I’ll get this out of the way right now, I’m a progressive socialist and Kissinger’s legacy in the world is one of reactionary repression and suffering. I find pretty much everything he stood for to be wrongheaded and harmful to society.
That said, celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life and an utter lack of humanity. I understand the motivation, but it should be fought against by remembering that no one is ever just one thing, everyone is a mix of good and bad, and we certainly shouldn’t give in to the desire to rejoice at another’s death, no matter what we think of them.
Fuck that opinion.
Is celebrating the death of a human being mildly unpleasant? Sure. But is it more unpleasant than the 3-4 million deaths he caused? Fuck no.
Celebrate the death of an evil man. Go for it. And for the neo-Victorian scolds who want to say that it’s bad to speak ill of the dead:
You know what goes here!
FUCK YOU!
Celebrate the death of an evil man. Go for it.
This is where I’m at too. I feel no guilt celebrating the death of an evil person.
I’m not going to pretend he was a good person. The world is a better place with him gone.
If we cannot celebrate the death of an evil man, how will younger generations learn to avoid the mistakes of the past?
Pretending he never existed amounts to a coverup of his crimes.
Alfred Nobel’s death was celebrated prematurely. He held several very lucrative patents all related to explosive munitions. A newspaper accidentally ran his obituary which described him as the “merchant of death” and equated his life’s work to creating new ways to “mutilate and kill”. He was so distraught by what society thought of him that he used his massive fortune to create the Nobel Prize. He had hoped that this would change how people would remember him.
I also think people who lead terrible lives should be remembered as such. Hopefully it causes other politicians to wonder what their own obituary will look like.
I’ll bet Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize wasn’t on his radar, though.
No one’s asking anyone to pretend he was a good person, or that he never existed. We don’t have to do any of that in not celebrating his death.
Younger generations can learn to avoid the mistakes of the past through being educated by those who lived through it and by being exposed to human kindness and compassion instead of retributive hatred.
So if people celebrated the death of Hitler, you’d say the exact same thing right?
No that makes the kids feel bad to learn the shitty mistakes we made in the past. Can’t teach that. /s
Hate and anger are human emotions. Ironic how you claim it’s inhumane to use those emotions.
I bet you would think different if his actions directly impacted you.
For my part, I agree. I don’t celebrate death. I sure as hell ain’t gonna mourn evil people, or pretend the world isn’t objectively better off without them. I’m also not gonna lose any sleep over other people doing it. I’ll happily celebrate any good things resulting from their death. But death itself isn’t to be celebrated, not for me.
Congratulations, you actually posted an unpopular opinion.
I think the best comment in response is from @mawkishdave.
I bet you would think different if his actions directly impacted you.
That said, celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life
The man in question disrespected human life his entire life. He is just receiving what he dished out.
We’re not rejoicing his death per se but rejoicing in a new world where the murderer of over 4 million no longer walks among us.
How can this be so hard for people to understand?
Gotta wonder if OP, being plopped in say, Paris 1945, would have also criticised people for celebrating Hitler finally ridding the world of himself…
Fucking centrists. smdhThat’s a really good way of putting it.
Evil people deserve to be hated.
Tolerance of intolerance (what you are doing here) is intolerance.
Intolerance of intolerance (what people expressing joy over Kissingers death) is tolerance.
Get off your fucking high horse, stop looking down your nose at actual good people, stop speaking up in defense of bad people.
Not that fucking hard to understand.
It’s an opinion. I don’t like it. It’s in the correct community though.
The man is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. You’re god damn right I’m going to cheer his own. I wish it was long and painful. I also wish he was locked up in “The Hague” when he died. Alone.
But I know you’re just looking for engagement because nobody would be THAT naive to not think he deserves death and so much more.
I am not OP but the argument appears to be the difference between Justice vs. Vengeance - i.e. even actively cheering for his death is not quite the same as celebrating it happening, after the fact.
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion from what OP wrote.
I wish he died a long time ago. And I’m happy he’s dead now.
A truly unpopular opinion!
celebrating someone dying in the way that’s happening now shows disrespect to human life and an utter lack of humanity.
I disagree with this when applied to Kissenger. His actions directly contributed to millions of people unnecessarily dying. This is not an exaggeration.
He committed treason against his country by purposely sabotaging Vietnam peace talks. He did this to ingratiate himself to Nixon, not for any sort of higher reason.
His evil deeds are very much still fucking things up in the present day.
Kissenger was one of the worst monsters of the modern era.
To top it all off, he never received justice for any of his misdeeds. He was widely venerated and powerful until his death.
He lived to 100. He died a powerful and rich man. It’s not like some incredible violence happened to him and everyone is celebrating his pain. It seems to me he lived his best possible life, from his perspective. I’m sure he died without regrets. He was a psychopath.
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating that this man is gone. I hope historians can illuminate his crimes. I hope we can collectively remember him as a villain, and accept his war crimes are something the USA is directly responsible for.
I regret that he was never tried at The Hague.
I don’t think people here are very receptive to what you are trying to say - fwiw I don’t think what you want to convey can be taught in mere words, as it relates to people’s underlying worldview with which they filter everything. But some of us get what you mean, no matter what words are chosen, and I want to say kudos for standing up for decency.:-)
Kissinger is responsible for the deaths of millions
Cheering his death is decency.
Simple thought experiment. If you were alive during Hitler’s death would you still feel the same way?
I don’t like the idea of celebrating death because there’s usually at least one person who is mourning and deserves to be respected in that. If people were celebrating the death of my loved one then yeah i’d feel pretty shitty about that.
But there is a certain category of person where this doesn’t apply. If you’re famous for doing war crimes then your death should be celebrated. It’s less about the person and more about what they symbolise. If you use your existence to bring such suffering upon the world then humanity kind of has a duty to celebrate the loss of that existence from the world.
I guess to the point of your statement, that everyone is a combination of both good and bad. I am just genuinely curious, what good did Kissinger do?
He made bomb makers SUPER rich.
The bomb makers thought that was good.
Lol, you respect human life? You must be very young or incredibly sheltered.
