Major media outlets are giving wall-to-wall coverage to UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder while taking millions in health care industry advertising. They’re silent about the real story: how profit-driven health care kills 68,000 Americans every year.
This was a fluke. Very few people with the education, intelligence, and especially the resources of this guy will end up in his position and find themselves planning a murder. Even fewer will succeed now that every major CEO will demand 24/7 private security.
Most people in this guy’s financial position would never end up screwed like he did. The resources it took to secure the weapon, the fake IDs, the travel are no small ask. Most people being crushed by the healthcare system don’t have the time and money left over for for such an elaborate murder plot.
And I know a lot of people are going to knee-jerk reply about how it’s really not that much money. I will just preemptively reply that those people should enjoy their privilege.
I was diagnosed with a life threatening chronic illness right after my 22nd birthday. I know the pain and absolute financial anchor around your neck an incurable chronic illness brings. I would have never had the time and resources to pull this off. I was too busy trying to figure out how to find a job I could keep with my condition, one that had health insurance that was worth a damn. And how to pay my doctor’s bills while still scrounging enough for rent, food, and utilities. I didn’t have money to buy a ghost gun, (or a printer to make one) and multiple bus tickets, and fake ids. Or the cash to live for a few days in New York while I scope out a target.
And that’s how this all works. As long as we’re all struggling to keep our heads above water, there’s no time left for a revolution.
But there is time for the 1/3rd of adults who don’t vote, to fill out a piece of paper. There’s time for them to give a shit about primaries and pick candidates that care about real people.
People are becoming desperate and with less and less to lose. If a guy in a “good” job feel compelled to go after a healthcare CEO, what about a guy already straddled with debt, no family, and nothing left?
I think you’re missing the larger point. Please let me try to help give you my perspective.
I have cancer. I’ve been fucked by medical insurance several times, but less than most. My cancer is very treatable and treatment is mostly going well. I still feel like shit every day. There’s some days I’m in so much pain I can hardly move. Some days I have migraines where I stay in bed all day. Some days I’m just nauseous all day.
The point is when you don’t have anything left to lose, you’re often too sick to fight back. @[email protected] is right in their assessment, the capitalist hellscape we live in is purpose built to keep people hanging by a thread so they simply don’t have time or energy to fight back even when they’re at their most beaten down… because usually by that point the energy has been all but sapped from their body.
I can tell you, in my state of poverty, I couldn’t just magic up the money for the things he did, I would have to be saving for months and months, maybe even up to a year or more. I’m already exhausted every day, I don’t exactly feel like busting my ass really hard for a year to get back at anyone. This guy certainly made way more money than I do, so this was much more easily done on a whim for him.
I’d personally say most people are probably like me, exhausted and in poverty to the point that they’d rather give up than fight. Once again, that’s built into the system of misery we live in, to break people down long before they finally wake up and want to fight back, so they’re empty, broke, and exhausted when they finally do. Most people go their whole lives not questioning our system because they’re too busy being burnt out by our system to have the luxury of time to question it.
I’m not telling you to go out and kill someone, but there are rich assholes profiting on your misery nearby wherever you live. Maybe it’s a medical ceo or a hospital administrator. Maybe it’s a landlord evicting you after jacking up rent again. Maybe it’s a police chief notorious for the harassing people in the community. When people have a cozy home and food on the table, they are willing to put up with a lot. Now people don’t have that, and they are going to atart lashing out at whoever they can because they have nothing else to lose.
You’re right in that the particular circumstances of this one is a fluke, but wrong in implicitly assuming that the circumstances have to be the same or similar, that the copycats will care about getting caught and therefore be locked behind a paywall.
The entire world just taught all the school shooter types that shooting a business exec will turn you into a folk hero. It will get you fame and admiration. It will get people trying to send you money for your legal defense. It will get you people spreading the word about jury nullification to use the system against itself. That’s everything they could ever want, and they only need one of the millions of guns floating around our country.
This month taught would be school shooters to instead go for board members, ceos, and billionaires. And it’s a far better lesson.
There are caveats to this. Stalking a business exec and being successful is harder. However security can’t mitigate ambushes very well. They can’t check every window in a city for rifles hanging out. They can’t shut down roads. And the bullet proof glass of their ride can’t help them once they step out to get into the hotel they have their 7am meeting at. There are limits, and a particularly motivated to get their name out there individual can always find an opening.
While I’m not in a situation like that myself, I can empathize because my fiancé has a laundry list of illnesses that leave her chronically ill as well. It’s awful, and it makes me hate the bastards running the show.
We should absolutely still vote, especially in the primaries. But it’s a mistake to think that there is no potential for copycats.
I don’t think we will see this level of planning in tye future. However, you could see employees pulling the classic postal tactic.