friend, i think it needs to be stated explicitly that i have respect for you as a person, your opinion, and your right to express it. i also need to say that i think we agree more than we disagree. i am an atheist for a start, and as evidence i submit the fact that i do not capitalize the name of the fictitious god. i do not capitalize a lot of things, friend, but i especially do not capitalize the word ‘god.’ i was using god as a convenient topical metaphor. i think see what you meant with trans hate speech now, i was a little quick to dismiss that point. in a way i think i was doing the same thing i think you were trying to do talking about trans hate by making the comparison to ‘empathy is a sin.’ i was trying to refer to the kind of mindset that says “empathy is a sin” and say you don’t have to think that way, whether you believe in a god or not. it was clunky and clumsy if i have to explain it this much, sorry for that.

And you do that by making it damned clear that it is a “with us or against us” mindset. Either side with The People or oppress them.

we agree. what i’m trying to point out is that in there are a lot of factors that have nothing to do with empathy or trans hatred or invading countries or oppressing minorities generally that do not occur to children before they walk into a recruiter’s office with civic duty and filial pride and escape from poverty in their heads. that it is possible to be a totally normal, morally sane, apparently well-adjusted human being who walks into a recruiter for a global war crime syndicate think they’re doing a right and good thing. telling such an apparently ‘morally sane’ person that they’re about to commit evil without explaining that to them, without overcoming almost 2 decades of programming inertia first is bound to backfire. the easiest and best way i know of overcoming that inertia is empathy. no gods required. and you don’t have to sympathize to empathize. that said, considering why someone acts the way they do does not obligate you to act that way too.

you don’t need to meet in the middle, and I am 100% not asking you to. i would respect your opinion a lot less if i thought you wanted to meet midway between fascism and whatever-we-had-before-that-we-could-pretend-was-democracy.