Will Shetterly
2 min readDec 22, 2024

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I give you props for trying to separate these things, but I think you make a few missteps along the way:

1. There is an enormous difference between those who exploit a system and those who are exploited by it. Brian Thompson could have spoken out for universal healthcare. Instead, he made many millions.

2. The Russian Revolution raised Russia from a backward, minor nation to the country that put the first human in space. Russia today owes its prominence in the world to that Revolution.

3. The deaths of the Romanovs is not as simple as you suggest. From Wikipedia’s article on the subject: “Historians have debated whether the execution was sanctioned by Moscow leadership.[22] Some Western historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War.[23][24] This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary.[25] However, other historians have cited documented orders from the All-Russian Central Committee of the Soviets preferring a public trial for Nicholas II with Trotsky as chief prosecutorand his family spared.[26][27]”

When discussing fate of the Romanovs, remember Twain’s words on the French Revolution:

“There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

And also this, by JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

4. What may look like justification of violence is often only explanation couched in gallows humor.

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Will Shetterly
Will Shetterly

Written by Will Shetterly

If you’re losing an argument with me and are too proud to admit defeat, please feel free to insult me instead.

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