If people had half a brain then the alarms have been ringing nonstop for years and any attempt to explain why so we can fix it resulted in failure.
Sadly, what they have is shit for brain.
I fear that instead of an era of reform, the response to this act of violence and to the widespread rage it has ushered into view will be limited to another round of retreat by the wealthiest. Corporate executives are already reportedly beefing up their security. I expect more of them to move to gated communities, entrenched beyond even higher walls, protected by people with even bigger guns.
Unfortunately the alarms are ringing for the wrong people. This is worrying as modern technology can allow these people to deal with mobs and riots a lot more effectively.
This is also why in certain grassroots communities people have been pressing for more radical, immediate action. If the big guys at the top start getting spooked then it could be too late for any efforts at dethroning them.
Yeah Bashar al-Assad knew there were a lot of people in his country that wanted to remove him from power. Because of this a movement to remove him from power completely failed. Oh wait, no, the opposite of that happened.
It’s actually more the norm that smaller actions (successful or not) snowball into larger actions. A movement isn’t a bunch of academics discussing ideology. It requires real actions non-academics can relate to.
Honestly it would be better for the people in power if this guy is never found. If they kill him, he becomes a martyr. If he’s put on trial, that’s an event that could spark protests. It’s better for the powers that be if everyone just forgets this ever happened.
I agree that it most likely is in the best interests for those in power to just drop the assassination story and pretend it never happened, but if it is the best choice it’s the best in a series of bad choices for the powerful. Underneath the immediate concern of one of the peonage getting up the courage to kill one of the Princes of the Universe is the general public response.
Every day the assassin stays free and in the news is a day everyone can see that the American public supports and condones the killing of people in C-suite (and likely beyond C-suite). That is one hell of a permission structure now in place. If the Powers That Be then pretend the killing didn’t even happen letting the assassin off the hook, that’s them giving carte blanche to copycats to do as they will, nobody is going to stop you. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
I have inside me blood of kings!
Yeah, the thing about that is it extends to not just those you dislike. Using your Syria example, you as a private citizen can be murdered in the street by another private citizen with no repercussions, too.
You are an American, you don’t live in Syria. As bad as America is, it’s not Syria. Wanting it to get that bad is not smart.
Yes. It SHOULD ring alarms. It should have rang alarms 100 years ago. It should make the rich and elite sit down and really contemplate the fact that nobody, NOBODY, gives a damn if they die, and we’ll openly celebrate the fact that they just got shot in the face. The world will be happy they’re gone.
It should make them sit down and ask the all important question of WHY.
Why would a nation cheer wildly at their death? What have they done to deserve that kind of treatment? And when they start asking those questions, hopefully they find the answers. Hopefully something is put right in their face that forces them to empathize with those they’ve hurt, and those that would not hesitate to shoot.
I do not know the shooters name. I do not know the shooters identity. However we ALL know the shooters story. We may not know the specifics. He may be dying, and was denied his own health. He may be losing or already lost a loved one. Whatever the case, we all know the motive. And what should scare these CEOs is that Brian Thompson never learned a lesson. There was no 3 ghosts of Christmas. Brian Thompson was just walking down the street one day. And suddenly he was dead. He didn’t even have time to process it. He never knew his killers name. He may not have even known he was targeted. He may have died before he even realized what’s going on.
But the rest of them? They should all be sitting in their homes, thinking about if they’re next. WHY they would be next, and what they’ve done to potentially be targeted in the future. What can they do to stop it?
Because for once in my life, I’m seeing real consequences for corrupt and evil behavior. THATS why everyone is cheering. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re all just hoping this turns into Americas version of the french revolution.
We’re not against the idea of working hard and becoming rich for it. We’re against the idea of becoming rich by exploiting the literal lives of those you step on. And that seems to be almost the exclusive way to become rich in this country. It’s sickening.
We (in the US) just elected a grifting, criminal “billionaire”. I don’t think the animosity so loudly and gleefully displayed in the reactions to the murder of this asshole insurance ghoul is representative of a newly heightened consciousness of wealth inequality. I hope that it is the start of something, but I’ve been disappointed in the public way too many times.
Just dropping in to remind everyone, that there have been 2 assassination attempts on the ‘grifting, criminal “billionaire”’ in just the last 8 months and he’s been hiding behind thick glass in public.
I don’t think it will stop, because however many people you manage to manipulate via targeted brainwashing (social media), you create at least a few super angry, unpredictable folks with ever less to lose. And they all have guns.
Edit: Also, nothing stops someone with a gigantic grudge, patience and high motivation from joining a private security company, getting training, a gun, and placed directly in the vicinity of a potential target. Really, there’s no good defense except not giving a ton of people reasons to want to get rid of you.
Edit: Also, nothing stops someone with a gigantic grudge, patience and high motivation from joining a private security company, getting training, a gun, and placed directly in the vicinity of a potential target. Really, there’s no good defense except not giving a ton of people reasons to want to get rid of you.
Not to mention the use of DIY suicide drones.
Why hasn’t anyone invented a super accurate grenade trebuchet?
I’m scared of his supporters becoming disenfranchised by and turning on him. They’re already so volatile that their violence isn’t always going to be as precise as a single bullet. There’s going to be civilian collateral damage. It’s hard celebrating all this, knowing the motherfucker had it coming, but considering the reality of violence, vigilantism and the kinds of people that do this (and the state they’re in when pushed enough)… yay dead rich murderous fuck… but shit, I’m scared for all of us. That dude could have missed… a stray could have killed someone. Couldn’t have gone through his head, shattered on his skull and shrapnel ricochets through a kid walking to school. Everyone wants street justice but forgets that living by the sword means living by the sword.
Are you kidding? Them turning on him is our greatest hope.
Trump is already responsible for indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of Americans due to his failure during COVID.
I don’t disagree. I’m just afraid of people with the same mindset going wild spray and praying all over the place and taking out bystanders with them.
Definitely. This was more of a general comment.
I will copy/paste a thought I had about a more structured approach for dealing with corruption/oligarchs:
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 like it. Honestly don’t think it’s harsh enough. My point was less about harsh penalties than collateral damage from crazies. I think we’re pretty much on the same page though.
Agreed - the alarm bells should have been ringing long ago.
There was a social contract between the upper and lower class (the middle class is a lie used to further divide us) that was basically - we’ll let you have your mansions as long as our quality of life improves as well. But the rich have been hollowing out that agreement for decades. The highest tax bracket (the percentage taxed on income only above a certain amount) has plummeted since the middle of the 20th century. Regulations have been removed and replaced with weaker regulations (like Dodd/Frank) and then THOSE regulations have been hollowed out. Any sense of responsibility and duty the rich might have ever had to the people and place that rewarded them so greatly has vanished and in place of it is cynical and manipulative and greedy - because the only thing that matters is getting more and taking more - removing the safety barriers that keep them from getting more, no matter who it might hurt because somehow acquiring wealth has become the most important thing (not doing something great, improving the world, or helping others).
At each step, the social contract weakens. As long as enough people aren’t feeling the pain they’re going to abide by their part of the bargain because most of the rest of us ARE actually just trying to live good lives and make sure it’s good for those around us. But there will be a moment when enough people are feeling the pain and won’t have any other choice but to act. In a system where justice is only dealt to the lower class - that action is guaranteed to be carried out outside the system.
There was never a social contract. Sorry, but that’s absolute nonsense. The power of the wealthy has always been engacted through manipulation, intimidation and fraud. Claiming there was a social contract between the wealthy and the rest of us is like claiming that there was a social contract between slaves and slave owners.
There’s no contract, there’s no agreement, there’s no relationship; that’s a fantasy concocted by the wealthy to justify their wealth. There is only power and exploitation. And exploitation will always grow worse over time.
They abuse us, and we let them abuse us because we’re not desperate enough to stop them.
Not yet.
But it’s getting there.
I mean the social contract is not always a physical thing and not always by explicit consent. Just by carrying out our part of the system and accepting the benefits of it (infrastructure/protection/stability) we are implicitly consenting to it.
That being said, I absolutely agree with you that it is always slanted heavily toward the wealthy and not to benefit the working class but only to keep them in line.
I like ownership and working class. That’s the real distinction seperateing us. People who work for money, and people who own things for money. Even 6 figure doctors and lawyers are working class.
In a system where justice is only dealt to the lower class - that action is guaranteed to be carried out outside the system.
Ironically it appears that the solution is the second amendment solution that is championed by the right.
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Remember when the Panama/Paradise papers came out and there were practically no Americans listed in them because American tax law is already so favorable to the rich that they don’t even need to bother hiding assets?
We’re not against the idea of working hard and becoming rich for it. We’re against the idea of becoming rich by exploiting the literal lives of those you step on. And that seems to be almost the exclusive way to become rich in this country. It’s sickening.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
I don’t care if you make money. I don’t care if you make a lot of money. I care when you pull out all the stops in order to make ALL OF THE MONEY, FOREVER, without any regard for what you destroy, or who you hurt or even kill in order to get it.
Brian Thompson built his fortune off the pain, suffering, and deaths of others, and the world is a slightly better place without him.
The better technology gets, the better the oppression and suppression will get, the worse it will be before people revolt, eventually they will be too feeble to revolt effectively.
Where do you think we are in that progression?
The better the control systems get, the better will get the working class at circumventing them. Remember that those who write and compile the codes used to keep us in check are also part of the working class. There’s always space for a backdoor or an exploit in all codes, one just have to learn how to use them to return to an unknown status.
There is no thing like a people too feeble to revolt. A people who cannot revolt is a people who cannot work nor produce (see every dictatorship in the world, they are surviving but they are not thriving nor innovating anything. The best they can do is copy [China] or using old technologies [Russia, North Korea, Iran]). If the elites want to have their iPhone 20 or their self-driving cars they need us to be productive, and with that comes a certain degree of freedom which entails a degree of risk for their health and lives
Maybe, maybe not. There’s no way to predict what direction technology will go with certainty.
It could be the case that it eventually becomes impossible to revolt due to technology being insurmountable. Maybe it won’t be the case.
But what is certain is that people will revolt in mass if they have their backs against the wall and nothing to lose. And we’ve been circling the drain on that.
Most interesting how many right wingers and boomers also support it.
You’re mostly angry at the same thing. You’ve just come to different conclusions as to what to do about it.
They aren’t as stupid as they come off as. They know things are bad and that the rich are fucking them they’re just wrong about how and why
They think the Dems are the ones allowing the CEOs to fleece us and think Trump will do something about it. They are stupid and easily manipulated. Their legit anger, but lack of skepticism is allowing them to be lead around by charlatans.
I saw a comment somewhere saying Trump will immediately pardon our hooded modern folk hero… we need to form a team for Olympic-level mental gymnastics with the galaxy brain takes some of these jamokes have
I think it’s that they know the Dems are not going to do anything about it either.
Many Dems actually believe that they are the good guys and aren’t also to blame for the corpo nature of America.
Two sides of easily manipulated angry people being led by charlatans.
Can we not do “both sides are the same” as we’re sliding into a dictatorship?
Most younger D voters don’t actually like the DNC and don’t believe that they will help much. They just prefer that to the active harm the Republicans are trying to achieve.
Most younger D voters don’t actually like the DNC and don’t believe that they will help much.
Lets not pretend its just youth. Its every demographic, isnt it.
I know too many boomers and GenX who were excited for Biden and Harris. Don’t get me wrong, I still voted for them and kept my cynical comments offline until after the election, but I sure as hell wasn’t excited.
Many Dems actually believe that they are the good guys and aren’t also to blame for the corpo nature of America.
Biden increased the minimum corporate tax rate from 0% to 15%. By following the money (and the tax rates) we cut thru the tired bullshit of vague claims. The best way to achieve clarity is to focus like a laser on what happens with tax rates.
They know things are bad and that the rich are fucking them
Which they 100% enabled.
Nah they’re fucking concavebrains. They think Harris was the greedy corrupt party and that Trump will drain the swamp.
The DNC is a greedy, corrupt party which is wildly out of touch and only exists to enrich themselves
Before you @ me, the GOP are howling fascists who are just better at spinning the narrative by establishing an “other” as a scapegoat
Given that both parties, on a global scale are right of centre that makes sense. Dems are right of centre and more similar to most other nations right wing parties and that just pushes the republicans further right. You have no left wing party, just a party that is more left than the other.
Biden/Harris didnt give a crap what Dem voters wanted or what was good for society. So the DNC have been concavebrains for a good long while as well. You’re not exactly wrong, but ‘Glass houses’, friend.
Biden was a good president, his competition wasn’t even close as far as what is good for america, and Biden won the primaries because more people voted for him.
Biden was against so many things that dems wanted, like single payer health care and medicare for all, and he directly enabled a far right genocide of innocents when 87% of dems (at one point anyway) did not. He also pretty openly sucked off the rich. He could have fixed our broken racist classist justice system and he went the wrong way entirely on that. He was against expanding the supreme court and now look where thats led. Straight to a sweep of every single lever of power and the stage set on his watch for very possibly the end of the republic.
Doing a bunch of unpopular things and then running again when he should have known he was both too unpopular and too medically incapabale to win essentially knifed every Dem right in the back.
I wouldnt bet on history being kind to Biden. I guess I could send you a much longer list of ways he was a terrible senator and a terrible president and deserved his low approvals, but whats it matter anymore?
If there were any reality where Dems had enough votes for single payer then he as president absolutely would have signed it into law with no hesitation.
You’re basically speaking in tongues about choices people did not make in alternate dimensions.
And you’re pretending the president couldnt have worked toward it, and that the only thing he can do is whats handed to him on a silver platter with all the votes ready to go. That thing he is missing is called leadership. The president is supposed to be the leader of the party and is supposed to push forward the party platform, not wait in his chair like a noble waiting to be handed a message that he has won something.
He didnt even try to work toward it. We needed a leader and we got a right leaning dealmaker with a lifelong fear of criticism from the right and a fetish for making republicans happy and feeling like he’s on his own side and who cares what his partys platform is.
I read a few of your comments to try to figure out where you are coming from. This ones my favorite comment of yours, from 3 hours ago:
“Only because Bernie was pushed on useful idiots as a useful vote-splitter that benefitted Trump”
I think thats tells us all we need to know about you.
Yes they are
Sure is. Class politics is ultimately more powerful than culture war spectacle. Events like this bring that truth to the forefront - the worker class is United against the owning class, for the most part.
If we have more politicians like Bernie and AOC, we’d see less of this kind of mess. Where’s the movement that gets people like them more support?
Suppressed by the people in power. It’s better for them if we fight over culture war bullshit and that’s (IMO) why the right pushes so hard against things being “woke” or “dei” or whatever new scary buzzword those dumb fucks come up with.
We’re too busy arguing amongst ourselves to realise we should all be looking up at the corrupt rich. But with bought off media and the ability to push propaganda at a previously impossible level just a few decades ago, a ton of the population is kept perpetually angry because non-white/straight people have the audacity to exist.
I’m a native (aka native American/indigenous however you want to call it) and over the last few years I’ve noticed people are increasingly comfortable showing their racism. I get followed around in stores while I’m shopping for groceries occasionally, I get managers staring me down because I took too long looking around and they think I was trying to steal and that my debit card will be declined, people happily making small talk with others and then blankly staring at me and saying nothing to me even when I’m being pleasant to them etc. All anecdotal of course and I could just be getting more bitter as I get older, but it honestly feels like a trend to me.
I’ve been dealing with that shit since I was a teen, you always get judged just for having the audacity to be born the wrong skin color anywhere but it’s (anecdotally) gotten much worse over the last few years, which just so happens to coincide with the rise of the right all over the world.
I really hate the world sometimes tbh.
So sorry man. Don’t let the right wing assholes get to you.
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2016 was the year that people demanded a populist leader. The DNC sabotaged Bernie, which lead to low D voter turnout and the RNC bent at the knee at Trump’s threats to run as a third party.
How did the DNC sabotage Bernie? Bernie was allowed in the Primary despite not even belonging to the party, and primary voters chose Hillary Clinton by a huge margin.
If I remember right, super delegates were the main reason Bernie lost the nomination.
If I remember right, super delegates were the main reason Bernie lost the nomination.
That is 100% false. Unfortunately Bernie never got a majority of the ELECTED delegates.
Being suppressed by the Democrats?
How can the DNC possibly suppress them? If anything, the fact that they let Third Party Bernie Sanders run in primaries for a spot on DNC presidential ticket, multiple times, is astonishing.
As long he doesn’t win he can run as much as he wants
Ah so you’re saying the DNC swapped ballots to make us think Bernie actually lost the primary?
The outgoing chairman of the dnc is a former corporate lobbyist.
The morons outnumber us, sadly.
DSA, Working Families Party, Our Revolution, maybe other more radical groups like CPUSA or PSL.
DSA
DSA revoked its endorsement of AOC.
And rightly so. AOC supported the bill which conflates any criticism of the state of Israel as anti semitisim. Friends tell friends when they are wrong.
Tbh, I don’t even have faith in them.
There’s a plethora of contradictions. Americans hate for-profit healthcare, inequality, and CEOs, but love to vote Republican and worship Elon Musk. The sad reality is the people did this to themselves and will keep doing it to themselves.
Wish people channeled this sentiment at the voting booth when Trump got on national TV and said he’d replace Obamacare with “concepts” of a plan he apparently was clueless of after 8 years of actively trying to destroy Obamacare.
Wish Harris channeled that sentiment in her campaign by championing M4A, so people might actually want to vote for her
Or any sentiment at all beyond rightwing nonsense.
It would of been a lie and never implemented. Even if they had the votes they’d find a democrat spoiler to ruin it in the last hour. Like they always do.
Yeah I mean it still wouldn’t have earned her my vote, but I guess I meant she should’ve just not been a liberal/Democrat lol
I mean it still wouldn’t have earned her my vote
So no politician has any reason to ever listen to what you want. Maybe that’s WHY she didn’t champion M4A. Not enough votes.
I meant that that alone wouldn’t have earned it. Genocide is a hard line for me. I guess politicians who support genocide don’t have any reason to listen to what I want if they’re not going to stop supporting genocide, so you’re partially right
The system failed. It’s over.
Did it fail? As far as I can tell, the system has sucked since its inception, and continues to benefit the same people it always has
As far as I can tell, the system has sucked since its inception
Nope. It worked way better before Trump.
and continues to benefit the same people it always has
That has always depended on the party.
Clinton: raised taxes on rich. Bush: lowered taxes on rich. Obama: raised taxes on rich. Trump: lowered taxes on rich. Biden: raised taxes on rich.
You’re talking to an anarchist. Biden, Obama, and Clinton are all my enemies
Point taken, I was referring quite literally to the system. It’s unlikely we’ll have another election, but if we do, expect the democrats to run Liz Cheney. Centrism doesn’t offend their class interests and they don’t care if they lose. So they’ll run a Republican and kneecap anyone to the left of a Republican.
I’m sure she would have if she had more campaign time. There were only so many news cycles between when she started and the election and the media did it’s usual thing of monopolizing coverage of Trump’s insanity (because outrage brings views).
why are there so many delusional Democrats?
It’s ok to admit both parties suck. Yes to different degrees, but you don’t have to gaslight yourself into thinking Democrats care about you
Before the ACA, the Democrats were calling for single payer, not quite M4A but much better than what we got. The ACA was modeled on the Republicans healthcare reform package. Since then the Democrats have been defending the signature plan of Obama even though it is literally the plan their opposition created. Of course, Republicans don’t have a plan and many people voting today don’t remember what it was like in the 00’s where insurers would just dump people when they got sick or jack their rates up so high it wouldn’t be affordable.
The weird thing is that when I first joined the workforce in the 90s insurance was actually better than it is today and less expensive.
Before the ACA, the Democrats were calling for single payer, not quite M4A but much better than what we got.
The same Dems who were calling for single payer before the ACA are still calling for single payer.
The weird thing is that when I first joined the workforce in the 90s insurance was actually better than it is today and less expensive.
Things were way better before the GOP fucked things up in 2003 when they created “high deductable health plans” which very predictably jack up EVERYBODY’s deductables sky high.
many people voting today don’t remember what it was like in the 00’s where insurers would just dump people when they got sick or jack their rates up so high it wouldn’t be affordable.
You see that here in the thread. I think a lot of people forgot how bad it was and lack imagination for how bad things can get.
I think we’re all about to get a reminder over the next 4 years. Boy, I hope elections function at the end of it.
Looking at the numbers in 4 of the swing states, Kamala got more total votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, but so many rural voters just came out and voted for trump and against Kamal, so much so that in quite a few of the races Kamala lost but democrats in congress won their races, despite both running on functionally identical platforms.
Sure Dems generally care less and suck because they don’t actually wield power when they have it but at least they’re not actively trying to kill the minority populations and drag us into a theocratic oligarchy to fulfill the Book of Revelations prophesies.
I’d fucking love it if both political parties were trying to best represent their constituents. But they aren’t, and opining for something that doesn’t exist and has never existed isn’t going to do us any good. We work with the tools we have and the people we can to make the best of a shit situation. It that means backing dems because they’re not actively trying to kill minorities I’m gonna go with that on election day and do what I can to mitigate other kinds of damages.
I think you drew a lot of conclusions that I’m not sure I can get on board with.
Looking at the numbers in 4 of the swing states, Kamala got more total votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020
Across the US She got about 7 million votes fewer than Biden in 2020. There was clearly an enthusiasm problem and the dems lost minorities and almost every other demographic in a huge way. DNC didnt want to admit that Biden was historically unpopular. like legendarily so, and they just plum forgot to shore up their base. They instead demanded fealty in exchange for right wing talking points and policies, and prancing loathsome rightwingers like Cuban and Liz Cheney across the stage like we were supposed to be impressed. It was lunacy, with some hubris mixed in for seasoning. So here we are, in the aftermath of corporate shill amateur hour.
They instead demanded fealty in exchange for right wing talking points and policies
There was literally none of those.
prancing loathsome rightwingers like Cuban and Liz Cheney across the stage like we were supposed to be impressed
None of them had any impact on policies in any way. So why would NOT welcome the support of the few conservatives who remained loyal to America instead of going neofascist?
It was lunacy
Getting people’s support without giving up a single thing in return is the opposite of lunacy.
So here we are, in the aftermath of corporate shill amateur hour.
WTF are you talking about. Harris was going to raise taxes on corporations even more than Biden did.
Getting people’s support without giving up a single thing in return is the opposite of lunacy.
without even challenging your other inaccuracies, its a plain fact that harris slowly bled percentages every day for the whole last month of her campaign. Every day lost ground, which only made her double down on looking for rightwing votes which didnt exist.
I mean, I voted for every Dem I could. I voted as hard as I could. But I also think we should ALL be publicly outraged at how bad the two parties are.
So did I and until something like the fall of the Whig party, split of the northern and southern Democrats and rise of progressive Republicans in the mid 1800s happens, we have to make do with what we have at hand.
M4a wasn’t even on her platform (it was in 2020, so not having it was deliberate)
I voted for Harris, and straight Dem downballot. But no, Harris did not support M4A. Harris did in fact tack to the right during her campaign to try to pick up more moderate Republicans, and this killed my (and many others) enthusiasm and her campaign.
As said in one of the other replies to this comment, it is okay to admit both parties suck. (I am not both sides-ing this, they are not the same, but they both suck for the average American)
The Democratic party has a problem, and the last 3 presidential elections prove it. The last time a Democrat ran on a message of change (Obama), they won handily. But Obama didn’t deliver, and now if any Democrat promises change…well the masses are disillusioned…they don’t think the Democrats actually want change, and the thing is… they are right. Party insiders don’t want significant change to the systems. Biden barely won on a message of “getting back to normal”…when Americans were dying but the thousands, think about how close that race was. I voted for Biden, and Biden actually did okay, he steadied the ship…but did he change anything? Anything I could see and would effect me in my day-to-day life. No, not really. In fact, in most ways life has gotten worse since the pandemic. That may not be Biden’s fault, but he was the president, fault or not. It was his responsibility. Again, nothing changed. Then Harris ran on a slogan of “Not going back”… There is no promise for a future there. Not going back is just not MAGA. I voted for Harris, I hoped as her campaign got off the ground she would distinguish herself from the failure of imagination of the Biden admin. But she kept tacking rightward, she was showing up on stage with all these “centrist” republicans, she leaned into border policy, pro-business, pro-capital, pro-war stances. The same Democratic Party schlock that keeps killing any enthusiasm for a Democratic president since Obama.
The worse things is, we all know what the problems are, and for many of them we know the solutions. They aren’t easy, but there is nothing unique about the problems facing America.
“Unprecedented” Wealth Inequality has a precedence…see the gilded age and the new deal
Healthcare … Every civilized nation has a form of nationalized healthcare, except the US.
Political Polarization… the yellow journalism caused polarization in the 1880’s. Truth in journalism laws were passed, and not repealed until Reagan.
A stagnant ineffective congress. Repeal the filibuster. Beef up ethics investigations.
A compromised judiciary. Multiple presidents throughout history have decided to just ignore the supreme court, because the court has no means of enforcement, enforcement is invested in the executive branch (checks and balances and all that). Additionally, the SC right to review a law for constitutionality was created whole cloth by the Supreme Court, and does not itself exist in the constitution. Finally, expanding the SC can be done by Presidential Order. I mean the SC can decide that it is unconstitutional…but then what…the president seats the justices anyway. Done.
Money in politics. The president is the head of the Law Enforcement branch. There are already laws on the books to shut down corruption, foreign interference, etc… American citizens commit multiple felonies a day without even realizing it (thanks to our byzantine legal system), this is doubly true of all these Corporations and Super-PACs funneling money to and from campaigns and foreign nationals. The laws are there, the will to enforce them is not.
Most/All of this has precedence in the US or other liberal democracy. I am not saying it is easy, but I am saying that it could have been done if the Democrats wanted it.
And addressing these things has popular support. Everyone knows what is wrong, and everyone can see no one is even trying to fix it.
But instead we get slogans that amount to, “nothing will essentially change, but the other guy is worse”, and then wonder why 40% of Americans don’t show up to the polls.
There are a lot of people who have stopped showing up for the Democrats, not because they like Republicans, but because the Democrats stopped showing up for them.
Nailed it
Harris did in fact tack to the right during her campaign to try to pick up more moderate Republicans,
WTF are you talking about? Because I didn’t notice an “tacking” at all.
nothing will essentially change,
She literally had an 82 page plan of economic changes. Were you expecting that the media was going to tell you about all the important stuff? The main stream media buries the important stuff so their billionaire owners can get gigantic GOP tax cuts. That means you have to work extra hard to understand reality. e.g. The 82 page plan of economic changes proposed by Harris. Just because you didn’t know about the plan doesn’t mean that there was nothing in it that would have benefited you in a huge way.
Sure okay, but I am literally looking at the plan now. I don’t see anything about unions, I don’t see any medicare for all or single payer healthcare, I don’t see anything about increasing minimum wage or indexing the minimum wage to inflation. I do see a lot of “helping more people get insurance”, which is exactly the non-solution I was talking about.
I literally see a platform that tinkers around the edges, without making any fundamental changes. But you are here to refute my claims…so tell me/us (everyone else in this thread): What policies in the 80 page policy book I am currently looking at would have been a kitchen table game changer for me? I am willing to be wrong. I agree that the MSM has a profit motive to not inform the public about good democratic policy. So, you came here to make a point. Make your point.
If you didn’t see the outreach that Harris was doing to centrist republicans, you weren’t watching.
<edit, because I am still reading my way through the 82 pages.> There is literally nothing in this plan (that I have seen so far) that is a direct reply to a single topic in the comment you are referring to. Like, most of the problems aren’t even acknowledged.
But most importantly, I watched all of Harris’ speeches. Remember, I voted for her. I was excited to vote for the first black women president. I have too many friends who are gay or transgendered to not vote Democrat. But if she had a solution to these issues (as you have said) and the MSM wasn’t telling me. SHE should have told me. I was there. I was listening.
And finally, while the initial lines of the post were about Harris not supporting M4A, which is empirically true and nothing in the document disputes that. The rest of the post was about the failures of the Democrats as a whole over the last 20 years and nothing in Harris’ policy book could reasonably refute that.
Well stated. I cant imagine how any of what you said is controversial at this point.
Please copy and paste here, Good Sir or Madam:
I’ve been telling everyone I know for years that Healthcare is Americas biggest problem. The country is designed to pick your body clean before you die. You can work your entire life here and everything can be taken from you if you get sick.
The country is designed to pick your body clean before you die
This is called extracting value and people pay a lot of money to learn how to do it.
they did channel callous neolibralism in the defense of wealthy, white institutions at the voting both. you just think one of the choices would not have been that.
If the murder of the United Healthcare CEO is horrible news…
At the very annual general meeting that would have occurred had this not happened, would there have been a word describing the horribleness of the news that United made billions more than last year off the backs of American policy holders, American doctors/nurses/physicians/pharmacists, American taxpayers? I highly doubt it.
Every dollar in profit is the standard extraction of value from people, which may be warranted at a fixed rate for the services provided. Every dollar in increased profit is a squeezing of their customers, hopefully for an enhanced service to them in return. In healthcare, it was found that an enhanced return in value to customers was no longer necessary, when making money in crushing people’s lives is more profitable, legal and encouraged by shareholders and management.
It is bad that vigilantism is being celebrated (though I’ll admit to being aboard the “laugh about this specific murder” train).
But I think the reason that this is being celebrated is that this is the only kind of justice this guy could have ever faced because his crime is legal
If CEOs get to celebrate making money by killing people we get to celebrate vigilantism.
At least with vigilantism fewer people die.
People should have re-optimized the economy a long time ago.
It’s a moment of catharsis, its that drop of blood against a psychopathic group of people using their power and control to decide whether we get to live or die and mostly choose to let us die.
At this point it feels like we’re in general are mostly out of options. Legislation hasn’t worked the ACA didn’t address the power health insurance companies have over us, voting with our wallet doesn’t work on an inelastic industry where every single person needs health care, the courts are bought out by these wealthy psychos.
Either we just live with the current and keep dying unnecessarily or we use the last box of civic engagement.
Dont beat yourself up about it. Look at the context the public still has the last time billionaire died it was a submersible.
The reaction to that and this are very similar except the challenge deep wasn’t involved to making healthcare unaffordable.
Not to mention Rick Scott also defrauded millions from medicare in Fl
Almost as if the media values billionaires way more than the average person does.
Well those are their buddies who sign their outrageous checks. Of course millionaires are protecting billionaires and other millionaires. Class interests come before all else.
I think that what is… idk, encouraging? about it is that we finally saw them flinch. After years of seeing justice go unserved and the villains thumb their nose at the law with full confidence that they’ll walk away unscathed, we got to see a slight chill, like they just learned that they may be mortal after all. Unfortunately, it’s also shown that the institutions can’t be trusted to do the right thing, and as long as they continue to be as feckless as they are, we’re going to see more of this. So, ultimately, inadvertently, the institutions are encouraging this vigilantism.*
I fully expect this to fade away soon as our “society” has the collective attention span of a dust mite, but we have to celebrate small victories wherever they come.
*or they could be encouraging it intentionally as a means to further break down our foundations </tinfoil>
One thing is that a company does work, gets a fair payment from that, and if you do a lot of work, you get a lot of payment
A whole other subject is when you squeeze every last dejt out of the people you say you work for
A completely different subject is when your company’s policies are so bad that you cause untold suffering and literally thousands of preventable deaths.
We shouldn’t need not want a vigilante shooter, these people (CEO’s of these kinds of companies) should all be in jail for life.
I’m a CTO at a small medical supplier company and I work hard to make sure we’re ethical. I can honestly claim were ethnical. We’re a bunch of people trying to make life easier for others, for doctors and patients. None of us are rich, but we are passionate and we honestly want to grow the company not by squeezing every cent out of our customers, we grow by just making sure we’re the best and fairest. It is very possible to be c level and to be ethical, but it has to be a choice.
if you do a lot of work, you get a lot of payment
Thats just not how the world works I’m afraid. At all.
It can it we make it
Private or public company?
Finally, a genuine and intelligent question. Thanks for that, so far I just got idiots responding
Private, of course.
When having a publicly traded company, it’s almost impossible to be ethical. Publicly traded companies should be outlawed. Investments here and there are fine, but the current system as-is is indeed fucked up
Yup, that’s where I was heading with that. Its weird how hard it is to be ethical and not get your ass sued for shareholder value issues in a public company.
The way it currently works makes it that publicly traded companies basically MYST be unethical to succeed. It’s really strange how any of this is legal at all
I’m a CTO at a small medical supplier company and I work hard to make sure we’re ethical.
Good for you, tell me, what is the average wage/compensation for your company? What is the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay?
Do you know those numbers off the top of your head? Does anyone but the CFO know? If you don’t know those numbers off the top of your head, you aren’t really trying your best to be ethical.
Oh fuck your attitude already.
Sorry but you have a rotten attitude. Nothing is enough, people trying suck anyway, and no true Scotsman!
Here: I have a relatively high salary, it’s give or take a little over twice the country’s average. My salary is about twice as high as the lowest salary at the company. The lowest salary at the company is slightly below he country’s average. I’m also the first to enter, the last to leave, and I work on the weekends as well to try and give my best to everyone. Not bragging, it is what it is. I also live in a < 500sqft apartment with my wife, and I’m totally happy with it, we don’t need more. I’m not rich, I’m upper middle class at best.
I don’t know the salaries of the other C levels, but I know how they live and what they drive and where they spend their vacations; Their salaries are comparable to mine. I got my salary because of the shit tonne I give tonhe company, same goes for the other C levels.
Your attitude of " everyone who has more than me is evil" is shit and is also part of the reason why things are as bad as they are. Goes for all people who think that any company automatically is evil because some companies are. There are LOADS of people who just work hard for what they have and who really try to make sure other have it good too.
You don’t get to judge me, so take your damned attitude and fuck off until you can behave normal
Actually, those are pretty good answers. Good on you. Have a nice night.
Thumb up
That descalated quickly! Props to you both!
Thanks!
I’m sorry but you’re not ethical. I’m sure you’re doing your best but you’re a small fish in a very unethical ocean. It’s not your fault, you’re just another cog in the machine.
Are you seeing what you’re writing there?
I’m unethical because I’m a cog in a machine?
So in other words, we’re all evil, you are evil, maybe we should all kill ourselves and get it over with because why even bother trying, rite?
Fuck your attitude
I’m getting REALLY tired of reading “fuck your attitude” multiple times in your comments, chief. You need to correct that language or you need to leave-- or more preferably get tossed out on your arse.
How about you adjust your attitude instead? Because it’s horrible.
I prefer bad language over bad actions. I may talk like a sailor but at least i do the right thing. Maybe you should try that too
And the dead who they killed by denying people what they paid for…there are dead victims here from this shit company and shit leaders.
Considering how many people a year die at the hands of insurance companies delaying and denying life-saving treatments to make a quick buck, the glee over this insurance CEO’s death is a fairly rational response - a reminder to the 0.1% that they’re not quite as immune to consequences as they think they are.
Structural violence is s great term that should get more use in cases like this.
I hope we’ll get some data on how much more money and effort is spend on this compared to cases where the target is just some regular nobody.
This case is a great reminder of who the police really work for. If/when the shit hits the fan, you know whose side they’ll be on.
In before it gets rebranded Critical Structure Therory.
expect more of them to move to gated communities, entrenched beyond even higher walls, protected by people with even bigger guns.
Protecting oneself from gunmen by surrounding oneself with gunmen with bigger guns sounds great until you think about it a bit more.
Thats when paranoia hits.
With a big enough crowd, no matter the size of the gun, the crowd wins.
Thats when paranoia hits.
Let them feel uncomfortable for the rest of their existence.
People seem to be forgetting the existence of robots (such as Spot and Atlas from Boston Dynamics) that can be adapted with guns and programmed to serve the rich in a way that (supposedly) won’t turn against them… (Until someone gets to hack those metallic dogs)
These robots (particularly Spot) are already being used for security and guarding purposes. It’s a matter of not if, but when, they get transformed into dystopian real-life Cyberdyne machines.
Paranoia should hit even harder if you decide to surround yourself with smart killer robots.
“If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable”
— Mikko HyppönenThat cuts both ways. It’s only a matter of time until we see Ukrainian style flying drone bombs on the other side.
Tiny drones with a small explosive charge, send a dozen to land on their head and shoulder area and explode. Good luck defending against that.
Aerostats. Once again, Neal Stephenson already called it.
That’s why you end up with an army that is too powerful for anyone civilian to resist.
Protecting oneself from gunmen by surrounding oneself with gunmen with bigger guns sounds great until you think about it a bit more.
Doesnt sound too great if you’re dead. Guns make ridiculously terrible defensive weapons. Gun nuts dont seem to understand this. Whoever gets bullet into meat first wins, and surrounding yourself with guns just guarantees vengeance after you’re dead meat, not safety. The size of your clip doesnt matter either. Its argued over as a distraction-- and was chosen as a legal battleground because its a pointless concern.
My eyes started rolling the second the writer said “the horrifying news.”
It’s really bringing the corporate shills out of the woodwork.
This incident is casting fresh light on norms that has basically become invisible to us in our lives - like the media’s natural tendency to side with the establishment.
like the media’s natural tendency to side with the establishment.
The right wing media openly shills for the rich.
The mainstream media works for the rich also but is just more subtle about it. The main thing they do is bury or cover up important stories that are most likely to affect average people. That’s why it never told you Harris had an 82 page plan of economic changes.
What the media treats as important is almost never what is actually important.
If you push past that, they do essentially conclude that this is an inevitable consequence of our current situation. It’s a better take than I expected.
I’m more horrified that it took this long for the backlash, but I’ve been expecting it for years.
Mostly glee though
What a painfully milquetoast article. The writing on the wall was there for a long time, and thinkpieces like this are nothing more than a shrug and “it do be like that”.
Again, people on Lemmy are frustrated that something “we all know already” was written down.
Can’t the world just hop on here and read our lemmy commentary instead?
