This book was such an interesting combination between a chore and a joy to read. I remember audibly gasping at some of the twists, but the antiquity of the language made it a slow go, at least for me.
You never had a stranger hit you with something personal out of the blue? It happens to me routinely. Yesterday I learned that a cashier at the gas station is tired because she moved a few months back and hasn't finished unpacking but was looking forward to the birthday party her husband was throwing her next week.
Last month I learned a lady had had to move far from her friends and family and hadn't seen her granddaughter in years, but hadn't told anyone because she doesn't have any friends here.
I just ask questions out of genuine curiosity. Sometimes (probably most of the time, tbh) I get surface level answers, but sometimes people need to talk to someone and I've been told that I "have one of those faces" that makes it easy to open up. Just because you would feel you are over sharing, and maybe culturally where you are these interactions wouldn't happen, doesn't mean they don't happen or that they can't.
Are you seriously comparing school shootings to someone being punched in the face after holding up a sign that they likely knew was going to be inflammatory?
Edit: I recognize that it doesn't matter what the sign says, he doesn't deserve to be punched. It is the kind of statement that reeks of teenage edgelord humor, that I hope the young man grows out of. I think the comparison is in bad faith though.
Oof, I think there was a convention of some sort hosted in Switzerland that settled some of these ethical questions in a fairly defined way, a little while back.
Edit: this was me being cheeky about the Geneva convention- unlawful deportation is a war crime. For real though, if you aren't familiar with the Nuremberg trials, the "superior orders defence" has been settled- no ethical quandary about it. It's illegal to follow illegal orders.
The second example kind of feels like the Third Man Factor.