this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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[–] skytrim@reddthat.com 82 points 1 year ago (53 children)

I play Skyrim. In that rpg video game you can be an assassin. After you kill Grelod the Kind, a child abuser, one of the children she tortured says:

"Kill one person, and you can solve so many problems. I wonder at the possibilities." - Runa Fair-Shield.

When does assassination become an acceptable political strategy? I can see how bumping off many crazy men (and right now I can only name male dictators but I guess women could be just as bad) would make the world safer - well, safer if we assume it would not trigger a backlash and WW3.

Maybe we could assassinate Kim and North Korea would rejoice not set off nukes? Maybe we could assassinate MbS and the Saudis would just shrug and appoint a new Crown Prince with a less murderous tendancy towards journalists and dissidents? But could we assassinate Putin, Trump, Xi, or Modi and not release hell?

If I had a red button to press and it would remove Putin, Trump, Musk, Thiel, Hamas, Netanyahu, or other bad guys, should I press the button? What do you think?

Note: this is a thought experiment - outside Skyrim, I never killed anyone, never worked as an assassin for hire, and have no desire to change that fact. I just want to read your thoughts on this topic - I think we've all wondered if there is a shortcut back to normality in face of current events but are we fooling ourselves?

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Putin and Xi...I'm pretty sure that, if they were topped, there's enough institutional Authoritarianism that either there would be a "clean" and immediate change to someone with the next highest authority....or it would fall into civil war with just as much speed, rounds of assassinations back and forth until the power vacuum is filled by someone able to pull everyone left to heel....or the whole government falls apart....

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You'd have power vacuums.

In America it's not too late. We have a clear succession strategy. It sucks...I think you'd have to pick people off till you got to Rubio to get back to something closer to normal. He's #4. If you don't stop there...it gets a lot worse before it gets any better.

China, Russia, and especially Best Korea are so deeply entrenched, I don't think succession would go as cleanly.

[–] Llewellyn@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Old meme that North Korea is Best Korea.

Honestly though...Rubio is such a spineless twit, if Trump, Vance, Johnson, and Grassley all got picked off, he'd probably shift so hard to the left he'd make Bernie Sanders look like Ronald Reagan.

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