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.
Still, people still found a way to express how they felt ― to the tune of more than 90,000 laughing reactions as of Friday.
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.
No you see regulation is bad, because government.
Which is a sentiment I could almost agree with if regulation wasn’t actually a tool in the arsenal for the working man and the community
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Damn… Can’t wait to reach the 1k…
What I wonder is what other industries might prompt the same level of hatred.
Private prisons companies? Hedge funds? Drug companies? Cryptocurrency exchanges? Payday loan companies? Dollar stores?
It would be a shame if it were only health insurance companies that were scared.
Oil, tobacco (I guess you said drug) companies, Monsanto/Bayer, nursing home and hospice admins…
Private military companies, such as Blackwater (or whatever they’ve renamed themselves this week).
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.
“You’re like Hitler but even Hitler cared about Germany or something”
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.
Consider Zuckerberg’s involvement in the Rohingya genocide.
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?
Oh my fucking god - Facebook has redacted the number of reactions.
Little pissbabies.
Anyone else feel like we should give the gunman a free pass, btw?
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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 don’t think you know what jury nullification is…
True, hence the question marks.
Jury nullification isn’t some official* legal procedure or anything, it’s just the principle that a jury can choose to find someone not-guilty for reasons outside of the facts of the case at hand - they may think the law being broken is unjust, or they may think the punishment for the crime is too harsh, or they may just be protesting the legal system in general. It’s possible because generally two things are true about a trial ruled on by a jury of peers - a jury can’t be punished for an “incorrect” verdict, and a defendant can’t be tried for the same crime twice.
a jury can’t be punished for an “incorrect” verdict
I agree with everything you said, but I just wanted to point out that a juror can’t legally be punished. I live in an area where both the city police and the county sheriffs are corrupt. They hold vendettas against anyone that pisses them off. One even stalked and assulted an ex using police lookup tools. Got caught, got slap on the wrist and he’s back at it, just more carefully now.
My point is that it’s supposed to be that jurors can’t be punished for their decisions, but in reality they might have to watch their back if the piss off the arresting officer (or anyone with power).
I hate living here. I wish I could afford to move.
Jury nullification is most likely not going to happen. Speaking about it during selection will get you booted from selection, and being too obvious that it’s your intent will get you booted.
With that said, it always is possible, even with a murder case like this. It is the logical consequence of a legal system such as ours were the jury cannot be forced to give a specific verdict, and the defendant cannot be tried twice.
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.
One can hope, but I’m honestly not holding my breath.
Mother fucker coming in here with truths and shit.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if I end up homeless on the back of some billionaire getting richer, I’m on a fuckin hunt.
Bring me to jail, what, you think I don’t want that piece of dick cheese dead AND a roof over my head? Don’t tempt me with a good time.
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.
UHC shooter is the beginning.
Remember: the 1% made the rules.
Fun fact; I caught a 30 day ban once off /r/politics for a comment that was explicitly that quote by JFK, attributed to him. “Promoting violence.”
The fuck are you still doing on reddit?!
I haven’t looked back since I left and absolutely enjoy Lemmy.
“Don’t half ass two things. Whole ass one thing.”
reddit sucks but lemmy barely exists. I run out of things to scroll here really fast.
I just left lemmy.world yesterday and I was blown away by the massive amount if content coming from instances I wasn’t seeing before.
I don’t agree with having someone running my instance telling me I’m not allowed to see what people are posting. I can determine that for myself, thanks.
You’re on lemmy.world, which defederates faster than other instances.
I left .world a while back. Even with NSFW turned off I still have good content.
I have 6-hour top as my default sort.
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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).
Why would you be banned? Everyone has been posting about this
Some people need the extra drama in their lives
Posting about it is one thing.
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.
Because extremist rhetoric is banned in any decent space.
In what world is: “An individual who has been earning millions from allowing preventable deaths to take place deserves to die” extremist rhetoric?
Advocating for anybody’s killing is extremist. It’s literally the most extreme thing you could inflict upon somebody.
Revenge and justice aren’t the same thing.
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Cause lemmy.world has been banning people for expressing that sentiment lol
