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I can tell you that I'm exactly in that positionI mean specifically the luxury of offering them mental help rather than punishment. Which can only happen from a position of societal authority, after these criminals have been removed from power.
I do understand the argument of say not condemning an individual TSA ball fondler [0] because they didn't personally choose the policies of their job. But in your case you were outright attacked - I think individual criminality definitively crosses a line where one can no longer say the thugs are just poor people forced to do a job.
It's kind of like when someone goes a bit too far blaming poverty for some instance of less-organized violent crime, and actually starts absolving the criminal as being another victim of the circumstances. In actuality, both the existence of the poverty and the crime itself are wrong, and regardless of the incentives being stacked against them, the criminal still chose to do wrong.
> Not only am I in a more comfortable and privileged position than people who are more seriously victimized by this system
As an aside, I will point out this means you actually have more of a duty to seek justice. A poor person will just get laughed out of an attorney's office when they ask about contingency, if they even got past the screening phone call. One of the problems I have with phrasing things in terms of "privilege" is that it makes it sound like you didn't get it as bad as you could have, so maybe you shouldn't be so angry at your specific situation. Don't slump into that.
> ...and I acknowledge that my somewhat passive attitude in response is itself a coping mechanism.
That was my point, and my comment was actually passive as well. You're pointing at the abstract concept of a spirit and saying theirs is worse off for it. A traditional religion might assert they're going to burn in hell. I'm focusing on actions in the concrete world, and since straightforward justice is (most likely) prevented, saying we can only hope they eventually receive corporeal comeuppance in some other way. They're all ways of setting aside the incongruity, so we can get over the fact that you (et al) were unjustly attacked, and get on with other things.
> Nevertheless, I think that for compassion and peace to become the true orders of the day in the information age, we must never lose track of our empathy for the agents of our oppression.
I'm a bit out of it in a few ways to fully grok this statement, but I feel like my problem with it is that the oppressive system is driven by energy (in fact, our energy - it's a parasite that benefits from the oppression), so all the understanding in the world will not stop it from continuing to exist (cf all those ambivalent poor people working for it so they can eat). Therefore, peace can only be obtained by a counterbalancing force pushing back.
[0] Although I personally feel that taking the opportunity to give them shit undermines the do-gooder propaganda they're subject to, and helps to increase the cost of running the system.