Allow me to introduce a few samples who disagree with your nuanced analysis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_tol...
Pragmatism cannot be escaped simply by complaining that I am pedantic. Saying something is an action. Practicing a ritual is an action. Dressing a certain way is an action. Eating certain foods is an action.
Recall that your original post insinuated that most people are too selfish to choose to die for their beliefs. I am trying to explain to you that people do not choose to die for their beliefs; rather, they choose to take certain actions, and then their killers choose to kill them because of those actions. It is the selfishness of those personal actions which we are considering.
And, once we have achieved this scale, we can clearly see that killing itself is an action. It is simply another tool for achieving our selfish ends. A person can choose to selfishly kill as many people as they can reach. This suggests that our morality needs to not just account for making the choice to "die for what you believe in", but also the choice to kill for what you believe in.
Finally, let us consider the context of your original comment. The comment recounted a tale of folks who were sent to concentration camps in the USA during WW2. They claimed that the average person has no control over federal politics; you agreed and asked people to consider how they would prefer selfishly to not stick their necks out for the sake of ending the concentration camps. However, there are two grand ironies there: first, that we today claim to have entered WW2 in order to destroy concentration camps; and second, that we today have concentration camps on our southern border.
I don't know exactly what your point is, since you're not using your words well, but I think that you should take a step back and try to figure out where you're headed. I have the luxury of an elected representative who already is trying to close down the concentration camps, so I know which side I'm on.
>I know that you want to have an attitude where you are indignant that I am minimizing genocide and war
No.
I re-read your original message. Your examples in some can be prevented by interrupting specific actions, as you describe it. Indeed speech, clothing, ritual, and any other behavior can be interrupted. For the OP, how would s/he interrupt being Asian?
>people do not choose to die for their beliefs; rather, they choose to take certain actions, and then their killers choose to kill them because of those actions
What is the substantive difference? I am also uncertain on "kill them because of those actions", or more precisely I do not believe there is a way for making such nuanced distinction. Looking through the list of genocides, I am hard pressed to find a set of actions that could have been interrupted to prevent death. At State level, maybe.
> This suggests that our morality needs to not just account for making the choice to "die for what you believe in", but also the choice to kill for what you believe in.
I had no disagreement with this statement in your first post, which is why I did not comment to it.
>concentration camps on our southern border
I do not know what country you live in.
>I don't know exactly what your point is
My original post was in response to describing the current willingness to '"care" about politics' but not to "die for" or "kill for".
(As part of the "kill for", I am certain neither of us are advocating murderous rampage, but more like a para-/military action to liberate.)
Again, appreciate your responses.
Also, please stop using HN primarily for political battle. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of which politics they're battling for), because it destroys what HN is supposed to be for. I had to go quite a way back in your comment history to get to a place where you weren't doing that. Fortunately I eventually found it so I'm not going to ban you right now, but can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit?