I happen to know a few people who have grown up stewing in a sometimes-violent sometimes-cold conflict. They are openly and honestly essentialist racists, and if given the red genocide button would likely push it, or so they say. They are on the borderline about compatriots who question  them, making dark jokes about traitors. I&#x27;ve never truly tried to engage with them, hampered by internal disquiet that kept me mostly quiet. I would say the value of knowing them lies in the knowledge of where complete breakdown of the peace leads. But I am disturbed by the way I see them, as lost causes and human writeoffs.