No good ethics can exist in a rigid & reductionist set of universal rules; good ethics always require contextual flexibility & situational analysis, anything less is lazy thinking claiming a moral high ground that simply isn’t there. Actual ethics take work & careful attention.

Wishing/praying/hoping for the death of a person in power who has done and continues to do measured, undeniable, and substantial harm & who actively contributes to the death of many others, IS a moral stance. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

There are no strictly universal rules: moral positions require knowledge of the specific situation & all its implications. We use shorthand because it’s easy, not because it’s right. Trump is not on the standard bell curve, his position & actions make him a legitimate outlier.

The shorthand rules we use for morals and ethics are valuable! These rules (laws etc) are a good starting point for judging situations pre-analysis. This is especially true for situations where outliers are vanishingly rare, but make no mistake, outliers exist.

Saying “wishing he’d die of COVID makes you a bad person” is a lot like saying “wanting the Nazis occupying your town to die in the earthquake that also killed your brother is a bad look” & people espousing it really do look that much like assholes to the rest of us.