A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.
Four days after a gunman assassinated a top health insurance executive in Midtown Manhattan and vanished, the unidentified suspect has, in some quarters, been venerated as something approaching a folk hero.
In grim twist, corporate media tries to guilt people out of having hope
Media is there to make owners feel good so they are doing just that.
Issue is that working class is not accepting this narrative.
A dead corporate executive is the most unified people have ever been in a generation.
I don’t think extra security can save them when entire country wants you dead
And we now have an entire country open to talking about how much they want corporate executives dead.
FA is done, I think this is FO stage
Three incident in the last 4 years where billionaires owned media got caught lying. Covid, Gaza, and now this. In all of these they didnt gave shit about innocent people dying, finding excuses and twisting words to gaslight people.
What’s grim about it? Of course people are gonna look kindly upon someone who kills a mass murderer.
I have a right-wing neighbor who voted Trump three times, says climate change is a hoax, and hates me for sometimes wearing a tie-dye jacket, but he says with a grin all over his face, “Did you hear about that insurance CEO who got shot dead?” and he laughs and laughs and gives me a thumbs-up.
America stands united.
Funnily enough the death of a United Health Care CEO has United Americans in a feeling of well deserved schadenfreude.
My trump-loving in-laws are the same. Voted 3 times for shitler, but they’re thrilled about this. It’s one thing in the news that we can discuss.
A few more of these and we’ll all really see how much we actually agree with one another, and how much the split and hate is manufactured.
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I don’t condone murder, but I also dont feel sad about a mass murderer being gunned down.
That’s pretty much what condone means. From MW:
To overlook, forgive, or disregard (an offense) without protest or censure. synonym: forgive.
From Cambridge:
to ignore or accept behavior that some people consider wrong
So you’re perhaps not encouraging it?
Hmm… TIL The word condone means something slightly different than I thought.
That said, one can still want a murderer to face justice while also not being upset about the victim death.
But I suspect this story has quite few people realizing they do condone murder in some cases.
Yeah, I looked it up to be sure. Not to be a dick.
And yeah, perhaps we should just condone condoning certain things and draw the line at encouraging or assisting?
Justice for the Grin Reaper will be either jury nullification, or never being caught. If he were imprisoned or shot by cops, it would be an injustice. We shouldn’t lock up heroes.
It’s not without protest though. The protest is… was this guy a mass murderer? Yes? Well ok then
I see that the corporate owned media is sweating bullets.
Good.
Yeah theyre really crawling for appeal but that means they are afraid. I was really against violent actions like this but after seeing how effective it isni guess im also a radical leftist now instead of just a leftist. If they take the power away from thw people you have to take it back violently.
This is what I was trying to tell all ya pacifist bastards, the rich are cowards and only know the language of violence.
Yup i get it now. But in the spirit of being democratic and stating close to ohr roots we should vote on who gets “handled” next.
We already did.
trump already tried to have Congress and his vp murdered last time. And now he has a scotus ruling that he is immune to everything. And we have a military that has already made it clear they will “just follow orders”.
Someone killing thousands through corporate policies: Not grim.
Someone killing that person: Grim.
/s
Yeah fuck the title of this article. What a shit way to introduce bias.
Grim? WTF? The dude is a hero.
We need a French solution to the oligarchy problem and this guy moved us in the right direction.
He’s a god damn hero.
May I remind you Trump got re-elected? The US chose for more money to mega corps and the ultra rich. There is no dictatorship in the US (yet), this system is by choice. Anyone who wanted to create a more social support system including better healthcare is painted as a communist, a nazi and as corrupt and en masse people vote for the person to make a fucked up system even worse. The US doesn’t need a French solution, the US needs to vote differently when they don’t like this shit. When you vote for oligarchs, you get oligarchs.
Trump got elected because the richest man in the world spent a quarter of a billion dollars on his campaign, and that has tangible results.
For some but for a lot, they are racist and sexist. Most people don’t even understand what their candidate stands for.
Why do you think people think these things and vote for oligarchs?
Because most people follow the one that shouts the loudest. The person who claims to have the answer to all problems usually does really well during elections, especially when there are many things not going too well. It doesn’t matter whether these persons actually have a solid solution, they don’t even have to have a plan, only shout they know what to do. People don’t want to spend their time to figure out whether a poliyion consists of empty promises and lies, people expect politicians to be honest. Most of the time the populist politicians not just claim they have the answer and solution to all, they also make their competition look evil by claiming they are corrupt, nazis, communists, pedophiles, etc. “You don’t want to vote for a pedo, do you?” No matter the acts they committed themselves. For example, Hitler claimed to be a national ‘socialist’ while claiming the dirty communists are evil, winning the socialist votes. Putin, who is a full nazi based on his actions, invades Ukraine “to fight nazis”. Trump, who is an extreme right wing politician with a long friendship with Epstein and now a criminal record, claims his opponents are nazis, pedos and criminals and those should never hold office.
Facts don’t matter, it’s all feelings. The one who knows how to hit that usually is very popular during less stable times. So when billionaires claim they can end wars, bring us to Mars, fix the economy, drive out those criminal desease infested immigrants (or jews in nazi Germany setting) (see, making them look super evil, dehumanizing them, creating a villain only they have a solition to), people just think “he’s successful with all his money, lying on such a large scale can’t be possible right, the opposition apparently is super evil, he must be a good candidate”.
TLDR: Fueling hate and anger, claiming to be the only one with a solution usually works to get people’s votes. And the general public is too dumb to see beyond empty promises and they dismiss facts over feelings.
Right. Everything you say is true but you don’t look into the mechanisms that sit behind and make it work. You’re not looking into why it works.
For example, you mention how people don’t want to spend their time figuring out what a politician really stands for. But why? Most people don’t have this time. Most people don’t have the training needed to critically assess the information they receive either. The system’s always worked on the basis of some level of honesty along with robust and critical media. Ultimately most people hear most of the words of the candidates through media. In the 20th century through radio, TV and in the 21st through the Internet. When you explore the media angle you can observe media ownership changes and with them a significant shift to pro-corporate, pro-billionaire and anti-worker stances dominating the landscape. In effect, the billionaires are telling the people who don’t have time or skill to seek and sift through independent information, what to think, believe and feel, and who best represents those feelings.
Then you have candidates emerge who represent those feelings and the same billionaires pour ridiculous amounts of money in their campaigns, get their media outlets to transmit the message without sufficiently challenging its factuality and effects.
You put the two together and that answers to a significant degree why people vote for oligarchs. We saw all of this play out in plain sight during the recent US election.
You can’t remove loudmouths that promise easy solutions to hard problems. They’ve always existed. If you removed their funding and their megaphones however, most won’t even know about them. That’s not to say populists haven’t been elected without being supported by the owner class, but this isn’t one of those cases. This is the owner class capturing the democratic system and electing their representative through these methods. It didn’t happen yesterday. It’s been going on for a while, getting ever more effective. Note that the alternative candidate in the recent election was also subservient to the owner class, just to a somewhat different part of it and perhaps to somewhat lower extent.
I think highlighting these processes is crucial because the solutions are actionable and efficient. It’s very unlikely for us to be able to get the majority of any society to be able to spend the time needed and have the mental tools needed to arrive at factual conclusions from sifting through the (corporate) media firehouse. I don’t think it’s ever been achieved. Removing private money from politics and media is possible and has been done before.
Lack of critical thinking and proper education
lol you guys don’t have a non oligarch option, so I don’t really understand how voting would save you guys at this point.
He didn’t get reelected by people who support the rich, he got reelected by people who want to push people who they feel are below themselves further down. They think Trump will do that for them, not to them. They think he is simultaneously rich and in their side. They are willing to ignore any evidence to the contract because ‘he just needs to act that way as part of his plan, in the end he’s secretly on our side’… As the wolf openly eats the sheep to ‘keep up appearances’.
The US chose for more money to mega corps and the ultra rich.
we never had a choice for anything different.
Yet out of the 2 bad options, you chose the one which is the worst by a landslide.
Does that make you feel better, running around telling random people they voted wrong, when you know nothing about who they voted for or whether they voted at all?
I feel fucking tired and hopeless with all the conflicts, extremism, hate and stupidity in the world right now. People are claiming murdering a CEO is a major win with the entire Healthcare drama, while next month antivax RFK Jr. Will be health minister. Idiocracy was meant to be a comedy, not a manual. Right now it’s a documentary.
when you know nothing about who they voted for or whether they voted at all?
I don’t believe the voting system is good, I’m even against it. But not voting is so fucking dumb, when you didn’t vote you’re not allowed to complain about anything because you kept your mouth shut when you had a chance to say something. I really feel sorry for the people who did chose the lesser of 2 bad choices. Although I do think murdering people doesn’t make things better. It only helps escalate the situation and cuts off a head which will grow back even bigger and stronger. I don’t feel bad for the CEO, it’s understandable what happened when you make people their lives missersble en masse. But it’s not going to change anything. When they catch the guy he’ll be sentenced and a new CEO will get better protection.
So no, it doesn’t make me feel better. People need to see things in perspective and stop thinking life is a Hollywood movie.
The only grim aspect is how much time, resources, and energy the NYPD has wasted trying to solve this. Statistically, there have been other murders since this one. They should move on and add this to their “unsolved” pile.
“We don’t care when they’re poor.” -NYPD
Clearly they need to make an “example” out of him or others may follow his lead.
The public should mount pressure on them to drop the case. Make it clear we want him to walk free.
Make me think, how many regular cops are actually OK with this? Sure cops are a privileged class, but they still have family and friends who suffer in the hands of private health insurance.
Cops have long had the Punisher.
Now big Insurance has The Adjuster.
I don’t know why they don’t just add it to the unsolved pile like all the other murders they see?
He’s not only hot; he’s making an example out of cruel millionaires … millionaires who prefer money and let people die, without ANY hesitation. So yeah, it’s not like being attracted to Dahmer, it’s more like being attracted to Katniss Everdeen.
Is it a twist if nobody is surprised?
Perhaps this should actually read “in grim reality, most see suspect in C.E.O. Killing as Hero or Heartthrob”.
The number one react on the UHC Facebook announcement about it is the crying laughing emoji. The people have spoken.
Honestly, hero or hearthrob is putting it lighty. If I talked about how I actually felt about this guy, I’m pretty damn sure that would put me on some kind of list.
And I only feel comfortable saying that, because I know we’re all thinking it.
Link related: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/16ohFsFviig
Where’s the twist? This is a dumb headline.
Turns out some people can only be pushed so far before they resort to violence.
America is finally united
Corporate response is buy more security
Is the start of the first corpo war?
Cyberpunk main quest activated?
After some recent events I read Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. It includes bit on how well trained, extremely prepared USSS agents were unable to stop a single practice gunman whose identity they knew. All variables were in their favor and they were far more competent than hired security will be. I’ve included an excerpt at the end.
Corporate security will not stop someone willing to go to jail or die for it, such as someone terminally ill and fucked by their insurance. Media puff pieces overstating security effectiveness— spread through outlets owned by the ultra wealthy— would be far more effective in preventing another event like this. Presumably the more people that know, the more emboldened they would be to repeat this heartbreaking, earth-shattering tragedy. Which would just be terrible. Certainly I would be horrified and thus suggest suppressing this info. We should be spreading how corporate security is infallible to protect heroes like Mr. Thompson’s peers so they can continue to be upstanding members of society.
“In the wake of the Wallace shooting, the Service conducted more frequent and intensive drills on how to handle different kinds of attackers on a rope line. Agents and officers practiced over and over, playing the roles of detail agents and spectators on either side of the line. The drill instructor warned the agents ahead of time that a person in the crowd would play the role of the shooter and approach the principal with a gun. The drill instructor even pointed out who that person was.
“The agents were told who had a weapon,” said one former agent. “And the guys are working the rope line and they’re constantly looking at this guy waiting for the moment when he’s going to pull the gun. They know who it is.”
Agents swiveled their heads back and forth from the spectators in front of them to the mock gunman in the crowd. They tried to anticipate his move and readied themselves for the fastest dive or lunge. No matter how many times they did the drill, the result was the same. “They never once stopped him before two shots,” the former agent said.”
good time to start a career in security as a non-American because these scumbags literally can’t trust anyone in their country to not step out of the way at the first opportunity, but I can’t see anyone else taking a bullet for them either so … good luck to them.
Some? I’ve yet to find anyone not on his side, the most I can find are people sarcastically saying “Oh no, won’t someone please catch him…”
What were the words written on the bullets.
Thing is, if they don’t catch him, it will inspire a copycat to repeat his tactics.
And I honestly can’t even bring myself to say it’s a bad thing; this gunman killed a glorified serial killer, a man who is paid to find people buying his product in order to get help for fatal yet curable illnesses, and kill them in order to save costs.
Violence is wrong and should only be used as a last resort, but well, given the circumstances it’s hard for me to lose sleep at night…
I legally cannot and will not advocate violence, I stress this, I AM NOT ADVOCATING VIOLENCE, IF YOU’RE PLANNING YOUR OWN VIOLENT ACT I BEG YOU TO RECONSIDER! Everyone out there has at least one other person who loves them, and most high profile violent acts backfire horribly on the perpetrator.
But I will say this. Some men can only be pushed so far until they’re at the edge, then they’ll grab onto the person who put them there so at least they fall together… And many MANY men are at the edges.
“Those who make peaceful resolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” - JFK
Deny. Defend. Depose.
They did the worst thing. They found him, named him, and published a glamour shot. This should have been the school shooting procedure if they didn’t want copycats. Instead of an unnamed killer they can vilify they now have the story of a normal, well educated, young man pushed over the edge. An Anti-Hero. I predict one of two things in the next 1-6 years. The death of health insurance or the death of more health insurance executives.
I’d like to take this time to point out that CEOs are cogs in a machine, important, highly placed cogs, but cogs all the same. They couldn’t run the place any other way without their majority shareholders firing them. Those are generally groups like Blackrock and Vanguard, (The largest shareholders in UHC). They have that status in many publicly traded companies. This gives them an outsized say in the board composition of companies across the economy; on issues like food, housing, and yes healthcare. If you’re looking for a deep state or shadow government, these guys are close as it gets. They don’t directly make the twisted policies but they do fire CEOs that don’t make the green line go up in any way possible.
Once Americans figure that out I think the rage is going to be surreal in it’s magnitude.
God I hope so
