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Comment by emmelaich | Hacker News Reader

> "No presumption of innocence was extended to the children who died with them."

So, would it be better if they held a trial and then killed them?

Does anyone believe that their innocence or otherwise has anything to do with them being killed?

Are there circumstances that make you think that the killing of children is OK?

It's at least a non-sequitur, possibly self-aggrandising yellow journalism and at worst it could be taken as a start at justification.

Sentences like these give me the creeps.

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You know what gives me the creeps? People who watch that video and read those facts and choose to focus on the tone of the closing tweet.

Well-put. To state that our ethical standard must be vigilantly maintained goes without saying. To put the treatment of these cold-blooded killers first is unnerving at best.

Why? It's worth pointing out. Just because some topic is emotionally heavy, doesn't mean other aspects of it can't or shouldn't be pointed out. It bothers me when someone may make a noteworthy point, and then someone else tries to make some inference on how they feel in general by compliment of what they didn't reference.

It bothers me because of a widespread and damaging tendency to focus on second order ethical issues rather than the main point. Instead of talking about what actually happened, people talk about how what happened is presented or the precise words that are chosen, how the same thing happened elsewhere in a way that attempts to make the speaker appear a hypocrite, or the identity of the person who presented it.

This happens all the time in the media and politics, and often involves deliberately uncharitable interpretations of what was said.

https://unherd.com/2018/09/insincere-politicians-cheapening-...

It's a bit like "Responding to Tone":

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Killing children is horrific. It doesn't need to be repeated.

Using hackneyed phrases cheapens the reaction.

I feel the story would have been stronger without the cheap emotional shot at the end.

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