ravi wrote:
>
>
> If I may: I think you are conflating "feelings" with "beliefs" and
> "thinking". When a guy cuts me off on the road when I am on my
> motorcycle, I "feel" like choking him to death, but I do not
> "believe" or "think" that such a "feeling" is meaningful (in a
> theoretical sense) or justified.
>
> Of course I want to see Pinochet or Kissinger suffer. For the same
> reasons that I want to watch The Big Lebowski and Harold and Kumar Go
> To White Castle every few months. It's a kick. The question is: can
> we generalise from this feeling?
In a world such as the present in which the arrest of Kissinger is just not conceivable, I would be overjoyed at his arrest: The Bastards are turning on each other. In a world in which we had the power to arrest and punish him, in the first flush of victory we would think/feel as Andie thinks we do/should and as you do right at the moment a driver cuts you off. Then if our victory was complete enough, we really have better things to do, and we should probably follow Trotsky's suggestion of sending them all off for life to a luxurious but isolated island resort. Punishment is backward looking.
And in the _present_ social order, of course, all punishment is positively evil.
Carrol