No, sorry. That’s still an act of hate. You’re targeting those people because they are ‘those people’. Your motivation is still to destroy a wide class of people simply for who they are. It’s just that systemic hate, doing exactly what I said it does:
You don’t break the cycle of retribution through violence unless you’re willing to kill every single one, no matter how innocent, no matter how newborn. And that takes hate. Without hate, there are other ways… a myriad of other ways, including just leave them the hell alone. Admit the possibility of error, and your own side’s culpability for it’s part in that cycle.
Mm. Either way it might be at the point where motive doesn’t matter anymore.
(… Is there a hard limit for that? … hm, no, don’t think so. On the one hand hardly anybody’s going to take their parent, child, or sibling being killed before their eyes as anything but personal; on the other, both you and I have both impersonally killed, or helped to kill, people on a scale of … cities, probably? … Maybe some colony worlds? So I guess it’s pretty subjective.)
Edit:
Anyway I feel like we’re sort of distracting from the topic. Maybe we should continue to discuss in Off-Topic, if we’re going to? It does feel like we’ve kind of reached a conclusion of sorts, though.
I think the lesson you can bring to your daughter from this exchange, is that it’s complicated. The Federation, due to the nature of its governmental strategy, is governed by a variety of voices, often standing in opposition to one another.
Perhaps one, or a few of the parties involved in making the decision to get involved was, as your daughter asked, specifically invested in preventing the Amarr from allying closely with the Caldari, creating an un-winnable 2-front war for the Federation. However, reducing the Gallente’s involvement in the Minmatar Rebellion to this motive alone, would likely be a stretching of the truth. Some might even call it propaganda.
Alas, it is wonderful that your daughter is inspired to ask such challenging questions, and I hope that you may help to show her that most answers are steeped in nuance.
Education is Important, and I have invested extensively in the School system on my home Planet.
I have Decided, in this specific Instance, to explain to my daughter that interstellar polities Frequently engage in Multifaceted Actions, and it is Uncommon for actions to have only One specific objective.
Also that politicians frequently make Decisions based on very incomplete information, which is why many Actions by interstellar polities have Unintended Consequences that may not show up for Many Years.
I might add it’s important to differentiate between the decisions of leaders and government and the desires of regular folk. Leadership often requires a degree of cynicism and pragmatism that often ignores the ideals an average citizen believes in.
Were there cynical reasons behind Federal support of the Matari rebellion? Certainly. However I think there was a genuine abhorrence held towards the institution of slavery by the citizenry of the Federation that fostered a genuine desire for the liberation of the Minmatar.
Yet even though the institution of slavery is evil in my mind, it is an evil that serves those in power. I’m pretty sure the common Amarr believe in their own sense of doing good in the world according to their own beliefs.
For them, enslaving people for generations is a mechanism for erasing the culture of their captives, and indoctrinating them into their own. They are entitled to believe that is a good thing. We are entitled to believe that is a bad thing. That disagreement can only be resolved in a language they understand. It is not a language that is spoken or written.
You know, when you’re going to try to be snide and belittling about illiteracy, it helps to not get the salient facts exactly wrong. Let’s take a look at context!
In this context, it’s obvious that ‘they’ are the Amarr while ‘we’ refers to the Matari people. Thus, Jesoph’s implication is that the Amarr understand only violence. In addition, you’ve already, in this very thread, referenced reading official histories in The Republic, which means you’d have needed the Minmatar to appreciate the written word in order for there to be official histories to read.
Now, you’ve also admitted to lying and fabricating your account entirely, so there’s some wiggle-room on whether we should take your statements as reliable that there are, in fact, words written by the Minmatar out there someplace.
But then, you’ve also been pretty consistently schooled in another thread about pretty much everything from supercarrier operations to whether or not Shakor needs to hide his threats of politically-motivated mass murder of Minmatar… via written word… from a Minmatar.
So maybe trying to get clever and snide about our mastery of the written word isn’t a can of worms you want to go opening, hmm?
The Amarr faith requires them to convert all of humanity to the worship of their god. It’s not a ‘hey, you know what’d be nice?’ or even a ‘go help them to know the truth’. Rather, they are called on to convert every human being. If you refuse to adhere to their beliefs, do you know what their faith—which has the weight of law, in the Empire—calls upon them to do?
Diplomacy, where the Empire is concerned, is only ever a tool to let them have more time to prepare to kill you. The honest ones, like @Mitara_Newelle of House Sarum, admit this. The rest just count on you to believe that the Amarr will ever let the wants of men overrule the commands of their god.
And remember, adopting the Amarr faith means your primary loyalty is to their god, and its servant on this plane… whoever’s butt is on the Golden Throne. Any Amarr congregations in the Federation? They may not even know it themselves, but they’re sleeper cells, to be called upon to Obey God when the time comes.
Feel free to ask them. Ask all of the Amarr on these boards. See if any of them will say ‘yes, we can let people continue to defy the will of god, no problem!’
Sure, I grew up friends with a lot of Ni-Kunni migrants from the Empire during my slumdog youth. They were good people and always helped out me and mine when no one else would.
They did invite me to their congregations a few times but their religion never really clicked with me - I never got the whole drinking wine and saying it was the blood of life and such.
Overall they just seemed like regular folk with their own peculiar beliefs. As far as I am aware they weren’t out to conquer or enslave anyone.
To be specific, my implication is that the diametrically opposed interests entail that diplomacy is at best a method to stall for time. At the end of the day no amount of fancy parties and smiles will change that their objective is to reclaim, and that they consider this a good thing, nor will it change that most sane people would consider that idea fit for the looney bin, as it isn’t serving a god as much as it is playing one.
Their reclaiming seems to be much more likely now that the federation has aligned itself with the Empress…
Should the minmatar turn to the Caldari I very much doubt our willingness to assist them in a defensive war. The respective capsuleer militias of the State and Empire have ties tested and tempered by fire.