How is it "progressive" to allow public safety issues to disproportionately impact vulnerable populations?

Is Omelas "progressive"?

I was arguing it's not progressive...

Right. Letting drug addicts destroy the commons as they die horrific public overdose deaths is “progressive”. Stifling free speech is “progressive”. Letting mentally ill children be irreversibly mutilated is “progressive”.

Dramatically reducing a country’s murder rate while breaking the narcos’ stranglehold on it is… something else.

I guess at this point the meaning of the word “progressive” has achieved a full inversion?

Bukele has emprisoned a large part of the population for the rest of their life in concentration camps.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250128-no-way-out-gr...

If he was killing them directly in gas chambers instead of letting them rot in prison, the population would be as safe, if not safer, forever.

Would that still be "progressive" for you?

Would you have supported Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" too, at the time? Or sterilizing poor people? I mean, those are perfectly logical suggestions that would work, wouldn't they?

These people have made the affirmative choice to join gangs that terrorize law abiding citizens. Their choke hold on El Salvador has prevented others from living safe, prosperous lives (not to mention the countless people they've killed). Removing them from society is progress. The amount of utils gained by the large majority far outweighs those lost by these criminals. And frankly, it's a false equivalence anyway bc they're, y'know, criminals.

> Would you have supported Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" too, at the time? Or sterilizing poor people? I mean, those are perfectly logical suggestions that would work, wouldn't they?

You have erected a startling number of straw men in your response. I'll ignore them.

We should do things that both work and benefit society. We should not do things that don't work. Here's a short an non-exhaustive list of "progressive" things that don't work: restorative justice, tolerating crime, allowing the destruction of the commons by the mentally ill and addicted, allowing criminals to be free and wreck society due to legal technicalities, bureaucracy, and corruption.

And thus, as I wrote previously, the word "progressive" seems to have fully inverted. Things that enable or create progress are called regressive, while things that are actually regressive and destructure are called progressive.

There are alternative paths one could take to address society's ills.

I'm saying Bukele's policies aren't progressive. Furthermore, he doesn't consider them progressive. His allies in the Latin American ultra right wing don't consider them progressive. "Progressive" to them is an insult.