I’m not celebrating that a bad person died, but that the bad people are afraid. It’s fucked up to think any justice was delivered from the death of one guy. The justice comes from how this motivates people to work towards systemic change; a world where these rich sickos are held back rather than encouraged. These rich people are not like us, and their panic is driving that truth home. Make them panic more. Let them widen the divide between us and them. Force them to show their true colors.
Simping for him is the right thing for us to do. It furthers his act of terror against the rich without spilling any blood. It doesn’t matter that it’s an empty threat for most of us; the more we celebrate him, the more people will take out their anger on the best targets imaginable.
If we don’t do it, that lonely white man will just shoot innocent people for infamy like they’ve been doing. They will join the cops or vigilante fascists in lynching trans people of color like me to scratch their itch for blood. This agitation propaganda is helpful in combating the agit-prop from the right. They’ve been doing stochastic terrorism against children for years, so fuck them and their mother if they complain about civility.
We’re in a state of nature now, with no political or economic sovereignty to speak of. We don’t have any human rights thanks to these rich idiots not appreciating the sweet deal they had, so I only feel empowered when I call their murderer hot.
I can’t believe that after thousands of years humanity still struggles with “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
When under attack, defend yourselves. When a potential possible attack some time in the future seems likely, or when a benefit provided by society via democratic system is taken away, if you attack preemptively then you’re probably just a POS.
We might be happy this time, but the next person might kill somebody we like. They might feel emboldened to target trans folk and democratic socialists. If violence escalates to riots then one side might start gunning the other down in the street. The only people who want the poor and ignorant to kill each other are enemies of our society as a whole.
You do not get to decide who lives or dies. No one does.
If an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, one person denying over 80% of insurance claims is a whole lot of eyes, which is a crazy ratio. I don’t think your analogy works.
Nation wide, 305 million Americans have health insurance. Over 80% were being denied because of a faulty system these companies refused to fix. That is 244,000,000 people. Two hundred and forty four million people being rejected.
United has 51 million people it “”““covers””“”, being generous and saying it was only 80% who were getting denied from this system means that’s still 40 million 800 thousand people.
All your what ifs already happened because of 2016 btw.
If I had my way him and his ilk would be facing life in prison.
BTW, United had a denial rate of 32%, double the national average. Idk where tf you got 80%.
The man didn’t gun people down in the street, he refused to pay for their treatment and his victims didn’t know how to fight it. Less than a fifth of a single percent of denied claims are appealed by the people whose claims are denied, they literally don’t even realize a system exists to fight against the injustice.
But now we’re moving on to violence in the streets? Well for your sake, I hope your side wins despite the massive sacrifices.
His systemic violence is far more dangerous than street justice. Stop being a libcuck. If someone wants to hurt you, or your community, or your entire planet, there is nothing unjust about stopping him in anyway necessary and this was certainly necessary.
“His systemic violence” is going to keep happening because nobody is doing a fucking thing about it, the killing in the street included. The only real solution is to change laws and pass sweeping reforms of the system, which demonstrably people are reluctant to do.
capitalism can not be reformed. the core value system of it and it’s prevalent iteration of neoliberalism is based solely on exploitation, individualism, differential advantage and monetary profit and is antithetical to life and thriving of life. you can’t fix this system with minor tweaks and reforms
the structural violence the plutocrats participate in and reinforce through myriad means like advertising and economic coercion is exponentially more devastating and deadly than someone venting like with this ceo shooting
edit2: the “real solution” is mutual aid, community building and dual power movements with an emphasis on anarchist ideas. to partially quote Buckminster fuller To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. but unfortunately sometimes the only language these monsters understand is violence, which is ironically what their colonial projects always claim about the oppressed
There is no reality in which tearing down the US system of government via violence and forceful action results in a better system than what currently exists. There is no precedent for such a situation. There is no way foreign adversaries wouldn’t leap at the chance to take control during the conflict. There is no way native adversaries wouldn’t leap at the chance to take control during the conflict.
If that’s your plan, a civil war that creates anarchy, then you might as well just hand the keys to the kingdom over to the richest americans because they absolutely would come out on top in that hypothetical.
What you’re really asking for is just for Americans to kill each other off only to make things worse, to make the entire world worse.
We are in anarchy at best under fascism. The rule of law is gonna breathe its last breath in January, so we better set up ways to exist without the protection of the state.
The strategy isn’t to kill every rich person, but see that they undermine their popular support. Let the Democrats have no popular support. Let the rich desperately kiss the ring of the crazy old tyrant.
We aren’t gonna need to kill Trump, just wait for him to die. He’s done a fantastic job of ensuring that no one else stands out around him because he doesn’t care about legacy. Even if he tries now, there’s nobody who can take his place. The MAGA movement will fracture without him. It’s what he’s made sure of. We need to give the rich nothing to grab onto except him.
No more spineless Democrats. If they don’t help us, let them flounder. I have no faith in the Gavin Newsoms of the world. We aren’t gonna get far catering to him. We need build up independently, using an anarchist strategy of mutual aid outside of the corrupt system. We won’t even need it for gaining political power, but to survive.
I’m not gonna do anything to hurt the rich personally, but I’m not about to stop anybody from doing that. Opposing violence hasn’t gotten progressives much electoral political power recently. They still get branded as violent rioters as the police state expands. Their efforts then get watered down and turned into controlled opposition, despite them being the only people working to save liberal democracy.
The biggest thing we need is to build up our support systems for everyone, NGO style. Provide people healthcare, food, and other necessities. Electoral politics should be ignored until we get closer to the midterms. By then we’ll know better what can and can’t be done.
I’m think the reactions to the killing of the CEO highlights how people feel they have no control in changing the healthcare system. The recent events is seen as some form of justice, and a feeling that someone is standing up for the little man.
While I think most people don’t usually like to celebrate murder, it does put the things in to perspective, and highlights the unjust system, because you can compare the act of the murder and the acts of insurance companies. You need to understand the context of these reactions and not just say people are “bad” for thinking it’s somewhat fair.
Politicians should take these reactions as a sign that things need to change. Hopefully this will be a catalyst, so something good comes out of it. Otherwise I think resentment will keep brewing and might cause more violence.
Edit: just wanted to add that the recent events has given people hope that things can change, which I think is the only positive side of this.
Well I hate to break it to you, but people were very much aware of the injustices and failures of the healthcare system. So you basically agree that nothing will change because of this, but more violence could come instead.
Yes, people were aware but feel they have no way to change it. Be it lying politicians, or the general problems of a two-party system.
The killing of the CEO made people feel it is possible to fight back at the system. Futile or not, at least “something”
This is what happens if citizens feel disenfranchised, which is the key here. This will scare some powerful people which it should. This is what you get in an unjust system.
I agree that that things will most likely not change, at least if we don’t take the opportunity to discuss why this happened and why people “cheer” on the killer.
The only real solution is to change laws and pass sweeping reforms of the system,
Right. So what’s your plan for doing this then?
…
Oh, right, you can’t do it because $200 Billion are leveraged against you being able to do this.
Violence is the authority from which all other authority is derived. We respect laws and governments because we have ceded them the right of violence to maintain and enforce those laws. Governments and corporations do not respect us because governments (and by America’s extension, corporations) hold the monopoly on violence.
Therefore, the credible threat of violence is required for a fair and equal negotiation. We don’t need to go in and gun down every C-level executive in the country, the same way the cops don’t need to arrest every single person in the country to impress upon the rest of us what they are capable of. The opponent merely needs to think that you might do it in order to fear and respect the prospect appropriately.
This assassination hasn’t solved any problems directly, not in the least, but what it has done is hand us a bargaining chip that is now ours to squander. We have proven that we, citizens as a block, are capable and perhaps willing to exercise the authority of violence, and the corpostate no longer holds the monopoly. This has the corpostate immediately scared, and puts us in a position to negotiate to prevent more of these, or even for someone else to wield us in their own negotiations (think some politician in a back rooms talk with insurance reps, “look do you want the citizens to keep taking pot shots at you forever or do you want to actually do something about it?”)
We, the people, don’t want violence. It isn’t ours to wield. We gave it up intentionally when we wrote the laws of our lands. But it is the last tool left to us when all others are taken away. The lesson that should be learned here and the real solution we should be looking for is to return to us the other tools we had for negotiation, so that violence isn’t the only remaining way for us to voice ourselves. When corporations were busy union busting and warping tax code and shrinkflating and lobbying down the minimum wage, they forgot that the reason all those things existed was to keep the people happy so they don’t rise up. We already had a corpo hellstate in America once before, and by the end of it, companies gladly instated all these worker benefits after mass general strikes and the third or so time all their corporate offices were firebombed. Skip a few generations and they’ve either forgotten why those policies existed, or they’ve ignored it completely in some show of demented grandeur.
But if I’m being honest I fully expect this opportunity to be thoroughly wasted and for us as a whole to generally learn nothing. It is possible that I will be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not really holding my breath for anything these days.
Nothing has changed, tho. United Healthcare still insures millions, will still deny claims with an automated approach. Millions still don’t know how to request information about denied claims, such as who denied them and where they are licensed to practice, or how to appeal.
If it was an eye for an eye we’d trap them and their descendants into ever worsening debt spirals, make them use a system that actively works against them to get their health issues treated, and we’d sit them in places for eight hours a day, for five days in a row, where they must do as we say to survive. This isn’t an eye for an eye, this is a sucker punch after years of having our eyes systemically removed.
I guarantee you that if the shooter had the power to do that then he would have, but the point of the hyperbole is that violence does not solve all problems and instead can be quite detrimental.
The ideal world would have people vote for politicians which oppose privatized healthcare and would make his profession illegal. An ideal world would see class action lawsuits bankrupt him. An ideal world would consider his company denying ability to get necessary care, despite qualifying for reimbursement, as an illegal act similar to assault, and have him sent before a jury.
The outcome we got is the worst possible outcome: the USA elected a bunch of explicitly pro-privatization officials and somebody felt violence was the only resort.
Lol what youre seeing now is nothing compared to how bad it could be.
Look to war torn countries whose democracies collapsed and see for yourself the possible outcomes. Only 70% of people getting healthcarw is your concern? Oh, baby, that number can go much lower and they can take away their bread, too.
Yeah the ideal world would also want its populace educated to be able to participate in democracy in the first place. This world is not ideal. This is what happens in reality when you’re in the business of crushing souls, as it rightfully should. Monsters should fear their own footfalls.
It has always been this way. The degradation of leadership across generations of a society until the people are forcefully unified through suffering to enact meaningful change. That meaningful change always comes wearing the face of violence. Because it is the only face despots recognize.
We all wish it weren’t so. We wish the struggle of people from power didnt lap like the tide against our societies. But that is not reality. In reality power structures corrupt and degrade over time, again and again no matter their nature or intention. This is the meaning of Jefferson’s statement on the Tree of Liberty. You may not like it, but violence is the foremost effective tool of the people. The secret thats always erased and kept from us is how to correctly use it.
Judge them as correct maybe. Society is and has always been built on violence. Kings, emperors, dictators, CEOs all leverage violence directly and indirectly to maintain power. Every successful social movement has been backed with violence or the threat there of.
Of course, why just yesterday I used violence to solve a fellow’s computer problems and then when my car engine light came on I fought 47 men and the light went away. I shudder at the day I suffer heart failure, I can’t imagine how many I’ll have to fight to magically cure it, on top of the people I have to fight that day to make crops grow dinner.
Wait, was it fighting? No no, I’m pretty sure there might be some other pillars to human society… Mutually beneficial coexistence of specialists with a strong democratic rule of law to settle disputes, or at the very bare minimum some temporary excuse to maintain a social contract of minimization of harm done to each other? No no no, definitely fighting. Fight not hurt brain like think think do.
you’re not even trying to educate yourself on the subject, you just hide behind your idealist, grand-standing spite. just go read Foucault and get some critical thinking done. question your biases ;)
I guarantee you that if the shooter had the power to do that then he would have
You don’t know that. Killing the rich is ethical; torturing them is not. And since the shooter has better ethics than you do, I doubt he’d violate such a basic principle.
that’s funny because suddenly after the enucleation insurance companies seemed to feel generous and denials dropped dramatically, and a famous decision on limiting the time frame in which anesthesia is covered got overturned. so some things were neutralized.
Do you really think all progress has to look huge? You’ve got to be trolling at this point, or you’re so loaded with emotions you’re just fighting people now.
An eye for an eye doesn’t make the whole world blind. It makes a few people blind until they wise up and realize “Wait, I like making people blind, but I don’t want to be blind!” And then they stop blinding people, thus removing the need to blind them in return.
A legislative solution? The people making legislature literally work with CEO’s, accepting their money in exchange for enacting policies that benefit them. They’re partners. I’d love a country where the government works for the people to hold back corporations, but this country specifically believes the opposite should be true. There will be no legislative solution insofar as capitalism is still the American system. There is no way within the current system for rich people to be brought to justice, only people working outside the system can make that happen.
Brian Thompson made a living making people blind, sometimes even literally, and it was all well within his rights in the eye of the law. Us giving him a taste of his own medicine is already showing results in those other CEO’s that don’t want to suffer the same fate. We’re literally already seeing what “an eye for an eye” gets us, and it’s fear among those who have been free to blind people for decades without ever worrying about being blinded themselves before now.
It doesn’t matter if you think a legislative solution is silly, this is never going to end any other way. If it is legal then people will do it, forever.
Well, yes, you’re right. People will continue to do it forever. So long as accumulating capital is the goal of the country, companies like United Healthcare will exist, and will be free to ruin people’s lives in the name of gaining more capital. However, unless we literally overthrow the system, it too will never change. Currently, the only viable solution that I can see actually happen is that every few years we need to remind the CEO’s that they’re not entirely safe by culling a few. Because we literally have no other way to influence them - the law is on their side, and we would need to overthrow the law itself to change that.
Your solution is only the right one in a hypothetical world where a legislative change is possible, but we do not live in that world. We might be able to change the world to make it a viable option, but to do that would require a lot more killing of a lot more powerful people, otherwise known as a revolution. Even then, in the scenario where we tear down this system and build a new one, greed will always exist in society, and those that seek power will always eventually worm their way into powerful positions. The new system would work for a while, but when greed and power inevitably come back together again, we’ll need to tear that system down and start over once more.
LMK when a country exists that doesn’t have accumulating capital as a goal for its people, until then we can use the method I mentioned which actually works.
Sure, you let me know when your method actually works. I’d love it if it did - it’d sure be a game changer literally around the world. Until then, let’s just be happy that this random gunman actually did something that worked, even if only temporarily.
Buddy, we are just animals trying to survive. The wealthy lack every transcendental value that makes humans special. They’re more like orcs. You want me to say please and thank you as they destroy my world and poison my family?
Rejecting reason and giving into animosity, into self-serving instincts, precisely describes the people poisoning the earth. Have fun being just like them. No good outcomes will come from your violent revolution, I can tell you that right now.
The person rejecting reason is you. Turning the other cheek is not rational. My conclusions are grounded in first principles, whereas your stance is closer to a religion.
Then why are you celebrating the death of a bad person in the first place? That’s the actual “eye for an eye” shit that’s making you blind. The death itself isn’t worth celebrating, only the effect of it on the world.
We are under attack dumbass. We’re being parasitized by the rich! The democratic system in the US is gone with the election of Trump. What the fuck do you actually think that would look like if not this? You’re either in denial, or too cowardly to actually stick to your word.
There are no “effects on the world” from this and if there will be then those effects will be purely negative such as more copycat killers attacking random targets. A bad person is just dead, its results are purely therapeutic.
This is basically the tolerance paradox but for violence. If people are willing to use violence on me (denying healthcare, keeping us poor, stochastic terrorism) then I’m fine using it back, otherwise they get free reign.
The “violence” of only the majority of people getting the healthcare they need is nothing compared to the “violence” of riots and murders in the streets.
Nor would more violence in any way remedy the old violence.
I explicitly did like when it was done to the rich, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the perpetrator. The enemy of my enemy is just some dude with a gun.
That dude with a gun left an unmistakable political message on his casings that resonates with literally every single American that has never been massively wealthy. Disliking him for pretty much any public thing we know about him paints you as the type of person that honestly has a few casings waiting for you someday unless you give up your wealth and work towards helping your new found class.
Nope, just ignorant. You’re ignorant. I don’t doubt you’ve been educated enough to read the book in question, but you’ve specifically and explicitly shown that you have not read the book in question.
Now instead of taking the advice to heart and growing, you’re dismissing all criticism. That’s okay. I’m sure you’re right. Go back to posting on reddit, le epic sir.
That was a reference to the texts the perpetrator had written in the shell casings he used, which were a reference to a book. He definitely sent a message with the act, and it was very much a political one at that.
I’m not celebrating that a bad person died, but that the bad people are afraid. It’s fucked up to think any justice was delivered from the death of one guy. The justice comes from how this motivates people to work towards systemic change; a world where these rich sickos are held back rather than encouraged. These rich people are not like us, and their panic is driving that truth home. Make them panic more. Let them widen the divide between us and them. Force them to show their true colors.
Simping for him is the right thing for us to do. It furthers his act of terror against the rich without spilling any blood. It doesn’t matter that it’s an empty threat for most of us; the more we celebrate him, the more people will take out their anger on the best targets imaginable.
If we don’t do it, that lonely white man will just shoot innocent people for infamy like they’ve been doing. They will join the cops or vigilante fascists in lynching trans people of color like me to scratch their itch for blood. This agitation propaganda is helpful in combating the agit-prop from the right. They’ve been doing stochastic terrorism against children for years, so fuck them and their mother if they complain about civility.
We’re in a state of nature now, with no political or economic sovereignty to speak of. We don’t have any human rights thanks to these rich idiots not appreciating the sweet deal they had, so I only feel empowered when I call their murderer hot.
I’m simping for the opening of CEO season.
I can’t believe that after thousands of years humanity still struggles with “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
When under attack, defend yourselves. When a potential possible attack some time in the future seems likely, or when a benefit provided by society via democratic system is taken away, if you attack preemptively then you’re probably just a POS.
We might be happy this time, but the next person might kill somebody we like. They might feel emboldened to target trans folk and democratic socialists. If violence escalates to riots then one side might start gunning the other down in the street. The only people who want the poor and ignorant to kill each other are enemies of our society as a whole.
You do not get to decide who lives or dies. No one does.
If an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, one person denying over 80% of insurance claims is a whole lot of eyes, which is a crazy ratio. I don’t think your analogy works.
Nation wide, 305 million Americans have health insurance. Over 80% were being denied because of a faulty system these companies refused to fix. That is 244,000,000 people. Two hundred and forty four million people being rejected.
United has 51 million people it “”““covers””“”, being generous and saying it was only 80% who were getting denied from this system means that’s still 40 million 800 thousand people.
All your what ifs already happened because of 2016 btw.
If I had my way him and his ilk would be facing life in prison.
BTW, United had a denial rate of 32%, double the national average. Idk where tf you got 80%.
The man didn’t gun people down in the street, he refused to pay for their treatment and his victims didn’t know how to fight it. Less than a fifth of a single percent of denied claims are appealed by the people whose claims are denied, they literally don’t even realize a system exists to fight against the injustice.
But now we’re moving on to violence in the streets? Well for your sake, I hope your side wins despite the massive sacrifices.
His systemic violence is far more dangerous than street justice. Stop being a libcuck. If someone wants to hurt you, or your community, or your entire planet, there is nothing unjust about stopping him in anyway necessary and this was certainly necessary.
“His systemic violence” is going to keep happening because nobody is doing a fucking thing about it, the killing in the street included. The only real solution is to change laws and pass sweeping reforms of the system, which demonstrably people are reluctant to do.
capitalism can not be reformed. the core value system of it and it’s prevalent iteration of neoliberalism is based solely on exploitation, individualism, differential advantage and monetary profit and is antithetical to life and thriving of life. you can’t fix this system with minor tweaks and reforms
the structural violence the plutocrats participate in and reinforce through myriad means like advertising and economic coercion is exponentially more devastating and deadly than someone venting like with this ceo shooting
edit2: the “real solution” is mutual aid, community building and dual power movements with an emphasis on anarchist ideas. to partially quote Buckminster fuller To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. but unfortunately sometimes the only language these monsters understand is violence, which is ironically what their colonial projects always claim about the oppressed
There is no reality in which tearing down the US system of government via violence and forceful action results in a better system than what currently exists. There is no precedent for such a situation. There is no way foreign adversaries wouldn’t leap at the chance to take control during the conflict. There is no way native adversaries wouldn’t leap at the chance to take control during the conflict.
If that’s your plan, a civil war that creates anarchy, then you might as well just hand the keys to the kingdom over to the richest americans because they absolutely would come out on top in that hypothetical.
What you’re really asking for is just for Americans to kill each other off only to make things worse, to make the entire world worse.
We are in anarchy at best under fascism. The rule of law is gonna breathe its last breath in January, so we better set up ways to exist without the protection of the state.
The strategy isn’t to kill every rich person, but see that they undermine their popular support. Let the Democrats have no popular support. Let the rich desperately kiss the ring of the crazy old tyrant.
We aren’t gonna need to kill Trump, just wait for him to die. He’s done a fantastic job of ensuring that no one else stands out around him because he doesn’t care about legacy. Even if he tries now, there’s nobody who can take his place. The MAGA movement will fracture without him. It’s what he’s made sure of. We need to give the rich nothing to grab onto except him.
No more spineless Democrats. If they don’t help us, let them flounder. I have no faith in the Gavin Newsoms of the world. We aren’t gonna get far catering to him. We need build up independently, using an anarchist strategy of mutual aid outside of the corrupt system. We won’t even need it for gaining political power, but to survive.
I’m not gonna do anything to hurt the rich personally, but I’m not about to stop anybody from doing that. Opposing violence hasn’t gotten progressives much electoral political power recently. They still get branded as violent rioters as the police state expands. Their efforts then get watered down and turned into controlled opposition, despite them being the only people working to save liberal democracy.
The biggest thing we need is to build up our support systems for everyone, NGO style. Provide people healthcare, food, and other necessities. Electoral politics should be ignored until we get closer to the midterms. By then we’ll know better what can and can’t be done.
lol what the fuck are you talking about
I’m think the reactions to the killing of the CEO highlights how people feel they have no control in changing the healthcare system. The recent events is seen as some form of justice, and a feeling that someone is standing up for the little man.
While I think most people don’t usually like to celebrate murder, it does put the things in to perspective, and highlights the unjust system, because you can compare the act of the murder and the acts of insurance companies. You need to understand the context of these reactions and not just say people are “bad” for thinking it’s somewhat fair.
Politicians should take these reactions as a sign that things need to change. Hopefully this will be a catalyst, so something good comes out of it. Otherwise I think resentment will keep brewing and might cause more violence.
Edit: just wanted to add that the recent events has given people hope that things can change, which I think is the only positive side of this.
Well I hate to break it to you, but people were very much aware of the injustices and failures of the healthcare system. So you basically agree that nothing will change because of this, but more violence could come instead.
Yes, people were aware but feel they have no way to change it. Be it lying politicians, or the general problems of a two-party system.
The killing of the CEO made people feel it is possible to fight back at the system. Futile or not, at least “something”
This is what happens if citizens feel disenfranchised, which is the key here. This will scare some powerful people which it should. This is what you get in an unjust system.
I agree that that things will most likely not change, at least if we don’t take the opportunity to discuss why this happened and why people “cheer” on the killer.
Right. So what’s your plan for doing this then?
…
Oh, right, you can’t do it because $200 Billion are leveraged against you being able to do this.
Violence is the authority from which all other authority is derived. We respect laws and governments because we have ceded them the right of violence to maintain and enforce those laws. Governments and corporations do not respect us because governments (and by America’s extension, corporations) hold the monopoly on violence.
Therefore, the credible threat of violence is required for a fair and equal negotiation. We don’t need to go in and gun down every C-level executive in the country, the same way the cops don’t need to arrest every single person in the country to impress upon the rest of us what they are capable of. The opponent merely needs to think that you might do it in order to fear and respect the prospect appropriately.
This assassination hasn’t solved any problems directly, not in the least, but what it has done is hand us a bargaining chip that is now ours to squander. We have proven that we, citizens as a block, are capable and perhaps willing to exercise the authority of violence, and the corpostate no longer holds the monopoly. This has the corpostate immediately scared, and puts us in a position to negotiate to prevent more of these, or even for someone else to wield us in their own negotiations (think some politician in a back rooms talk with insurance reps, “look do you want the citizens to keep taking pot shots at you forever or do you want to actually do something about it?”)
We, the people, don’t want violence. It isn’t ours to wield. We gave it up intentionally when we wrote the laws of our lands. But it is the last tool left to us when all others are taken away. The lesson that should be learned here and the real solution we should be looking for is to return to us the other tools we had for negotiation, so that violence isn’t the only remaining way for us to voice ourselves. When corporations were busy union busting and warping tax code and shrinkflating and lobbying down the minimum wage, they forgot that the reason all those things existed was to keep the people happy so they don’t rise up. We already had a corpo hellstate in America once before, and by the end of it, companies gladly instated all these worker benefits after mass general strikes and the third or so time all their corporate offices were firebombed. Skip a few generations and they’ve either forgotten why those policies existed, or they’ve ignored it completely in some show of demented grandeur.
But if I’m being honest I fully expect this opportunity to be thoroughly wasted and for us as a whole to generally learn nothing. It is possible that I will be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not really holding my breath for anything these days.
Vote against privatized healthcare, you stupid assholes. Vote against the GOP. Vote Dem.
and how’s that working for you? and everybody else?
The killing in the street included, except for the fact that they changed their decision.
Will it be implemented again later? Probably. But this event caused change now.
Nothing has changed, tho. United Healthcare still insures millions, will still deny claims with an automated approach. Millions still don’t know how to request information about denied claims, such as who denied them and where they are licensed to practice, or how to appeal.
If it was an eye for an eye we’d trap them and their descendants into ever worsening debt spirals, make them use a system that actively works against them to get their health issues treated, and we’d sit them in places for eight hours a day, for five days in a row, where they must do as we say to survive. This isn’t an eye for an eye, this is a sucker punch after years of having our eyes systemically removed.
I guarantee you that if the shooter had the power to do that then he would have, but the point of the hyperbole is that violence does not solve all problems and instead can be quite detrimental.
The ideal world would have people vote for politicians which oppose privatized healthcare and would make his profession illegal. An ideal world would see class action lawsuits bankrupt him. An ideal world would consider his company denying ability to get necessary care, despite qualifying for reimbursement, as an illegal act similar to assault, and have him sent before a jury.
The outcome we got is the worst possible outcome: the USA elected a bunch of explicitly pro-privatization officials and somebody felt violence was the only resort.
Obviously violence doesn’t solve all problems, but it does objectively solve a lot, if not most, of them.
And when we normalize solving problems with violence then the weak and disadvantaged will be slaughtered like lambs.
We’ve mostly not been and yet that is exactly what’s happening now. I’d at least like to try something else.
Lol what youre seeing now is nothing compared to how bad it could be.
Look to war torn countries whose democracies collapsed and see for yourself the possible outcomes. Only 70% of people getting healthcarw is your concern? Oh, baby, that number can go much lower and they can take away their bread, too.
Yeah the ideal world would also want its populace educated to be able to participate in democracy in the first place. This world is not ideal. This is what happens in reality when you’re in the business of crushing souls, as it rightfully should. Monsters should fear their own footfalls.
It has always been this way. The degradation of leadership across generations of a society until the people are forcefully unified through suffering to enact meaningful change. That meaningful change always comes wearing the face of violence. Because it is the only face despots recognize.
We all wish it weren’t so. We wish the struggle of people from power didnt lap like the tide against our societies. But that is not reality. In reality power structures corrupt and degrade over time, again and again no matter their nature or intention. This is the meaning of Jefferson’s statement on the Tree of Liberty. You may not like it, but violence is the foremost effective tool of the people. The secret thats always erased and kept from us is how to correctly use it.
If you want to live in a violent hell then thats just you, society will judge you for your self-justifying actions.
Judge them as correct maybe. Society is and has always been built on violence. Kings, emperors, dictators, CEOs all leverage violence directly and indirectly to maintain power. Every successful social movement has been backed with violence or the threat there of.
Of course, why just yesterday I used violence to solve a fellow’s computer problems and then when my car engine light came on I fought 47 men and the light went away. I shudder at the day I suffer heart failure, I can’t imagine how many I’ll have to fight to magically cure it, on top of the people I have to fight that day to make crops grow dinner.
Wait, was it fighting? No no, I’m pretty sure there might be some other pillars to human society… Mutually beneficial coexistence of specialists with a strong democratic rule of law to settle disputes, or at the very bare minimum some temporary excuse to maintain a social contract of minimization of harm done to each other? No no no, definitely fighting. Fight not hurt brain like think think do.
you’re not even trying to educate yourself on the subject, you just hide behind your idealist, grand-standing spite. just go read Foucault and get some critical thinking done. question your biases ;)
The Allies of WW2 would like a word.
The Allies were on the Defence. They, for the most part, treated nazi soldiers with dignity and even fair trials and rehabilitation.
Ganking any unarmed civillian in any context is not comparable that.
You don’t know that. Killing the rich is ethical; torturing them is not. And since the shooter has better ethics than you do, I doubt he’d violate such a basic principle.
This isn’t “an eye for an eye” this is about the neutralization of a serial eye remover. An eye for a thousand eyes seems a very easy choice to make.
Nobody neutralized shit. They just took an eye.
that’s funny because suddenly after the enucleation insurance companies seemed to feel generous and denials dropped dramatically, and a famous decision on limiting the time frame in which anesthesia is covered got overturned. so some things were neutralized.
I would argue that people we care for are already under attack and dying… some of them directly because of bad policies, political and corporate.
Oh well look at all those great policies that got written overnight because we murdered a dude. /s
Do you really think all progress has to look huge? You’ve got to be trolling at this point, or you’re so loaded with emotions you’re just fighting people now.
If this “progress” were “huge” it would be war in the streets.
An eye for an eye doesn’t make the whole world blind. It makes a few people blind until they wise up and realize “Wait, I like making people blind, but I don’t want to be blind!” And then they stop blinding people, thus removing the need to blind them in return.
Yeah, I’m sure after we murder more people they’ll start thinking twice about putting people in debt. /sarcasm
Without pursuing a legislative solution, no matter how many people you kill: the problem will never go away.
A legislative solution? The people making legislature literally work with CEO’s, accepting their money in exchange for enacting policies that benefit them. They’re partners. I’d love a country where the government works for the people to hold back corporations, but this country specifically believes the opposite should be true. There will be no legislative solution insofar as capitalism is still the American system. There is no way within the current system for rich people to be brought to justice, only people working outside the system can make that happen.
Brian Thompson made a living making people blind, sometimes even literally, and it was all well within his rights in the eye of the law. Us giving him a taste of his own medicine is already showing results in those other CEO’s that don’t want to suffer the same fate. We’re literally already seeing what “an eye for an eye” gets us, and it’s fear among those who have been free to blind people for decades without ever worrying about being blinded themselves before now.
It doesn’t matter if you think a legislative solution is silly, this is never going to end any other way. If it is legal then people will do it, forever.
Well, yes, you’re right. People will continue to do it forever. So long as accumulating capital is the goal of the country, companies like United Healthcare will exist, and will be free to ruin people’s lives in the name of gaining more capital. However, unless we literally overthrow the system, it too will never change. Currently, the only viable solution that I can see actually happen is that every few years we need to remind the CEO’s that they’re not entirely safe by culling a few. Because we literally have no other way to influence them - the law is on their side, and we would need to overthrow the law itself to change that.
Your solution is only the right one in a hypothetical world where a legislative change is possible, but we do not live in that world. We might be able to change the world to make it a viable option, but to do that would require a lot more killing of a lot more powerful people, otherwise known as a revolution. Even then, in the scenario where we tear down this system and build a new one, greed will always exist in society, and those that seek power will always eventually worm their way into powerful positions. The new system would work for a while, but when greed and power inevitably come back together again, we’ll need to tear that system down and start over once more.
LMK when a country exists that doesn’t have accumulating capital as a goal for its people, until then we can use the method I mentioned which actually works.
Sure, you let me know when your method actually works. I’d love it if it did - it’d sure be a game changer literally around the world. Until then, let’s just be happy that this random gunman actually did something that worked, even if only temporarily.
Bhutan
You’re the epitome of the cautionary adage that all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.
As for your claim that an eye-for-an-eye is somehow bad? Tit-for-tat is an excellent strategy for maintaining successful cooperation.
Lastly, there’s no coherent normative theory according to which killing is bad categorically. That’s simply ridiculous.
I’d rather die a good man than start killing unarmed civilians. Evil can have this worthless hell if more of them truly exist than the rest of us.
I am unafraid, of them or you.
Killing the rich is self-defense. This planet is dying. Every oil executive, private jet owner, and wealthy polluter is guilty as fuck.
Also they’re not civilians. They’re not even human, as far as I can tell.
Dehumanize the enemy and give them no quarter, but you’re so certain that you’re the good guys. Tale as old as time.
Buddy, we are just animals trying to survive. The wealthy lack every transcendental value that makes humans special. They’re more like orcs. You want me to say please and thank you as they destroy my world and poison my family?
Rejecting reason and giving into animosity, into self-serving instincts, precisely describes the people poisoning the earth. Have fun being just like them. No good outcomes will come from your violent revolution, I can tell you that right now.
The person rejecting reason is you. Turning the other cheek is not rational. My conclusions are grounded in first principles, whereas your stance is closer to a religion.
Then why are you celebrating the death of a bad person in the first place? That’s the actual “eye for an eye” shit that’s making you blind. The death itself isn’t worth celebrating, only the effect of it on the world.
We are under attack dumbass. We’re being parasitized by the rich! The democratic system in the US is gone with the election of Trump. What the fuck do you actually think that would look like if not this? You’re either in denial, or too cowardly to actually stick to your word.
If anyone ever wondered who would sympathize with the British in 1775, posts like OPs should answer that question
There are no “effects on the world” from this and if there will be then those effects will be purely negative such as more copycat killers attacking random targets. A bad person is just dead, its results are purely therapeutic.
This is basically the tolerance paradox but for violence. If people are willing to use violence on me (denying healthcare, keeping us poor, stochastic terrorism) then I’m fine using it back, otherwise they get free reign.
But the violence will never end. By using violence back on them you change nothing. The solution is not violence, it is political action.
If you have any actual impact on politics via violence then you’re justing going to tear down a bad system for an obviously worse outcome.
The violence already doesn’t end. Why should I sit and take it? Obviously we need political stuff too, but violence is a useful tool to those ends.
The “violence” of only the majority of people getting the healthcare they need is nothing compared to the “violence” of riots and murders in the streets.
Nor would more violence in any way remedy the old violence.
The violence has been escalating longer than you’ve been alive. This instance is smaller than the day before it.
You don’t have a problem with violence, you just dislike it when it’s done to the rich.
I explicitly did like when it was done to the rich, but that doesn’t mean I have to like the perpetrator. The enemy of my enemy is just some dude with a gun.
That dude with a gun left an unmistakable political message on his casings that resonates with literally every single American that has never been massively wealthy. Disliking him for pretty much any public thing we know about him paints you as the type of person that honestly has a few casings waiting for you someday unless you give up your wealth and work towards helping your new found class.
Please respond without telling someone else that they may be murdered
The only way, shape, or form that this “message” is “political” is that it is apparent less people believe in politics than ever.
Go read the book, then go ahead and edit your comments so you don’t look as silly.
Wow look at that pointless non-argument. Just call your opponent uneducated and ridiculous. Gosh, I better respond in kind, when in rome and all that.
Nope, just ignorant. You’re ignorant. I don’t doubt you’ve been educated enough to read the book in question, but you’ve specifically and explicitly shown that you have not read the book in question.
Now instead of taking the advice to heart and growing, you’re dismissing all criticism. That’s okay. I’m sure you’re right. Go back to posting on reddit, le epic sir.
That was a reference to the texts the perpetrator had written in the shell casings he used, which were a reference to a book. He definitely sent a message with the act, and it was very much a political one at that.
deleted by creator
The CEO did.