I’m on the side that wants to produce meaningful change for human society. I want to help people.

If you just want to kill people without thinking or caring about the consequences, then I guess we aren’t on the same side.

I’m on your side. You’re speaking out of desperation, lashing out instinctually.

But as I said before, directionless anger will not get you far. You and those like you will surely fail, and all of your rage will amount to nothing.

As they say, when you come at the king, you best not miss. As bad as you feel the situation is now, it could be far, far worse.

We’ve been sitting on a powder keg for a while. It doesn’t take many people to start some shit - a few more assassinations and things will change fast.

Things will change for the worse. We just elected Donald Trump and the government is controlled by conservatives. How exactly are you expecting them to react to CEOs getting assassinated? You think they’re going to come to the table and work out a plan for universal healthcare, a compromise?

Fuck no, they’re going to fight fire with fire. And they’ve already proved they can manufacture consent from average Americans by taking advantage of their stupidity to make them go against their best interests.

I’m sorry for your loss, but this nonsense isn’t going to bring anyone back, it’s just going to lead to even more suffering and violence.

A successful revolution takes a whole lot more than bloodlust and directionless anger. The emotion is there, but there is no revolutionary framework or ideology in place to direct that feeling towards meaningful change. This seeming “unity” is ephemeral, it’ll be forgotten as soon as the next media cycle starts.

The recent killing of the UHC CEO seems to have pushed all the right buttons in activating people’s bloodlust and mob mentality. But I actually looked at some of the threads on reddit after being a bit taken aback by the reaction on Lemmy, and redditors were being just as violent. So I don’t think it’s Lemmy getting more radical, it’s just the flavor of the week right now to celebrate violence, as long as it’s against the bad guys.

I don’t know the details of why United Healthcare denied so many claims. I don’t know to what extent this particular man had influence or control over those decisions. Despite your blustering, neither do you.

Even if I had omniscient knowledge of the entire process, I am quite certain that the moral liability of this individual human being would not be such that he would be subject to execution under any reasonable justice system. Maybe he did belong in jail, but never in a million years did he deserve to be executed without a fair trial.

As you go back further in history, essentially everything was decided by violence. But the balance of power has shifted with the rapid advance of technology. Violent behavior is less likely now than ever to make a difference, in my opinion.

And also that’s not what this is. There wasn’t any manifesto, there wasn’t any protest, there weren’t any unions going on strike. It was just one man gunning down another man in cold blood. To what end?

Good luck with that, Rambo

No, I’m not going to help you murder CEOs without just cause. I’ll keep standing right here, thanks very much.

Shifting goalposts. You have not addressed my criticism of your goofy point here. Oppressors, collaborators, and rebels all have to exist within the systems that exist, and that has nothing to do with each group’s intentions for the future of that system.

Let me explain more fully. You are correct that all three groups have to exist within the extant systems. What you fail to understand is that all three groups can and almost always do exist within individual people. When you post on Lemmy like you’re currently doing, you could maybe lay claim to the role of a rebel, if I were being generous. But when you go to work, you’re wearing the hat of the oppressor. When you pick up your prescription and pay the copay to your health insurance company, you’re a collaborationist. When you go to college and graduate with a BA, you’re a collaborationist.

This entire argument stems from my refusal to reduce a man to his occupation. It would be nice if human beings could be divided into neat little boxes of different types (rebels/oppressors) and we could deal with them accordingly. Unfortunately, the human condition is not so clear cut, it’s frequently messy.

Furthermore, even if we were to ignore all of the nuance that I just pointed out, and go with a rough estimation, there’s a second major problem with your approach. Namely, it’s impossible to understand who is playing which part until the dust has settled. Was Thomas Jefferson an oppressor, a rebel, or a collaborationist? I would imagine his contemporaries would have considered him primarily a rebel due to his prominent role in the American revolution, while modern audiences might consider him an oppressor due to his extensive slave holding. Conducting business dealings with Napoleon Bonaparte seems like the work of a collaborationist.

Point is, even with historical perspective and knowing how events turned out, it can still be difficult to understand the roles that certain people played in society. How much more futile a task to attempt to categorize people into groups without the advantage of knowing the outcome of their actions. You might as well be throwing darts with a blindfold on, that’s the level of accuracy you’re going to get with that approach.

The assignment of moral culpability is reliant on the ability of a person to make a choice. When I pick up my prescriptions, that has no impact on whether or not little Billy gets his heart operation. No choice I could make would impact that, except through my political activity or, failing that, through some sort of violence.

I don’t believe in free will, so this argument is kind of moot for me. But if I did, I would argue that there is almost always a choice you can make that can impact something, even if it’s nearly impossible to identify what that specific choice is. In other words, there is always something you can do, but as a human being it’s extremely difficult to identify what that something is, partially because we aren’t as clever as we pretend to be and partially because society intentionally obfuscates the choices that we do have.

Of course, not believing in free will also moots many of the traditional ethical perspectives, but for most purposes I find deontological ethics to be a relatively reasonable viewpoint. I think the important thing to remember about utilitarianism is that there are very strict limits to our ability to measure the consequences of our actions. We are not intelligent enough to predict the butterfly effect of our actions, so attempting to assess the consequences of certain actions is quite the tricky task. Deontological ethics simplifies things to a level that we can engage with more easily.

Politically speaking, the kinds of reforms required to fix our healthcare system are far greater than anything ever achieved without at least a credible threat of violence.

I beg to differ, just look at the New Deal. When the Great Depression happened, American society did not descend into lawlessness and anarchy. The American people did not resort to murdering the robber barons who had gotten us into that mess. They elected a progressive candidate in FDR, who enacted massive legislative reform that far exceeds the level of reform needed for our current Healthcare system.

Nonetheless, you are not wrong in your assessment of the current situation. It certainly is dire, and I don’t hold much hope for a similar solution as occurred back then. But it’s worth pointing out that it really did happen through political means less than 100 years ago in this country.

It’s also worth noting that FDR is exactly the kind of person that the current mob would be putting on the list of assassination targets. He would be a very easy target as well, with the polio and all. The current social climate would literally eat FDR alive and he would never get anywhere near the presidency. He was the epitome of an old money, American aristocrat. And yet he did more for the working class than any president before or since. I wonder how many people had that on their bingo card in 1930.

There is no plan of action that gives us a violence free route to an equitable healthcare system for at least the next 50 years. Violence won’t be sufficient on it’s own, but it will be necessary. Public support for this shooter actually decreases the amount of actual violence that might be otherwise required.

This is where you lose me. You can’t know these things. You can’t know the future 50 years in advance. You can’t know the overall impact of this event until it actually unfolds. And pretending that you do is the classic way to convince yourself to do and support horrific things in the present day.

Hope and determination are great, but aren’t worth much without a viable plan of action.

I’m working on that. I already know that assassination probably isn’t going to be a huge part of a viable plan of action.

We have tried all the “right” things for decades and have only lost ground. Maybe it’s time to move on to the “next” thing.

Have we? We’ve flip flopped back and forth between Dems and Republicans for the past 50 years, there hasn’t been any clear, indisputable mandate from the American voters as to what the government should be doing. We as a people cannot agree on a path forward, so we continue to languish.

I don’t even remotely believe that history is over, I intend to advocate for massive social restructuring. But I also understand that attempting to brute force things is foolish and counterproductive.

But when the workers and the owners are fighting at a large enough scale (beyond one or two murders), it forces the government to come in and mediate between the two sides. They must reach a compromise in order to quell the violence.

This has never occurred historically. What historical period of workers and owners fighting at a large scale are you alluding to? That hasn’t ever occurred in America. What usually happens is that people vote, and that’s what causes the government to act.

Which means the owner class has to give something up in exchange for the worker class to stop the violence. It’s how we got unions and worker protections when voting and political pressure failed. It’s never the right answer, but at some point it’s the only answer left.

We got unions and workers protections because of voting and political pressure. The modern framework of labor rights in the US was almost entirely created by FDR, who was swept into office by an overwhelming majority of voters as a result of the Great Depression. He passed a ton of legislation as part of the New Deal and utilized political pressure on the Supreme Court when they tried to strike down the legislation. It was strengthened and expanded by JFK and LBJ, two more presidents who were elected with strong mandates from the American people.

There is no scenario where gunning down healthcare CEOs applies any sort of political pressure to anyone. I know that it feels like it means something to the common person who doesn’t understand much about the functioning of government or business. But I can promise you that it means very little to the people with the power to make decisions, aside from reminding them of the necessity of private security.

👏

10/10 retort, well played

It’s just the inconvenient truth. You are all so desperate to prove that you’re opposed to the system, because deep down you know that you’re a part of it. None of us can escape this guilt.

I’m also desperate to prove that I’m opposed to the system, but unfortunately I’m intelligent enough to understand the difference between a rational attempt at reforming the system, and random acts of violence that actually cause the system to become even more dysfunctional. I can’t naively cheer on this stuff like you, because I understand how futile and counterproductive it is towards the end goal of reform.

Honestly, I suspect many you gave up on changing anything for the better a long time ago. Now you just want to watch the world burn. I still have hope and determination to change things, and for that I get called a collaborationist and bootlicker by edgelord keyboard warriors. Oy vey!

I think we’ve already established that the list you made was a pretty good one so the suggestion that a list of those most responsible can’t be made is pretty odd to me.

No we haven’t. On what grounds are you taking doctors and nurses off the list? They’re the ones with medical training, if anything they’re the ones with the ultimate power over who gets medical help and who doesn’t. They choose to sell their services to the highest bidder. But they hold no responsibility? Absurd.

The same is true for voters, or any other group of people. Probably the only groups that could even dream of limited liability would be religious cults/fundamentalists like the Amish, because they are at least making a good faith attempt to avoid participating in society any more than necessary. Or remote uncontacted tribes I suppose.

Let’s say I agree with you that violence is never the answer, what’s your alternate suggestion?

Dude wtf, I never said that. I literally already addressed this in my original reply to you, like an hour ago?

I don’t have any aversion to physical violence, if it is directed towards a rational goal with defined objectives and limits to its usage. This is an example of the opposite, an arbitrary and chaotic usage of violence that only serves to exacerbate social dysfunction.

I can only waste so much of my time going in circles, I’m out.

How so?

I just feel bad for everyone because you’re too stupid to see that you’re only hurting yourselves with this childish exaltation of violence. I can clearly see that you people are drowning and it pains me, but you’re lashing out wildly in such a way that it makes it dangerous for someone to try to save you.

What’s even more distressing is that you aren’t alone out there. There are also children drowning out there right beside you, but you’re making it too difficult to provide any assistance because of your wild flailing. Long after we are dead, the inability of our generation to react maturely and productively to the reality of modern society will continue to haunt our descendants.

Do you have a job? Live in a house? Have any family or friends? Do you eat food?

Unless you answer no to all of these questions, I unfortunately must inform you that you too are a collaborationist.

Actually don’t bother, the fact that you’re using the internet already proves that you are.

I’m not being intentionally obtuse. I’m trying to open your eyes to the fact that there is no list that can be drawn up. It’s an impossible task to separate human beings from the conditions of their environment. The system is inherently flawed, it doesn’t matter who becomes the CEO, they are all incentivized to follow the same playbook.

What you suggest has been tried countless times in the past. When you remove the people occupying positions of power, others just take their place. You’re ultimately advocating removing individual human beings, when you should be advocating changing the system entirely. Instead of trying to overthrow and take over the system that exists, you should be trying to escape the system and build something better.

I don’t have any aversion to physical violence, if it is directed towards a rational goal with defined objectives and limits to its usage. This is an example of the opposite, an arbitrary and chaotic usage of violence that only serves to exacerbate social dysfunction.

If the people you listed don’t help improve the situation then yes, they probably should be worried for their safety

I listed everybody. Every single human being on this planet is, in some way, responsible for the current state of society. There is no line that you can draw between yourself and people [who] don’t help improve the situation. We are all, by definition, a part of that group, for as long as it takes until the situation does improve. And that’s why I’m trying to explain that this kind of action is taking all of us further away from whatever improved version of society you envision.

It worsened my mood drastically. So that seems like a net negative so far.