Personal Responsibility - legitimising sadism?

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Why is it that people who speak of Personal Responsibility use it always to justify choosing to allow catastrophically bad things to happen to people, often things that lead to death? It's as it is considerered an acceptable way to legitimise the bloodthirsty mob baying for blood. Is it the acceptable method to be sadistic and bloodthirsty these days?

I think it's because it's a great rationalization, that people like because it makes them feel good. It lets people think that they are the responsible ones, and that since everyone else is a moocher who is lazy (or perhaps disabled because they offended god in some way). And so, they get to rationalize that they are the superior people, literally better than everyone else. Humans find such stuff irresistible.

It's also a good rationalization against uncertainty in life. If you can believe that are the right kind of person, then you never have to worry about random calamity befalling you and your loved ones. That's because calamity only happens to those who deserve it. Who deserves it? People who don't prepare, or work hard. Scammers.

Thus, logically, people who experience calamity didn't prepare, work hard, and aren't mooching. People who worked hard and had a calamity don't exist -- you know, because of logic.

I suspect this is why the privileged classes like such ideologies. They don't have practical experience with random devastating crap. The human ego loves to take credit for went right, whether or not it had anything do with it or not.

Overall, I think current politics is playing on selfishness. And selfishness is very very easy to appeal to. So much so that if you tell people the right lies they'll believe them without any real evidence.

There is a very great difference between a belief in personal responsibilty and schadenfreude.

I am perfectly capable of believing in personal responsibility but at the same time advocating for protections for those who cannot or will not exercise that responsibility. I can believe that a person is the author of their own misfortune while at the same time sympathizing with that person for their circumstances.

Sadists, so-called, might use the mask of a belief in personal responsibility, but that does not mean that all who share that belief share in their joy at others' misfortunes.

This. Don't conflate the two.

People who use that phrase "Personal Responsibility" almost always use it to justify evil happening to people. They are also supremely arrogant in that the implication of what they say is that their good fortune is completely their own work.

I don't. I'm a strong believer in personal responsibility, but also civic responsibility. The two are not mutually exclusive at all.

I think you're really generalizing here. I also don't believe making use of the phrase "personal responsibility" as a rhetorical device, implies that the person has any actual belief in or understanding of personal responsibility. A good example would be the live-at-home libertarian who has no job but takes his frustration out on the working poor or independant unemployed, and forcibly burdens his parents to provide everything for him because he can't find work and refuses to apply for benefits. This person might use the phrase, but clearly hasn't got the first clue what it actually means.

IMO, it is one of the fatal flaws of libertarianism. Individual freedom, carried to an extreme, is dangerous.

About 50 million Soviets would say the same about collectivism but they are now dead. You can twist it almost any way you want, but collectivism has a higher body-count than individual freedom does.

and that wasnt a huge strawman?

any pure ideology is absolutely worthless in the world of today, live with it.

Perosnal responsibility is just that: Personal responsibility.
Everyone has or should have personal responsibilities of some kind.
How it automatically relates to justification of genocide or suffering I have no idea.

You're speaking in vague terms when you rail against 'personal responsibly'. Please be more specific.