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If people had half a brain then the alarms have been ringing nonstop for years and any attempt to explain why so we can fix it resulted in failure.
I fear that instead of an era of reform, the response to this act of violence and to the widespread rage it has ushered into view will be limited to another round of retreat by the wealthiest. Corporate executives are already reportedly beefing up their security. I expect more of them to move to gated communities, entrenched beyond even higher walls, protected by people with even bigger guns.
Unfortunately the alarms are ringing for the wrong people. This is worrying as modern technology can allow these people to deal with mobs and riots a lot more effectively.
This is also why in certain grassroots communities people have been pressing for more radical, immediate action. If the big guys at the top start getting spooked then it could be too late for any efforts at dethroning them.
Yeah Bashar al-Assad knew there were a lot of people in his country that wanted to remove him from power. Because of this a movement to remove him from power completely failed. Oh wait, no, the opposite of that happened.
It's actually more the norm that smaller actions (successful or not) snowball into larger actions. A movement isn't a bunch of academics discussing ideology. It requires real actions non-academics can relate to.
Honestly it would be better for the people in power if this guy is never found. If they kill him, he becomes a martyr. If he's put on trial, that's an event that could spark protests. It's better for the powers that be if everyone just forgets this ever happened.
I agree that it most likely is in the best interests for those in power to just drop the assassination story and pretend it never happened, but if it is the best choice it's the best in a series of bad choices for the powerful. Underneath the immediate concern of one of the peonage getting up the courage to kill one of the Princes of the Universe is the general public response.
Every day the assassin stays free and in the news is a day everyone can see that the American public supports and condones the killing of people in C-suite (and likely beyond C-suite). That is one hell of a permission structure now in place. If the Powers That Be then pretend the killing didn't even happen letting the assassin off the hook, that's them giving carte blanche to copycats to do as they will, nobody is going to stop you. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
Yes. It SHOULD ring alarms. It should have rang alarms 100 years ago. It should make the rich and elite sit down and really contemplate the fact that nobody, NOBODY, gives a damn if they die, and we'll openly celebrate the fact that they just got shot in the face. The world will be happy they're gone.
It should make them sit down and ask the all important question of WHY.
Why would a nation cheer wildly at their death? What have they done to deserve that kind of treatment? And when they start asking those questions, hopefully they find the answers. Hopefully something is put right in their face that forces them to empathize with those they've hurt, and those that would not hesitate to shoot.
I do not know the shooters name. I do not know the shooters identity. However we ALL know the shooters story. We may not know the specifics. He may be dying, and was denied his own health. He may be losing or already lost a loved one. Whatever the case, we all know the motive. And what should scare these CEOs is that Brian Thompson never learned a lesson. There was no 3 ghosts of Christmas. Brian Thompson was just walking down the street one day. And suddenly he was dead. He didn't even have time to process it. He never knew his killers name. He may not have even known he was targeted. He may have died before he even realized what's going on.
But the rest of them? They should all be sitting in their homes, thinking about if they're next. WHY they would be next, and what they've done to potentially be targeted in the future. What can they do to stop it?
Because for once in my life, I'm seeing real consequences for corrupt and evil behavior. THATS why everyone is cheering. It's been a long time coming, and we're all just hoping this turns into Americas version of the french revolution.
We're not against the idea of working hard and becoming rich for it. We're against the idea of becoming rich by exploiting the literal lives of those you step on. And that seems to be almost the exclusive way to become rich in this country. It's sickening.
We (in the US) just elected a grifting, criminal "billionaire". I don't think the animosity so loudly and gleefully displayed in the reactions to the murder of this asshole insurance ghoul is representative of a newly heightened consciousness of wealth inequality. I hope that it is the start of something, but I've been disappointed in the public way too many times.
Just dropping in to remind everyone, that there have been 2 assassination attempts on the 'grifting, criminal "billionaire"' in just the last 8 months and he's been hiding behind thick glass in public.
I don't think it will stop, because however many people you manage to manipulate via targeted brainwashing (social media), you create at least a few super angry, unpredictable folks with ever less to lose. And they all have guns.
Edit: Also, nothing stops someone with a gigantic grudge, patience and high motivation from joining a private security company, getting training, a gun, and placed directly in the vicinity of a potential target. Really, there's no good defense except not giving a ton of people reasons to want to get rid of you.
Agreed - the alarm bells should have been ringing long ago.
There was a social contract between the upper and lower class (the middle class is a lie used to further divide us) that was basically - we'll let you have your mansions as long as our quality of life improves as well. But the rich have been hollowing out that agreement for decades. The highest tax bracket (the percentage taxed on income only above a certain amount) has plummeted since the middle of the 20th century. Regulations have been removed and replaced with weaker regulations (like Dodd/Frank) and then THOSE regulations have been hollowed out. Any sense of responsibility and duty the rich might have ever had to the people and place that rewarded them so greatly has vanished and in place of it is cynical and manipulative and greedy - because the only thing that matters is getting more and taking more - removing the safety barriers that keep them from getting more, no matter who it might hurt because somehow acquiring wealth has become the most important thing (not doing something great, improving the world, or helping others).
At each step, the social contract weakens. As long as enough people aren't feeling the pain they're going to abide by their part of the bargain because most of the rest of us ARE actually just trying to live good lives and make sure it's good for those around us. But there will be a moment when enough people are feeling the pain and won't have any other choice but to act. In a system where justice is only dealt to the lower class - that action is guaranteed to be carried out outside the system.
Most interesting how many right wingers and boomers also support it.
You're mostly angry at the same thing. You've just come to different conclusions as to what to do about it.
They aren't as stupid as they come off as. They know things are bad and that the rich are fucking them they're just wrong about how and why
They think the Dems are the ones allowing the CEOs to fleece us and think Trump will do something about it. They are stupid and easily manipulated. Their legit anger, but lack of skepticism is allowing them to be lead around by charlatans.
They know things are bad and that the rich are fucking them
Which they 100% enabled.
Nah they're fucking concavebrains. They think Harris was the greedy corrupt party and that Trump will drain the swamp.
The DNC is a greedy, corrupt party which is wildly out of touch and only exists to enrich themselves
Before you @ me, the GOP are howling fascists who are just better at spinning the narrative by establishing an "other" as a scapegoat
Given that both parties, on a global scale are right of centre that makes sense. Dems are right of centre and more similar to most other nations right wing parties and that just pushes the republicans further right. You have no left wing party, just a party that is more left than the other.
Sure is. Class politics is ultimately more powerful than culture war spectacle. Events like this bring that truth to the forefront - the worker class is United against the owning class, for the most part.
If we have more politicians like Bernie and AOC, we’d see less of this kind of mess. Where’s the movement that gets people like them more support?
Suppressed by the people in power. It's better for them if we fight over culture war bullshit and that's (IMO) why the right pushes so hard against things being "woke" or "dei" or whatever new scary buzzword those dumb fucks come up with.
We're too busy arguing amongst ourselves to realise we should all be looking up at the corrupt rich. But with bought off media and the ability to push propaganda at a previously impossible level just a few decades ago, a ton of the population is kept perpetually angry because non-white/straight people have the audacity to exist.
I'm a native (aka native American/indigenous however you want to call it) and over the last few years I've noticed people are increasingly comfortable showing their racism. I get followed around in stores while I'm shopping for groceries occasionally, I get managers staring me down because I took too long looking around and they think I was trying to steal and that my debit card will be declined, people happily making small talk with others and then blankly staring at me and saying nothing to me even when I'm being pleasant to them etc. All anecdotal of course and I could just be getting more bitter as I get older, but it honestly feels like a trend to me.
I've been dealing with that shit since I was a teen, you always get judged just for having the audacity to be born the wrong skin color anywhere but it's (anecdotally) gotten much worse over the last few years, which just so happens to coincide with the rise of the right all over the world.
I really hate the world sometimes tbh.
2016 was the year that people demanded a populist leader. The DNC sabotaged Bernie, which lead to low D voter turnout and the RNC bent at the knee at Trump's threats to run as a third party.
Wish people channeled this sentiment at the voting booth when Trump got on national TV and said he'd replace Obamacare with "concepts" of a plan he apparently was clueless of after 8 years of actively trying to destroy Obamacare.
Wish Harris channeled that sentiment in her campaign by championing M4A, so people might actually want to vote for her
Or any sentiment at all beyond rightwing nonsense.
I've been telling everyone I know for years that Healthcare is Americas biggest problem. The country is designed to pick your body clean before you die. You can work your entire life here and everything can be taken from you if you get sick.
There's a plethora of contradictions. Americans hate for-profit healthcare, inequality, and CEOs, but love to vote Republican and worship Elon Musk. The sad reality is the people did this to themselves and will keep doing it to themselves.
If the murder of the United Healthcare CEO is horrible news...
At the very annual general meeting that would have occurred had this not happened, would there have been a word describing the horribleness of the news that United made billions more than last year off the backs of American policy holders, American doctors/nurses/physicians/pharmacists, American taxpayers? I highly doubt it.
Every dollar in profit is the standard extraction of value from people, which may be warranted at a fixed rate for the services provided. Every dollar in increased profit is a squeezing of their customers, hopefully for an enhanced service to them in return. In healthcare, it was found that an enhanced return in value to customers was no longer necessary, when making money in crushing people's lives is more profitable, legal and encouraged by shareholders and management.
It is bad that vigilantism is being celebrated (though I'll admit to being aboard the "laugh about this specific murder" train).
But I think the reason that this is being celebrated is that this is the only kind of justice this guy could have ever faced because his crime is legal
If CEOs get to celebrate making money by killing people we get to celebrate vigilantism.
At least with vigilantism fewer people die.
Considering how many people a year die at the hands of insurance companies delaying and denying life-saving treatments to make a quick buck, the glee over this insurance CEO's death is a fairly rational response - a reminder to the 0.1% that they're not quite as immune to consequences as they think they are.
Structural violence is s great term that should get more use in cases like this.
I hope we'll get some data on how much more money and effort is spend on this compared to cases where the target is just some regular nobody.
expect more of them to move to gated communities, entrenched beyond even higher walls, protected by people with even bigger guns.
Protecting oneself from gunmen by surrounding oneself with gunmen with bigger guns sounds great until you think about it a bit more.
Thats when paranoia hits.
With a big enough crowd, no matter the size of the gun, the crowd wins.
My eyes started rolling the second the writer said “the horrifying news.”
Mostly glee though