More than 90,000 people mocked an online tribute to Brian Thompson with laughing emojis.
In the wake of the killing, widespread public animosity towards health insurers ― and UnitedHealthcare specifically ― may explain why the company quickly limited who could comment on their tribute to Thompson.
Specifically calling for violence is against LW's TOS, and they seem to be ban happy when the violence is directed at the owning class.
As for people calling for violence being posted, I've seen very few comments more than 30 minutes old on LW doing that, but plenty on other servers. I'm not sure how LW is handling other instance comments though.
Billionaires, and those like this guy who enable them, must face consequences
I would propose the following approach:
You need to put them on trial in a legitimate court (i.e. exclude compromised judiciary systems).
If the oligarch/senior lackey is found guilty, you could use real rehabilitation methods that would creates incentives for good behaviour for other criminals:
Full asset seizure (every last cent, home, house, everything).
Extended family and business partners being required to sign affidavits detailing their knowledge re: assets in [1], with an understanding that if the affidavit was found to have not been signed in good faith, they will be subject to full asset seizure and their own family and business partners will also have to sign similar affidavits for their own case. No statue of limitations for affidavits.
20 years mandatory live-in community service as junior support person at a hospice centre (minimum wage). Exact focus of community service would depend on crimes committed.
I am not saying this is currently possible. Just pointing out that there are "win win" approaches that do not require extra-judicial killings (albeit the nature of human history is such that sometimes people are left with no other options).
I agree that’s a more proper response. I was super drunk last night but there is no longer a court in America that isn’t corrupted because the Supreme Court is corrupted and they overrule
Politicians but especially rich people seem to forget that when we have nothing to lose, that's when revolutions happen.
JFK's quote has been ringing in my head since all this has happened: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
These assholes have stacked our government against us. Sure we have some good eggs but the level of progress especially in the last 20 years has slowed to a crawl.
As far as I’m concerned people like this are worse than Osama Bin Laden, so if you were dunking on him dying then why should this be any different? Because what he did was legal? At least Bin Laden had an ideology; he thought he was the goodie, no matter how fucked up that was. This guy profited from people’s death and suffering.
I will preface this comment by saying that due to my ethnic background and atheism, I would probably be one of the first in line for a theocratic equivalent of the gulag. I will also add I am not American, but I have lived and traveled in North America, Europe and Asia for many years.
The functional outcomes derived from the actions of US oligarchs and Osama Bin Laden are largely identical. Mass suffering, mass death, condemning many millions of people to a life of misery. If anything US oligarchs have an edge on Bin Laden due to the scale inherent to operating in the US and protection provided by the local judicial system and social attitudes.
Now I don't think Zuckerberg had any direct malicious intent here (unlike say Osama Bin Laden, in a different context of course), but what does it matter? His actions, callousness and supremacist attitude led to a large number of people getting killed and many more getting their lives ruined. But because of the compromised nature of the local judicial system, not only did he not have to take responsibility for this actions, but he even had the gal to claim that this was an example of how effective FB was. Do you think we would see a similar reaction if FB was used in hypothetical ethno-religious mass killings (e.g. US Catholics vs Protestants) in the continental US? I think not.
Zuckerberg knowingly enabling the Rohingya genocide could be seen as a controversial argument. I do not. I think any real judicial authority should have seized all his assets (every last cent) and sent him for mandatory community service work for two decades as a junior latrine janitor on the island of Bhasan Char. What about a less "controversial" case?
My favourite oligarch gang in the US are the Sacklers. These thugs set up what is essentially a massive drug cartel peddling one of the most deadly drug substance (we are not talking about LSD or MDMA). And yet all they got was a somewhat larger fine than usual that still allowed them to keep billions. Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is got be pissed. 😆
Now where does Bin Laden play into this? Both Bin Laden and US oligarchs do horrible things. But unlike US oligarchs, Bin Laden was quiet open about his intentions and did not try to hide behind PR or state that some court in Texas leveraged the 69th amendment of the US constitution to prove that his actions were legal and were about "fighting for freedom". On the contrary, he could have just been doing blow, driving fast cars, chilling on yachts, like all the other elite princes in Saudi Arabia, but instead he gave up that life to fight for something he believed in.
It was wrong, he was a bad person. I am not arguing against that. But how many US oligarchs have the guts to do something like that?
And if the outcomes of the actions of US oligarchs are actually worse than Bin Laden, is it a stretch to say they are worse than Bin Laden?
Yeah, I guess. Does it pertain to first degree murder? And could it just devolve into a juridical fight? 'cause then I think it turns into whoever has more money to spend wins, so... What I'm suggesting is that we, the people, agree all-together to not rat the gunman (or -woman) out to the pigs.
I took one for the team and went to Fox News to read the user comments on the first story I could find about this. It's pretty telling that even there, the overwhelming sense I got -- in between the "Obamacare is why healthcare is so bad!" and the "where's Hunter's cocaine, Mister FBI?" and the "our so-called nation is secretly run by acolytes of a shady transnational world government" -- is that they don't understand why this is getting any more attention than any other random street crime in the big bad city.
Even MAGA doesn't care; wrong kind of billionaire, I guess.
The MAGA public doesn't like billionaires in general, they just like Trump and Musk. That's it. It's a cult of personality, not anything based on actual values or policies.
Obviously MAGA is funded by them in the background, but the average MAGAt doesn't know that or care.
Yeah, MAGA doesn't have principles or anything even resembling a coherent world view.
I've had more than a few conversations with MAGA types who agree massive corporations are running rampant and are a major problem, but then go on to advocate for deregulation.
They only like things that may possibly be an advantage to them. Unless they are currently in a health care dispute with UHC, They honestly don't give a rat's ass what happens to anyone at that company.
The MAGA public doesn’t like billionaires in general
Yep. Their list of billionaires they hate has different ones at the top of the list but they hate billionaires, too. I had folks in MAGA hats tell me they liked Bernie for that reason alone.
This company is absolutely tone deaf to the animosity around the death of this company units CEO.
For decades they have been the dealers of death across the United States through their “delay, deny, defend” industry policies. Historical, among the worst offenders of this practice and it shows in their stock price.
So now they act shocked when 1 no name, piece of shit (he was behind the decision to use AI to deny claims…), rich cunt gets gunned down in the streets like a stray dog? To UHC, this should just be another business day, business as usual.
Short term results of his death:
UNH stock dip
profit maximizing policies put on short hold across industry (already seen 1 company pull back changes on anesthesia limits)
“fear” lingering in the minds of health insurance executives
Long term:
as stocks recover and new administration rolls in, policies re-instated
install new generic cookie cutter CEO
24/7/365 armed security details provided to C-level executives, and ultimately whatever costs passed down to policy holders
wait for media cycle to end/move on
nothing changes for the people
One thing I do notice is an increase in bi-partisanship around the death of this one person. If it gains enough traction beyond the memes, could this be the catalyst that unites the working class against the rich thus causing real and permanent change?
One can hope, but I’m honestly not holding my breath.