I love the story as well. Brilliant writing on the choices and perspectives of a so-called "ideal" society.

This reminds me of a terrible David Brooks (establishment hack, a useful idiot for people who consider themselves more sophisticated observers of the news, for context) NTY article that used a Those Who Walk Away From Omelas reference to defend all sorts of modern atrocities and injustices in the US and abroad. He completely misunderstands the story on purpose just to push propaganda for the US empire, he's pathetic. It's like Brooks couldn't ever become a real writer on his own merits and so he had to resort to cobbling together some distorted parodies of other people's great works like Omelas.

He literally tried to justify the US invasion of Iraq by saying that not walking away from Omelas was not only perfectly reasonable, but necessary, and so we have to just put up with all sorts of heinous shit in order to tell ourselves this is a good and just and free society. I cant believe he held a job at the NY Times for so damn long. Fuck David Brooks.