some progressively more and more inclusive ‘identitarian’ social/cultural mores and understandings that we have been progressively able to institutionalize and maintain across larger and larger tribes, be they cities, states, or countries — or across trans-continental religious beliefs and so forth.
But, it still doesn’t take much to threaten and undermine such affinities and for communities, countries, religions, etc., to fall back into an existential sense of tribalism. As you point out, this is the nature of perhaps most of the stories we develop and carry with us through the ages and continue to feed and reinforce the manias that feed that not-nearly-vestigial beast within us. It’s not just James Bond film, of course. It’s the sports arena, the competitive marketplace, jealousy, the four fears, and so much more.
But just relating to our situation in the here and now, I still find the following words attributed to FDR to be a very good statement of what it still takes to keep our unique U.S. experiment in building and sustaining an ‘e pluribus unum’ moving forward:
“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”
If one digs deeply enough into this seemingly simple statement, I believe one can come to a some terrifically fruitful avenues for the sorts of concrete policies that you suggest people might choose even as they remain, as we long will as a species, subject to the appeal of fascist narratives and impulses.
If you mean for it to explain the idea of 'getting the bad ones' I simply don't agree. I see how they are to--and about--children, for example. They will particularly harm children of the groups they despise. They have no empathy, no sense of mercy for the innocent. The more helpless a person, the more they revile them.
It's much darker than normal 'vengeance.' People seeking vengeance do not enjoy the torture of someone who is unconnected with anything harmful. Sure, maybe these things are connected sometimes but I think it's a tangential connection, and there is genuine sadism.
I believe fascism involves the annihilation of humanitarian or universalistic moral systems or any moral system which could trend in that direction by replacing it with a reversal of a normal moral system. I can't claim to understand the whole psychology of it. But it is not a partial reversal of normal morality where 'the guilty' must be punished and they have mistaken who the guilty are. It's a much more sweeping program.
They DO get non-fascist people to support it by presenting it under the guise of ordinary morality where 'X is unfair' or 'X is harmful' so people who care about fairness will agree with their bad ideas. But for the fascist, it runs a lot deeper. They do not believe in fairness and they do not care about harm. They seek power in a way that most of us cannot comprehend because it involves the rejection of any moral constraints.
So maybe I agree with Serwer altogether? I'm not sure. I don't disagree with you that they utilize ordinary moral feelings as a way to increase acceptance and support for their actions. But I think they reject this ordinary morality altogether in the end.
I just don't think this is how it works. Even someone like Goebbels was very motivated to explain his actions through empathy/protecting those in need of protection.
no one thinks of themselves as evil, pretty much. everyone tells a story where they're the hero. fascist stories are quite predictable—and also quite similar to pulp narratives that are popular with lots of people. I think it's too easy to say, "these people are just sadists", but they're not chortling supervillains. they think they're acting out of compassion and righteousness. a lot of it is lying to themselves for sure, but if you ask fascists why they're doing what they're doing, empathy and narratives of innocence protected are going to be a big part of it.
They do not think they are evil. They believe that they are choosing ‘the good’ in some respect. Power is good. The Aryan/master race is good. Other moral systems involve weakness. They are strong. These things are permitted of them.
What they value is not what any of us would call good. They can utilize moral arguments, and moral concepts. But they are not drawing out of the same well for those concepts when they use them as applied to their own goals.
I assume you have read Primo Levi. If not, it will help you understand them better.
People do not have the same referents for moral concepts merely because they use the same words. The Nazis dehumanized other human beings completely. They are not applying or using the same ideas that the rest of us are applying. They are working from a different normative template. In each case, the person driven by those norms thinks of them as ‘good.’ But only in one case is the person rejecting known norms of humanity, seeking to perform actions which are beyond the pale within those norms—they know that but they prefer the value of the Aryan race, the reich, etc. over the other value system people standardly hold which forbids the gassing of babies, the elderly, and a mass of defenseless naked people in concrete bunkers and becomes frustrated when the quote of murder slows because it takes a long time to kill people even with gas.
There is some overlap but it is like the difference between astronomy and astrology. Both talk about the stars but do not share the same paradigm. The stars are there. They refer to them. They are in the same physical universe. But what they seek is not the same, and they are not utilizing the same investigatory strategies. Astrologers and astronomers value different things, have different goals, different rules. Maybe the astrologers WERE the first astronomers but the paradigms have diverged far too much to regard them as overlapping projects now.
Merely offering a moral justification like Goebbels did when you are detached from the actual. moral value of people does not demonstrate you are operating from the same conceptual schema. You could not possibly but one can also tell that they are not.
It’s much more complicated even than to say ‘they believe they are moral justified, period.’ They realized there’s another powerful conception of morality in existence in which one cannot do mass torture and mass murder. They knew that they were violating it, as most people are raised within it, and so were they. They tried to cover up their actions because they knew the horror that would ensue. They recorded them for the future when they had successfully eliminated the value system but in the present, they hid everything they did because they knew it would horrify everyone who possessed their former value system.
Their schema is about power and domination. If you were correct that everyone is sincere and acting from authentic moral principles they consider rationally defensible against objections, there would be no such thing as rationalizations necessary.
E.g., right now the DOGE workers, many of whom are neo-Nazis are going against the instructions of the Secretary of State and manually deleting payments to things like Pepfar. They are doing this because they agree with the Nazis and the apartheid government of South Africa that is a good thing to kill Black Africans, and a bad thing to prevent their death, even if they are children. This has nothing to do with ‘revenge’ against these people or some larger justice they seek. They dehumanized Africans and they want them to die. There are some people who will orchestrate the killing of other people so they will no longer exist. This is their wish—for those people not to exist. Because they are inferior, and should be eliminated.
There are actual murderers in this world. Not every murderer is murdering for what we would consider justifiable reasons, wrongly conceived. No—they have entirely different reasons, that come from norms which we cannot recognize since they are the opposite of the norms we hold, that children should be protected and people should not be eliminated from the planet in the goal of wiping out those of inferior races. This is the logic of eliminativism, which some racists and all Nazis hold. It is not a version of anything that comes from the moral values we hold but a different moral system.
very true. Boils down to Cruelty Creates Camaraderie. The further question is what else can do the same, and is there a way to foster it.
I don't think we will get over "good guy taking down the villains" as part of entertainment, though it would be nice if there were more "taking down the villains via the law" than "via the knife in the eye." But I've never liked action movies. But you are right: we CAN try to foster "good guy taking down the liars" even, perhaps, if it takes a knife in the eye. Part of the problem with our culture is that lying ISN"T seen as reprehensible. And perhaps it isn't always: the white lie (what a nice hat) isn't motivated by cruelty. Perhaps if more of our reprehensible villains were not serial killers or criminal masterminds, but bullies beating up the weak? Go for it, Bond. Piranhas it is for the genocidal leader or the gay-baiting bully.