So this whole vigilante murder thing...
[EDIT] Inb4 more people try to suggest that I'm mourning the loss of this scumbag capitalist fuck: No, I'm not sad he's dead. No, I don't think corporate murder is acceptable and no, I would not ever rat to police if I knew the shooter and yes, I believe the punishment fits the crimes he's committed against untold thousands of people. THAT SAID...
I'm not down with vigilante murder or anything because it seems like the slipperiest of slopes toward chaos, but what other option is there in a situation where someone seeks to make an impact in this way? You can't just beat up evil CEOs and let them go back to work. It would be naïve to expect them to change their ways when faced with consequences for their actions and then promptly let go. It just seems like the chances that it emboldens their penchant for exploitative behaviour and disdain for people in need are too high.
We're just born into and strapped to this capitalist ride and expected to sit quiet and make these leeches their billions. How else can this cancerous greed possibly be dealt with? Is vigilante murder the only effective option? Honest questions. I'm terribly conflicted and I'm genuinely curious what more reasonable and intelligent minds than mine think about this because I can't think of an alternative to murder in this case.
Ideally, we wouldn't have to resort to vigilante killings to level the playing field but I 100% understand that we don't live in a society where the rich will ever give a fuck about the rest of us or would ever sacrifice their power over us in the name of goodwill.
OP, can you please edit your question to make it clearer. Remember, open-ended and thought provoking.
I tried. Not sure how much clearer I can make it if this doesn't do the trick.
This is a very interesting question that would require so much more talk than is proper for a lemmy comment.
I’ll try and make a stupidly short summary:
In political philosophy, it is commonly accepted to define a state as a political community where the government detains the monopoly over legitimate use of physical force.
Basically what allows you to feel safe in such a community - as opposed to a more tribal one - is that you know that you can’t be harmed by your fellow citizen. When you buy your groceries you don’t want to worry that the shopkeeper will beat you up because he doesn’t want to give you change. When you are outside enjoying your sandwich you don’t want to worry about a random guy cracking your head open in order to steal it. You are not worried because you know that their violence would be considered illegitimate, and would be met by legitimate violence.
This only works if everyone agrees to delegate their use of violence to the state, who in turn executes that violence through the appropriate means (police etc) using the appropriate rules. If violence is taken into one’s hands the whole foundation of the political community breaks down, which means that the state has existential interests in prosecuting whoever does it.
States where violence is not really prosecuted are those commonly considered failed states.
Now I know this is rather abstract and the real world is more complex than that, but as I said this would require a lot more space than is available here. But there is your answer: [privately administered] violence is not the answer.
I’m with you. I was just addressing the general question, which doesn’t get addressed as much as it should :)
I would rather see the conversation going towards reforming the broken system rather than going in the direction of “fuck the state it’s all broken anyway” which wouldn’t help anybody.
Let’s call this murder an act of political violence. If it’s the first, brutal step towards reform, then it’s one thing and we can “celebrate”. If it’s the first step towards Dodge City (which is the vibes I get from some comments) then there is very little to be happy about.
I mean there are people who want to reform the broken system. They're sabotaged by the elites on both sides of the aisle, which is why it has continued being broken in the first place.
The threat of violence is the fundamental basis of all political power. Politicians act in self-interest, and will be exactly as corrupt as the people allow them to be.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_power_grows_out_of_the_barrel_of_a_gun
True, but it used to be understood that he'd get beaten up if he didn't give you change. Slowly that bar has been moved to where now they over-charge you, keep the change, and then have the cops arrest you if you try to get help from the institutions put in place to ensure a safe society. Figuratively of course.
But there is the question of whom most people consider part of this political community - people aren't going to crack each other's heads open over a sandwich. But over denied healthcare.. even in a world where most people support the lynching of these CEOs, you should be safe with a sandwich.
Also government constantly approving selling violence of mass destruction
Killing in the defense of others is a legal defense to homicide.
If the guy were attacking people with a machete, nobody would dream of prosecuting the person who put him down.
The fact that he's doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.
And they've used that time to change laws and tax codes to ensure their power and money will pass to their children, forming lasting dynasties who will continue their extortive behavior.
$1000 says Baron Trump will be president someday, no laws required (just idiots)
What a terrible premonition.
Is it really a big issue or are you just internalizing the language of the oppressing class, putting common people against each other?
And now you're adding ageism to the mix. It is not old people who are the problem! Keep your eyes fixed on the real enemies and don't target your exploited fellows.
If any other avenue existed: it would long have been tried and replicated. They have the judiciary, they have the legislative bodies, they have the senates, they have the presidencies/head of states whatever. There is no influence left except appealing to their literal and undeniable physical humanity
This situation is the result of them facing literally no consequences ever for tons of exceedingly evil shit. It appears to be the only form of justice available
Thats what the comment above yours said.
For now... Eventually the bastards will basically be like D&D liches and can only be destroyed if you find their phylactery: Their consciousness uploaded to a computer kept in a fortified bunker, miles underground.
See: the recent fallout show
👁️👄👁️
This is fine. Then it would only become necessary to sever their lines of communication. This would take for form of an appeal to the closest human element to not listen to their masters and to not repair any damage that prevents them from doing so.
As to what form that appeal takes, well, people can make up their own minds as the situation demands.
I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of "the social contract". The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called "the justice system". But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.
It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.
When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson's murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother... we ain't the owners.
The guy who wrote those words was also raping his slaves. It's always been this way.
I am down for it. If more of it happens I'll laugh just as hard every time.
Because fuck em. They've spent the last half century recreating The Gilded Age. If now is when the bill comes due. Good. Happy I'm alive to see it instead of just reading about it.
You're a savage pretending to have morals
I have morals. I have empathy. For the homeless. For the destitute. The poor. The hungry. Victims of war.
For parasites like Brian Thompson I have nothing but vicious mockery and laughter. Fuck them all. May they die screaming.
Edit - hold up, I'm not done.
I am a savage. The product of my environment. An environment that has told me all my life that 30 dead kids every week or two is the price we pay for freedom. That a million dead civilians on the other side of the planet is good and just because we're the good guys. That the predatory monsters at the head of all these companies that have made life here worse year over year are the smartest and most qualified and that what they do isn't only legal, but just. That the poor don't deserve food water and shelter. It's fine if they starve. Because they didn't work hard enough or maybe they're on drugs. That corporations have no responsibility whatsoever to anyone but their shareholders. They deserve everything they can take from us. Because that's Capitalism and Capitalism is just the best. That women don't deserve self determination because of a 1700ish year old book of shitty fairytales.
So yeah. [redacted] all the ceos. All the billionaires too. Why should I care? They're just meat. Fuck em. A few more bodies on the pile. No big deal.
Edit 2 - Same country that handwaves off a goddamned genocide. Funds it, supports it, and tells me it's not a big deal. 100,000 dead civilians this year. Tells me that I can't boycott the country using MY MONEY to ethnically cleanse an entire indigenous population.
Two wrongs don't make a right I'm afraid.
Edti: Like you don't exactly need to be Kamt to see that setting a precedent for extra-judicial killings isn't going to end well.
I don't care if it ends well. I'm just enjoying the ride.
I'm not afraid. I have nothing to fear. When I die the entire country wont celebrate like Ewoks watching the 2nd death star explode.
I could start today and 🔫 my way through the entire fortune 500 and I'd have less blood on my hands than Brian Thompson had. (giggled at "had")
Got no love for the dude. Clearly wasn't a boyscout. Also have to admit it was a slick assassination given that they are still at large.
I just feel celebrating it (encouraging it?) is immoral Nihilism might seem appealing but it's basically just giving up.
Moral. Immoral.
There's no quantifying it because the opposing classes are not equal. They have the money, police, political support, media support, the entirety of the power structure of this country.
We have numbers, and little if anything left to lose.
The fact your country resolves every single problem with violence is astonishing. Lemmy has been a cesspool the past few days. You guys deserve Trump - he's pretty much a personification of the entire country.
The fuck you think billionaires are?
... You mean a human?
The main point of any government is a mediator between people.
When the government is corrupt and not only lets the powerful break the laws, but rewrites them in their favor, people realize it.
They stop following rules because they know others aren't. If someone stops them in the act, they feel innocent because they didn't complete the act. If no one stops them, they legitimate believe it was allowed, because they see people flagrantly break the rules with no consequences on the daily.
That's what today's elite don't get, they're stopping the peaceful process we all agreed was better than violence, because they have a monopoly on legal violence. But eventually it just means no one follows the rules, and 99% of us don't have much to lose these days.
A society that starts acting that way quickly becomes uncontrollable.
Like we saw four years ago, it only takes a relatively small amount of people in one spot to really be uncontrollable. A mob of 5,000 people is just as unstoppable as a hoard of 5,000 zombies. At that point pain compliance is the only thing that can get thru to them, and there's always a chance the mob fights back instead.
That's why if cops think the mob has a chance of having guns, they immediately back down.
If BLM had marched with ARs, shit might have changed.
How do you feel about the French Revolution? Storming the Bastille to kill the governor was an act of vigilante murder, and there's an entire holiday celebrating it.
Violence should only ever be a last resort when all else has failed. But there have been numerous times in history where we consider violence to have been a just last resort.
The hard part is recognizing when it's truly time for that last resort. I can't say for sure where the line is drawn. Maybe it can never be clearly drawn in the moment and will just have to be something for future historians to judge.
Before you prick your finger and commit to the contract, lemme remind you it took about a century for France to settle down into a republic and then still didn't establish some basic rights until the 20th century.
And that century included an attempt to take over the world (by Emperor Napoleon), a bunch of ambitious dictators, the invention of the Piano, and consequently, romanticism and multiple instances in which the guillotines had to be pulled out and heads piled high because the ownership class refused to play nice.
Okay, you're slightly better informed. Do do some research.
Sign away.
You said do-do lol
Haha. Dodo. They did say it haha.
So the French Revolution led to the career of Billy Joel?
Bo Burnham
The French Revolution and the English post-war (WWII) Cultural Revolution. Yes. Though there were two very important musical technologies. In Paris mid 19th century, the Pianoforte ( soft / loud ) allowed for a keyboardist to express velocity changes, allowing for more impassioned expression (hence the Romantic age), and then a similar thing happened in the mid-20th century, with the electric guitar, the output of which could be run through filters, essentially turning them into early synths.
Mix that with musicians learning and expanding on the blues and we have the Rock-&-Roll revolution of the 60s and 70s.
Ok, but frame some of those same problems in the context of the times and their peer countries. Did France’s rights or republic keep pace, lag, or were they actually ahead despite the turmoil? There were many places with awful monarchs that were effectively dictators. Maybe they were stable dictatorships…and it took global conflict to unseat many of them.
🤓
France was a revolution of a monarchy in a continent of monarchies, who in turn demanded they choose a king, and that was after they were tired of Robespierre's culty shenanigans.
France refused because they didn't want to be dictated to by the international community (who again were still feudal lords). Napoleon developed the Napoleonic Code, establishing bunches of civil rights and rule of law, before inventing the Levée en masse (popular conscription) and proceeding to make Europe his personal bitch^†^
They tried a bit of the constitutional monarchy thing with the Bourbon restoration, but again Charles X went Heritage Foundation on the French and started rolling back rights eventually resulting in the July Revolution of 1830 (more guillotines, more piles of heads).
It wouldn't be the last.
Note in Russia / USSR, the moment the Red Army won and Lenin started going Communist, Wilson pushed Europe to embargo the union, to never give it a chance. The Red Scare started at the beginning, and was entirely about its threat to King Capitalism. Of course, we'd see the true colors of Capitalism a couple decades later with the Great Depression, and Hoover was glad to let people live in cardboard boxes and piles of paint cans while dying of malnutrition surviving on flour paste. Compared to that, Lenin's arrangement started looking really good, and FDR's New Deal, a stopgap to give capitalism one more chance really pissed off the industrialists, who began their plot to propagandize the United States into a fascist pro-capitalism bulwark. That was a pivotal moment in the white Christian nationalism movement that is taking over in 2025.
But I'm pretty sure the far right is going to be happy enough to shoot first.
Going back to France again, it's much like Nazi-occupied Paris, in which the German Wermacht soldiers were such Karens, and the garrison was so brutal that the French couldn't help themselves but take action. It started with cutting phone lines, defacing propaganda and slashing tires, but eventually La Résistance organized into a formidable fighting force.
We know ICE is eager to crack heads, typically immigrants and their families, but in Trump's first term they went after anyone who was Latin enough or simply brown enough. If local law enforcement behaves as the nationwide police unions have been pushing them to, we're likely to see civil unrest rise up in many states, and then we'll be one sympathetic dead victim away from riots and Molotov Cocktails.
/🤓
† These days, mostly thanks to WWII, the French are known as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but historians like to keep in mind that everyone gets their turn in the barrel, and everyone gets their turn on top of the hill.
When the justice system no longer provides justice, justice will be sought elsewhere.
All I know is that jury nullification is legal and is there for a reason.
The closest thing to a real answer that i can come up with is to remove money from politics. That itself seems near impossible a goal, but in order to start making better decisions you have to improve the decision making process that got us to this point.
Taking money from politics is like taking food from cooking. Not compatible.
The whole point of politics is power, influence, assignment of scarce resources. I don’t mean this in a bad way, it’s literally what politics is about: you want your government to make laws that influence your community, to collect taxes and use them in a certain way, to regulate certain things the way you’d like. Without those things politics are meaningless.
Money is just power that you can measure and trade, it will always be part of the equation. Removing money from politics is nonsensical.
Justice Thomas? Is that you on Lemmy?
The whole point of politics is compromise. Finding solutions that the most people can accept.
Compromise is the… point, of politics? Are you sure? At best it’s a mean to an end, and only in democracy. We’re not taking moral judgement here, just what is what.
John: "I think we should install storm drains so Main street doesn't flood when it rains."
Jim: "But that will block access to my store for weeks!"
Bob: "And I think it's a waste of time and money!"
Politics is the process of finding a solution that most of the affected people can agree on. As I see it. The rest is just scale.
There's few countries where the effectiveness of electoral campaigns are measured in the amount of money raised.
It is possible to regulate the amount of money in politics, there's plenty of examples.
Party funding and salaries are not “the money” that is in politics, those are peanuts. Do you think Elon musk is interested in a government job because he wants the paycheck?
I wasn't taking about that at all.
I'm most countries there time of money in politics is way healthier than in the us.
So it's possible to regulate that better.
Yes but you are talking about party funding. Politicians are not into it for the funding, that’s peanuts.
The relationship between politics and money is already regulated, that’s what embezzlement laws are about. They can be improved, but you’ll find it’s harder than you would think.
Surely decoupling money from politics is not possible, which is what I was answering about.
No I was talking about electoral funding, through super PACs and the like. How individuals and companies can buy their way into politicians favor.
I was talking about that the dollar amount raised during elections is a measure of success. That's not the case in almost all developed countries. And it's wrong.
Aha, gotchu now
You can form an organization that gathers evidence and levies lawsuits in an effort to expose and stop their abhorrent practices. You just need to make it your sole purpose in life. It only took Rob Bilott 30 years to get DuPont to stop knowingly poisoning 99.9% of all life on planet earth. DuPont was even fined 3% of their annual profits from a single year. Other than that? Nothing. They have their hooks into the politicians, the legislators, the judges, the regulatory agencies, and the police forces. How do you fight that without making it your entire life's work?
One would need to forge a dominant unified labor union or labor union network that has the sole purpose of representing the worker. Unions would need the power to cripple a company. It will cost everyone more at first, but it could eventually claw back the salaries of c-level executives.
That is a great question. Thanks for the link. I only know the surface level basics of the DuPont story.
It's an outstanding movie, yet infuriating, and enlightening simultaneously. Definitely check it out to get a glimpse into the power these companies have, and the destruction they're willing to wage for profit.
Not to toot my own horn, but I'm a rather intelligent person. I have done a lot of thinking and reading about these problems. I have tried to consider ways that might change their minds without violence and come up with little.
The rich NEED to be afraid of the poor. Or there needs to be no rich. Those are the options for a prospering society.
The rich throughout history have always been afraid of the working class it just usually just shows up in less obvious ways.
The way the wealthy talk about the working class
The way the wealthy always look to divide the working class into camps to fight amongst themselves
The way the wealthy demonize labor unions
The way the wealthy keep education limited and expensive
The way the wealthy use religion and media to drive their idea of goodness and justice
The way the wealthy try to make the working class envious of their wealth so the working class spends their money and time trying to replicate it.
Are all examples of an underlying fear of the significantly larger working class population getting control.
And it is such a winning strategy that it works on them in reverse. The wealthy will do whatever they can to keep their wealth and always try to pile more on because of the fear of being one of them (the working class) that they have demonized for generations.
EDIT: added more examples
thing about people being afraid of something is that it tends to lead them trying to kill it
The poor have been afraid of the system for decades.....
Agreed. When you fear the actions of the system as much as the consequences of inaction, the needle definitely shifts.
There are so many more of us than there are of them that a general strike would bring about swift change without us stooping to their level of harming others to gain and wield power.
Unfortunately, we’d have to stop all the infighting and work together. We couldn’t be bothered to do that for the latest US presidential election, so I’m not sure we’d do it in this case.
I have even less hope that violence and threats of violence will do any good at this point. They have so much money, they can buy invincibility. And that’ll be even easier under the next administration. Vigilantism is a feel-good revenge fantasy rather than it leading to anyone’s life improving. If it was effective it would be much more common. We’ve got the guns in America, but their use has not yet caused a utopia.
I mean the labor movement that lead to humane labor laws was very much violent. Compared to what insisting on nonviolence would've accomplished, the modern US is indeed a utopia. As for why, well, count the number of children you know who work in coal mines.
Given all the divisions in our society, it's remarkable how unified people seem over cheering this CEOs murder. I think we may have unlocked a common cause.
There is no such thing. Even the secret service drops the ball sometimes. Also, more security means more potential for betrayal. If the demand for security personal goes up, the quality will go down.
Best answer here
Over the last several years, I have had opportunities or at least contemplated opportunities to make lots of money while exploiting others or being a completely useless finance bro.
The thing that keeps me from moving in those directions is moral character. If you can’t bring yourself to bullshit your fellow human and take from them to enrich yourself without providing any real value, you won’t get as rich as a CEO. Think of all those get rich quick YouTubers who do nothing but sell digital bullshit or ebooks about how to sell ebooks or some other digital bullshit to get rich quick.
There are, of course, exceptions, but what did Brian Thompson really do for society? Moreover, what harm did he cause to society?
These people know they are doing the wrong thing and are cashing in on their ability to take from society while enriching themselves. In the context of health care, they’re literally hurting and killing people.
Remember when the arguments against nationalized health care were mostly about how we would have death panels? How fucking ironic.
Yeah it's so weird that more than 30 countries have managed to implement public healthcare without assassinating CEOs. Mind boggling.
Without knowing why he did what he did, we can speculate, I can not judge him for his actions.
I can make assumptions, as many have done, as to why he felt it justified to take the life of another.
If we are to assume the shooter to be sound of mind and logic, we can only assume his actions to have been taken in a just morality.
He must have known that killing one man could never right or prevent the wrongs he experienced. He didn't kill someone irrefutably innocent. He didn't kill a random person. He didn't kill the messenger. He killed the person at the top to send a message. Points off for his message not being excruciatingly clear in motive. Points for his execution, thus far.
He scared people of a similar position to try and wipe their names from the internet, lol they don't know how the internet works. They are scared, but they will need to be more scared into correcting the wrong that the shooter experienced. They have operated with the feeling of impunity from the consequences of their actions. If one death can correct the course of things, that death is justified. Unfortunately, we do not live in a just world.
If his, or other's ambitions are greater, there can be a horrible justice done in this world if those in power are unwilling to do what is right.
I don't want another person to die when they can be saved, but I don't cry for a life lost to save many more.
Profit < people. If you feel otherwise, you deserve a one gun salute.
Don't kill people and don't be a dick, but I wouldn't see or say a damn thing if you do the right thing in the wrong way.
Do you feel that the words he etched into the shell casings that he left behind still leave questions as to what his motive was? It seems pretty clear to most of us.
The words written on the casings is a message. It is not a statement and backstory. The vagueness is doing what it is meant to, cause speculation and inspire fear for people who identify with the victim.
We can easily assume, but we don't know.
I don't think vigilante violence is a good idea but if some of the murders in the US are targeted at billionaires instead that's fine by me. If the system wasn't fucked this wouldn't have been news.
imo, the cancerous greed is unchecked capitalism.
when the whole system is designed to gain power thru money, it's money that is needed to fight back. this is all just my two cents but, people that do not vote for increasing minimum wage policies are losing their biggest bargaining chip.
I'm sorry, but we could increase minimum wage to $400 per hour, and an entire lifetime worth of work wouldn't equate to what these people make in a single quarter. Yes, we should improve the system for the working class, but working alone will not even get a person 0.01% of what they would need to fight powers such as these. It takes organizations. It takes a movement.
yes, it is indeed a sorry state. even i don't think minimum wage policies could take effect with oniy one person voting in.
I feel like people are finally starting to see why Batman has so many interesting villains.
I've never been one to outright support vigilante justice on account of believing that everyone ought to face the same trials and go through the same systems to ensure justice.
I'm not an idiot, though, and I realize a system where our rich are held accountable to the same degree as our poor is incredibly unrealistic/borderline impossible.
"When peace is impossible, violence is inevitable." Paraphrasing, but given the system we find ourselves in, this was just a matter of time.
Nothing has changed OP. We each protect what is important to us individually.
For the assassin, that meant dealing with the threats to him and his family directly. (Or maybe he was just crazy, or maybe both)
You're not judge, jury, or executioner so don't even try to be.
Thanks for your perspective on this. I'm certainly not trying to be judge, jury, or executioner here but my concern is that its become pretty clear that many in the society I live in are completely content assigning those roles to themselves and I find that to be concerning.
"And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure."
Both quotes from Thomas Jefferson, which isn't to say that that it's true - only that our founders expected us to defend our liberties with violence if necessary.
Six words:
soap box
ballot box
ammo box
more words than that:
First you try talking. You campaign, you protest, you petition. None of that has worked during my lifetime.
So you turn up to the polls to vote. Because of how elections work in this country there are only two actual choices, one wants to actively destroy the healthcare industry and the other isn't all that bothered by the destruction of the first. Everybody in congress owns stock and they get paid for fucking over the citizens. When the citizens say "give us healthcare" and the Republicans say "no" and the Democrats say "No. 🏳️🌈 #BLM" We're kind of past it.
The only option left is violence. Isn't it amazing how much unifying power there is to be found in the act of putting three little bullets in one little executive?
Bruh, chill out for a second. I'm not for a minute mourning Brian Thompson. You're living in too black and white of a world if you don't allow people to ask questions about complex topics like this. What is self-evident to you might not be to others.
Sorry I wasn't able to crystal ball your perspective into my mind before posting. I'll remind myself to read your mind in advance next time I dare to ask a question.
People vote for greed because schooling indoctrinates hierarchy:
https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-public-schools-in-your-country-are-designed-to-make-kids-docile-obedient-workers-for-the-upper-class/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
How schools should be:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-one-thing-that-should-be-taught-in-school-that-isnt-already/answer/Harri-K-Hiltunen
Schools have leaned hard into producing victims over the last few decades. They promote policies that ensure nobody ever learns to defend themselves, or fight back against bullies or the system. They actively punish kids who recognize they have a right to defend themselves.
This is an age old topic and there is no right answer to it. You need to decide where you draw the line. Unpersecuted vigilantism will lead to chaos, on the other hand, we live in an unjust and structural violent system where rich people kill by signing papers and poor, desperate people die. They sometimes even vote for the elite before dying.
I glued myself to the street to protest our government not acting on our planet heating up. I knew I broke the law but I felt like I needed to. It was a rough experience, still I don't regret it because I did what felt necessary to me. The guy shooting the CEO probably feels the same, and pathetic "Proud Boys" chasing immigrants do so as well. For me, violence against other people is a line I don't see myself crossing. But I can think of scenarios where I would understand people resorting to it.
We're on the same page. Thanks for your response.
Because standing armies was a no go in 1792.
And yet some groups still buy guns in large quantities because of this.
Then they're delusional. The Army dismantled AQ. It's not going to have a problem with Y'allqaeda.
Oh, they are delusional 100%. However most of these delutionals also end up going to work at the police or sheriff, the rest want to dismantle the government and fly their no step on snek flags
Jefferson was all about the trees of liberty and the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Curiously he also imagined that an ultimate weapon would outlaw war forever. He was half-right: We just have war with no-nukes rules. But we should appreciate that nukes are difficult to make and are too messy to be actually useful.
I suspect he didn't imagine that guys going amuck (a trope since time immemorial) would be complicated by a surfeit of semi-automatic weapons. I imagine his solution would not be to limit civilian weapons but to look at the problems that drive guys to go amuck.
And also Jefferson, while he believed in abolitionism academically he did so not enough to free (or pay) his slaves, which means he didn't have a solution for shit (literal poop) mixed into the meals sent down his dumb waiter.
And the problem with the amuck thing is it can still scale, hence billionaires might make AI-controlled swarming armies of killer robots to dominate the world, and then have a trusted lieutenant decide to use the same army to just burn it all down like Mad King Aerys Targaryen.
And no amount of gun control is going to stop billionaires from making doomsday weapons.
We've become too soft, and we need to get used to harsh realities. What was done was a perfectly acceptable and reasonable response. May this be the beginning of something new.
tldr: there is the electoral system.
governments change because of who leads/ represents the people in their governments.
in the US, "the people" have little to no understanding of their government(there have been studies about this for the last 60 years), and because conservatives campaign on emotional bigotry, which is immediately hard-hitting and compelling versus waiting 2 years to receive a tax decrease(which works, but takes 2 years), undereducated and unsupported American citizens have been put into increasingly untenable situations where they are struggling to survive while working themselves to the bone and receiving lower compensation, and if an emergency arises, they are denied basic services.
when you have no other options to support yourself, murder becomes an option, since nothing else has worked and they are provided with no other options they are comfortable with.
there are some civil services, and the government can always change, regardless of what popular opinion fashions, but right now in the US you have a couple hundred million people desperate to survive in a country that provided survival wages, and now that they have reelected Trump and he's already before even taking the White House began turning against unions and civil rights, those wages will probably lower again, living cost increasing and civil benefits decreasing.
out of 200 million desperate people, some of them are willing to take the most drastic measure because maybe it'll make a difference, who knows.
i mean, lots of people know, but most Americans have been clinging to the edge of a cliff by their fingertips for years or decades, so they don't have the perspective that others may.
Can we do the same, but in a stew?
not down for "vigilante" murder? so you are down for corporate murder?
I don't know when we got the idea that killing someone with a pen is better than killing someone with a sword. at least with a sword you have to look them in the eyes while you do it
Nope. That's not what I am suggesting at all. I literally said that I don't think there's any other option besides vigilantism, which to me presents a difficult situation to reason through.
I'm allowed to find this situation conflicting and ask about other's people's thoughts on it to help me understand my own.
i don't see violance as a first option but i'm not a pacifist, sometimes its going to be the only option. i don't think dropping a random ceo or two is anything more than revolution larping though. this kind of thing is more likely to just make insurnace campuses a target for ramdom shooting in the same way american schools are. a bunch of people just trying to make a living in an economic enviroment where picking your employer is a privilage, will get get unalived along with maybe a low level exec who has little actual power. and we'll see a whole lot of stories about why we should love insurnace companies. i'm not mourning this fucker or feeling sympathy for his family, but it's not a long term plan for improving anyones life. we find ourselves with a fewer billionaire media tycoons and i'll be less sceptical of people suggesting this practice.
Thanks to everyone that spent time writing in response to this. This added context from so many perspectives really clears a lot of things up for me. 🙏
We already live in a culture that glorifies constant violence. Roughly one person gets murdered every day in New York City, and dozens have been killed across the U.S. since the CEO's death. We wait with bated breath for the next school shooting, or episode of police brutality, to fill the news with more poor bodies. I've even been personally affected, having to dive out of the way of a fleeing gunman to avoid stray bullets from his automatic.
The only thing that has happened is equality. The billionaire class that has fostered and profited from the culture of violence has had a taste of what we get to go through every day. If there is any slippery slope to slide down, it has been sloped by the bourgeoise.
The incident still appears to be a professional hit (as of this comment).
That means its much less likely to be about the wrath of countless UHC victims, and more likely a business associate or rival.
That said, we lowly proletariat are already dying, and will do so a lot more as Trump and the Heritage Foundation advance their agenda. The sooner we all get on board with resistance, the better.
That said, there are effective nonviolent means of revolution, but I suspect sooner or later some pretty woman will get killed horribly on camera, and the whole country will start exploding.
A professional hit would have had some plausible confusion if it was suicide, such as defenestration that the ruski's like to do. Or he simply would have disappeared. The US has no shortage of gun enthusiasts and youtube is a great teacher. It doesn't make sense for a business associate or rival to inflame the masses and increase the likelihood of copycats since it directly affects their class. All of these fucks are in it together and they protect their own.
They protect their own from the working class.
But they very much are not friends to each other, and are glad to speed along succession if it suits their interests. You are right that deaths that look accidental or like natural causes
Still, you have a point that the bullet casings were labeled to make a statement. The question is if that was sincere, incidental or to throw off investigations. This guy seems to be well skilled.
Start a political party?
I mean it isn't easy, but if you gain traction, one of the two big parties will, potentially, implement the ideas to grab your votes.
I think this reasoning is why everyone is in this current situation.
It's just a constant stream of pushing goal posts. Before you know it, you have a dictator running the country and they're sending immigrants (or previously Jewish people) to be killed en masse.
I know that's a very harsh comparison, but it all starts with people accepting small changes.
Question everything your government is doing, even if you agree with it. (Obviously not to the point of conspiracy theories haha)
Doubt you've reasoned yourself into that opinion.
I'm really not comfortable with all the cheering of this evevtm
The guy might have been a huge POS, he was not personally responsible for a broken and violent system that Americans have created for themselves. Americans continue to democratically elect individuals from the dominant class who promote inequality, they have the system they deserve.
When Obama timidly tried to correct the healthcare system, Americans voted, twice, for someone who promised to destroy what was build and replace it with the “concept of a plan.” They made a democratic choice, they chose a pedophile billionaire to run their country, this is no french revolution.
That CEO guy was just one of millions who WANT the system to be unfair. What is this shooter gonna do, kill every capitalist in the US?
We hung the "just following orders" guys after WWII.
They weren't personally responsible for the system they perpetrated. But we hung them anyway.
Same thing here.
Or is your gripe that it came from the bottom up instead of the top down? That it was righteous fury instead of cold legality? Because the legal side has utterly failed us. Been corrupted if not outright captured. It serves them not us. Million dollar fines on billion dollar profits aren't a penalty. They're a rounding error, an operating expense. Already accounted for in the budget.
Leave people with no recourse. No justice. They'll make their own way.
A couple of questions for you:
Will you be shooting every capitalist in the US? Is an Amazon worker "perpetuating the system"? Is an Amazon consumer is? Who will draw the line between the victim of the system and the responsible for it, you?
And no, we didn't just hung every German who followed orders.
Again, I'm deeply anti-capitalist. But Americans choose this system over and over, of course the shit will hit the fan, I just don't believe shooting CEOs will fix things, unfortunately.
Historically socialist states are very pro-rehabilitation, once the former ruling class is not an immediate threat. PuYi for example, the last emperor of China, who'd been a willing puppet of Japan, ended up living his life doing menial jobs such as street sweeper, actor, gardener, and tour guide.
Nicholas II on the other hand, had white armies fighting just a few hundred miles away and potentially the armies of Europe making him an active threat.
So should all capitalist of the US (probably meaning around 96% of the population), get shot or rehabilitated? Which is it?
Capitalist doesn't mean someone who supports capitalism, those people are called liberals, capitalists are people who own significant amounts of capital.
Typically it's only used to refer to the big capitalists, your car dealership owners to owner-operator plumbers are small capitalists whose class interests are generally opposed to both workers and big capitalists.
Less than 1% of the population are big capitalists, and of them I'd support all of them getting rehabilitated once they're no longer a threat, the death penalty only makes sense against active threats IMO.
Though China has had some success using the death penalty in cases of gross social murder, such as when a baby formula maker poisoned a dozen babies, several executives were executed, and they haven't had any baby formula contamination since.
No one snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche.
Of course not, a single person could never do that. But the millions (probably closer to tens or hundreds of thousands) of people who want the system to be like this are outnumbered by the people who have to suffer in it, so they'll just encourage more acts like this by pushing people to extremes.
77 millions Americans voted for your president knowing exactly who he is :a liar, pedo, rapist, felon, with absolutely no plan for healthcare. Not only do they want the system to be the way it is, they wanted it to be even more unfair, even the people who suffer for it are brainwashed.
I wish you guys a civil war, if that's what you want, but I doubt it will ever come.
Don't count on the fact they want the system to be worse. In reality, the Democrats' message of 'nothing will fundamentally change' is likely a much bigger driver, as were the lies they chose to believe from the pedo/rapist in the face of reality. Especially given the bipartisan approval of this event.
That's bull. Democracy isn't how Trump became president either time. It's an oligarchy, powered by dirty money and dirty deals. This one death just saved thousands of lives, if not a lot more. You don't think healthcare CEOs have a direct hand in lobbying and political trickery?
I think it's quite naive to believe insurance company will now change their way of doing things because one their CEO got shot. Unfortunately, I think will be replace by another one just like him and the only thing that will probably change is that they will hire security and make "customers" pay for it.
A majority of Americans want the system to be the way it is, keep shooting CEO and they will want the government to act to prevent it.
USA is the result of decades of under-education and media misinformation. Want it or not, a majority of voters chose Epstein's closest friend to be president.
So the election system is broken and anti-democratic? Does that mean the jan 6 rioters where right to attack the capitol? US is going to shit, and Americans citizens are responsible for it. 77 millions voted for Epstein's closets friend, twice, they know exactly what they were getting.
Well if you guys are ready for a social revolution, I will be happy to support it (I'm not a US citizen). Unfortunately I've seen too much stupidity not to be cynical about the chance of it happening.