There is no "them" or "us". "They" are just people. They are rarely even people that we disagree with - they're innocent civilians that were unlucky and lived in what turned into a war zone, or soldiers that are simply following orders to protect what they consider their home. The decision is whether or not to take hundreds, thousands, or even millions of lives exactly like the one of the navy officer with the launch code embedded in his chest. Lives that had nothing to do with the conflict at all.

The "bad guys", the ones you might actually refer to as "them", are sitting somewhere comfortable, far out of reach of any of this. Their only interaction in this is that they pressed a button.

It's scary that even here on HN, a comment like this would get downvoted. Seeing the world through a lens of "us" and "them", and seeing "them" as being less worthy of our humanity & consideration, has led to more human-atrocities throughout history, than almost anything else.

It's pretty clear that the grandparent meant that for better or worse, ingroup-outgroup bias is a very real thing in human psychology abd sociology, and there wouldn't be many wars without demonization of the outgroup. I saw no indication that they actually thought that this is a good distinction to make. Is-ought problem.

But there has to be an "us" and "them" unless we live in a truly post-scarcity society.

You can label whatever group you find yourself in to be "us", and the rest as "them", but they're no different than you. You're just being selfish in valuing your life more than theirs.

This selfishness if of course natural for any human, but that does not make it better.

Does there have to be? It seems more accurate to say that we like there to be.

It is naive to think we are all one happy human race. I wish it were so but it isn't. The "others" will have no problem killing you and dance on your grave. I guess that is why the saying goes "If you want peace, prepare for war"

Usually, and judging by the numbers, it's the inverse.

It's the self justified "us" than do most damage, not some "others".

It doesn't matter which army is battling me, whether it is Russian, Chinese or American. They will have no problem killing me, because that's their job, and there is war. Dancing on my grave would be difficult, because that would require retrieving my body.

I'm not saying that war is not necessary, but pretending that you're fighting zombies thirsting for nothing but your blood is idiotic. The soldiers you're fighting joined their army to protect their people. The people itself most likely just want to passively continue with their life, not understanding what the war is about, knowing nothing but the date of the first bomb. The people that started the war is sitting somewhere cozy, out of reach.

> The soldiers you're fighting joined their army to protect their people.

Simply not true in the case of, say, an aggressor who initiates conflict by invading other countries.

Many a times there is definitely a right an wrong in war.

The side which is right has no choice but to respond with aggression. Fight, or else be laughably annihilated for the sake of a pacifist ideology.

> The "others" will have no problem killing you and dance on your grave.

Any evidence for that?

Read a history book. The human nature is well documented.

You're not reading the same history books, obviously.

Because again and again, humans are well-documented to NOT dance on each other's graves. We consistently pull back from the brink of destroying the "other" and not only let them live, but help them rebuild.

>Seeing the world through a lens of "us" and "them"

And yet you demonstrate it yourself with, "I expect them to do it, but not us in the HN community. We're different here."

Armchair psychology: I suppose media can be blamed partly for this view. Bad news sell, and the further away places are correspondingly, stereotypically, only the worst of the news are of reporting value. Thus, people in far away places are associated with fear and chaos.

Also: Baseline human psychology is tribalistic and violent. We need education and culture to behave as modern - and sustenance amd safety.

The media give the people what they want.

When I come to put you up against the wall for holding dangerous to the nation ideas like that, will you still think of me as one of your own?

I have no one labelled as "my own", at least not in the nationalist/patriotic sense. My family and friends my go into that category if we really must, but that's it.

If you put a gun to my head, I'm certainly not going to care if you're my local baker or a North Korean soldier, just to name a random nation. Hell, I'll probably have sympathies for the soldier, as they are just doing what they were told, like any other soldier would. Getting angry at them would be pointless, although I'd of course do my best to fight for survival, and if I came out the winner, I would be upset that the life I had to take was not the life that was to blame.

For the baker, it would be hard to tell if the hand was forced, or if the idea of slaughter was of their own making.

> Killing via button is killing many of them "them". Hacking the innocent's chest is killing one of "us".

Pressing the button means killing of lot of "us" in the end too, because there's no such thing as one-way nuclear exchanges nowadays, with subs ready to fire from anywhere in the world.

Also, fallout is not restricted by borders. For example US and USSR where within 60 miles of each other at there closest borders during the Cold War. India and Pakistan share a border.

Which is why we have proxy wars where we "protect" or "liberate" peoples who are not super power themselves and do not have second strike capability.

> The President must distinguish "them" or "us", otherwise he has no business leading the country in a war.

Starting from the 60's, the concept of MAD and a truly global, total war made this distinction irrelevant. As soon as you push that button, you're not only condemning "them" to death.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

As if the establishment haven't killed (and allowed the killing) of tons of "us" without flinching an eye...

From this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

to much worse stuff. But suddenly when it becomes matter of open public scrutiny it's some kind of big conundrum...

Do you really think that anyone ordered that? Do you think the President, or Governor of Ohio said, "You know what? Shoot the peaceful protestors!" Of course not. A few Guardsmen panicked and started shooting in a stressful situation (you really shouldn't use the National Guard for police work unless they're MPs). I'd bet money no one above the rank of Corporal was involved in the decision, and probably no one above PFC.

Isn't that a naive assumption of how things work? Do you really think the President (or Governor of Ohio) are actually involved in the nitty gritty of things?

They just make their general discontent known ("oh, those pesky anti-vietnam protesters" etc), allow for the cultivation of an "us and them" dynamic, and then their people ensure that for years the police is not just allowed to do bad things but even encouraged (with protecting policemen that stepped out of line, giving promotions to their leadership if not directly, then after some such scandal gets forgotten, etc).

From McCarthy and Hoover, to the treatment of the human rights activists, the 68 democratic convention and onwards to this, the Watergate and more, it's not about some "bad apple" or "stressful panicked" actor, but about systematic cultivation of such solutions.

Well, as someone alive and politically aware during the period, and who's studied that event, no, that Manichean world view doesn't match what happened in the cultural '60s in the least, a period which includes much of the '70s.

For one thing, "those pesky anti-vietnam protesters" had burned down the ROTC building a couple of days before, there was quite a bit of violent rioting prior to the shooting and the National Guardsmen had already had to use their bayonets to manage it (when bayonets get fixed and bloodied you know things got very serious). Today's "campus protests" are utterly farcical by comparison.

In general, violent civil insurrection was common, and the authorities management was very mild by the international standards of the time, and there was plenty of pressure from the bottom up for much more strenuous measures. Note it's the only major incident of that type in that period, and is a trifle when compared to atrocities like Waco.

McCarthy? Please, if you don't know what the phrase "submit to party discipline" means, and that it resulted in every member of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), back when it was popular and selective in admittance (through the '30s at minimum), was a self-declared traitor, well, read up on what the other side was saying, or things like the Venona decrypts which eventually revealed just how accurate McCarthy's raw information was.

And note how the authorities' flaccid response to GRU and NKVD spying through these traitors like Hiss paved the way for crude men like McCarthy. That's a lesson you'll see from the Weimar Republic to a lot of what's happening today, and there's plenty of history of this sort of thing in pre-modern times.

Hoover was a bad apple, I'll grant you, and the rest of the barrel remains rotten to this day; has the FBI Hostage "Rescue" Team ever actually rescued anyone? Latest is their shooting in the only fatality resulting from the Bundy Oregon mess, and then trying to cover that up.

Well, you're defining "us" too broadly. If you redefine it as students vs National Guard then it's not hypocritical at all, just ghastly.

Honestly, large scale nuclear weapon deployment is going to kill alot of "us" so symbolically killing one of us is a better representation of reality.

There is never going to be a one-sided nuclear exchange when a substantial number of powerful, ideologically opposed countries have access to ICBMs.

Seems to me that the President is not going to push the button unless someone else has already pressed theirs, and the missiles are on their way.

Only two countries have formally declared a no-first-strike policy: the USSR and the PRC. The USA has always reserved the right to initiate a nuclear exchange with another country.

Given that those two countries were demonstrably not averse to killing millions of their own citizens, one might perhaps take those assurances with a very large grain of salt.

Yes, but that's different than that being a scenario which is remotely feasible (it's not). Not renouncing a first strike during the Cold War was a measure to counter massive Soviet conventional numerical advantages in the European theater. France also does not guarantee no first use, because it wanted the Russians to know that crossing into France would necessarily mean nuclear retaliation on their cities (as if the Russians made it to the French border, the conventional war would essentially be lost for NATO).

In short, there are no realistic circumstances under which the US would launch a first strike with nuclear weapons. The political cost is too high, and the benefits could never outweigh the costs.

also of note, the US has precedent of making the first strike: against Japan.

First only if you don't count minor details like Pearl Harbor. And given that we were systematically destroying their urban areas, just less efficiently albeit with more casualties, it's again a different thing.

The policy the above poster is referring to is No First Use [1], which is specifically about the use of nuclear weapons as a means of warfare. The Pearl Harbor attack, as it was not nuclear in nature, would not be relevant the No First Use policy if it were being followed to the letter and spirit.

How most nuclear powers would actually react to large-scale non-nuclear aggression is of course a whole different discussion.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use

More efficiently.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not the most destructive bombing runs in WWII.

The March 9th 1945 bombings of Tokyo were far more destructive.

> The President must distinguish "them" or "us", otherwise he has no business leading the country in a war.

This shows just how much 20th c. nationalism still holds sway in many minds when it is as ridiculous as sports fandom.

All lives are important, but my neighbors and family are more important than strangers.

On a connected planet, who is not your neighbor?

Is this a topology question?

People who live far enough away that I don't see them with any regularity and whom I have no emotional or social connection.

Sounds rather selfish

Wallowing in tribalism is like wallowing in the way humans suck at statistics, while pledging allegiance to one's casino.

Sports fandom is much less ridiculous because it is at least a benign outlet for the human tribal mentality.

Tribalism is a fundamental facet of our species. Aspiring to act as if it weren't is not a strategy likely to achieve much beyond lamentations.

Nationalism != tribalism. Nationalism exploits tribalism, in the way that casinos exploit other natural cognitive disabilities. That does not doom all of us to losing our savings at the casino. In fact gambling has a much longer history than nationalism. 20th c. nationalism is a johnny-come-lately, like video poker machines, and could be a passing fad.