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The anti-retaliation side assumes that there are more groups than the two monoliths, of which one is actively doing the titting upon all tatters and the other has only now gained a reprieve to briefly tat upon all titters.
If I'm someone who dislikes the left at their current level of cancel-happiness, yet would dislike the right more if they were in power and would be just as cancel-happy, then blind, cathartic retaliation from the right as soon as they can teaches me that I actually don't want to give them a chance to prove they'll stop canceling as soon as they get the catharsis out of their system.
So again, per my post, do you apply this logic universally? Do you recoil at Little Timmy punching Brad, because you imagine that in all of his resentful little fury he'd probably be just as bad of a schoolyard bully or worse if he had Brad's status?
If "I believe you would behave badly if you were in a position of strength, therefore I can't support your retaliation from a position of weakness in the present moment." is a solid argument against retaliation, then retaliation is basically off the table entirely, because, as the old saying goes, power corrupts. If anybody who might take inappropriate advantage of a position of strength is banned from defending themselves from a position of a weakness, then almost everybody would be banned from defending themselves from a position of weakness.
Among the victims of mass shooters, for example, haven't there almost certainly been some who themselves fantasized about going Columbine occasionally? The types of young men who perpetrate these massacres have also not infrequently been their victims. So if one of these potential victims who likes to indulge in a little GTA and might even do so IRL if they had the power to do it without consequences (as unlike an actual mass shooter they're not willing to give up their life over it) manages to wrest control of a gun from an actual current mass shooter and end him, we should object?
I think this is just a bad assumption. Yes, left vs. right is somewhat reductive, but in regards to the issue of Donald Trump's assassination, splitting people into those two camps is hardly inaccurate.
Your mistake is assuming that "their unprovoked assault, our retaliation" is a correct take on the situation in the first place, because you once again reduce the two coalitions to monoliths. A better analogy would be Little Timmy "retaliating" by punching Kyle, who actually didn't touch him other than standing next to Brad and looking complicit. What is Kyle going to think now? Likely that if he's going to be assaulted anyway (perhaps for some verbal insult against Timmy), he might as well join in on the beatdown.
My argument is "if you don't like the side I'm closer to, how about you start your retaliation with the people who have wronged you most, not the people who are the easiest targets, such as myself. Otherwise, you'll find me closing ranks". If you don't care and see yourself as a perpetual Little Timmy, then be my guest and flail around. I'll keep the enforced pronouns.
Which Kyle has been attacked? Because if we consider who has been highlighted as the most innocent victim (the Home Depot cashier), she wasn't targeted for merely "standing next" to anyone or "looking complicit". Nobody is going after people who just happen to merely identify as left-wingers or Democrats, simply automatically assuming they support Trump's assassination (even though of probably many if not most of them do based on their "stopping Hitler" rhetoric), and proceeding from there (as left-wingers meanwhile have often done in the past with anybody who identifies as right-wing in relation to their most hated right-wing beliefs, as anyone who has ever tried to post on Reddit can testify to). She made a direct comment supporting Trump's murder. She is, as I characterized her, Sarah. She cheered Brad on openly and wished for the death of Little Timmy's mom.
This just gets into my broader point about tit for tat though. If left-wingers had taken your own prescribed medicine and focused their efforts exclusively on the Trumps and Musks of the world instead of the random people using the "OK" hand sign, then we wouldn't be here. But if you go after our cashiers, as you have for years, why shouldn't we go after yours? Are you just going to stop without any retaliation looming over you? Again, I doubt that.
And we'll keep up the aggressive "misgendering" then. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If not, then the gander has no reason to ever let up on the goose.
So I don't even really see where you're contradicting me.
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You already thought that, though, since you said you would dislike the right more given the same actions.
The right currently claims their principles are against the same actions, though. I'm explaining how being flippant about the Home Depot lady makes me disbelieve that they will act according to those stated principles if given the opportunity.
Can your principles not be against certain actions then if you would ever make use of them as demonstrative retaliation to prove their malice (or just to actively quell a threat/as a deterrent to further harmful actions against you)? If somebody punches me in the face and I punch them back, do I lose any credible claim to being basically more or less against punching people forever then? (Or, to specifically address the Home Depot lady, if I've been punched in the face repeatedly for years, and I punch somebody in the face for being a punchist who posted on social media that they're upset I didn't get punched so hard I died.)
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