Reply #16: there is no similarity?

[iverglas]

Actually, there is.

All of the individuals in question were human beings.

It's the one great big similarity on which the whole of human culture and history and society has been constructed and continues to be built.

Personal feelings are one thing. I might rejoice in the death of a particularly horrible individual I know personally, say.

This does not mean that I am entitled to kill the person or that I should expect to do so with impunity. The public rules are different from, and not determined by, personal feelings.

Public displays of glee at a death straddle that line. They are understandable as expressions of each individual's personal feelings, for which they are answerable to no one. But they undermine that fundamental, essential value of human society: the humanity of every individual member of it.