While I am too old to advocate for violence, this line hit me pretty hard:
"Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."I’m of the opinion both violent and nonviolent means are probably necessary and there’s plenty of nonviolent means of engagement. no war has been fought without support from somewhere, whether that’s a national war machine or the supporting element of an insurgency. there’s always logistics, resources, and well organization that has to occur.
I’m in no condition to fight myself, but over the coming decades I’m gonna have to be thinking about how much violence I’m comfortable being around and how much we can support people in the thick of it. violence is definitely present already in day to day life, but it’s more of an orphan-crushing-machine kind of violence that feels more normal.
This is a silly ad hominem argument though, an indication that what he’s arguing against is too valid to refute on its own merits.
Violence solves things. But by the powerless? No, historically speaking that just leads to military action, often followed by mass executions. Fighting fascism with violence is like fighting fire with gasoline. They feed off that shit. Maybe you can argue it worked in Haiti, albeit with a lot of help from yellow fever. But have you been to Haiti?
He’s right that peaceful protests never solve anything. But organizing and acting as a bloc solves a lot. General strikes, civil disobedience, boycotts, even voting as a group has a strong track record of changing things.
Fighting fascism with violence is like fighting fire with gasoline.
Remind me again how Hitler’s Germany remained Fascist and in control of all of continental Europe over the last 75 years…
I want to believe that peaceful organization like civil disobedience leads to change, but I can’t recall seeing that work in recent history…
How recent is recent? Tunisia, Egypt (well until the population turned out to be too dumb for democracy anyway) are examples.
It hasn’t worked in the US because it’s been too half-assed and the existence of democratic options lowers incentives. Contrast the successful civil disobedience during the civil rights era, where the right to participate in elections was one of the things being denied. But with the increasing signs that democracy is being controlled by a few billionaires, it may see a comeback.
well until the population turned out to be too dumb for democracy anyway
Liberals when
and the existence of democratic options lowers incentives.
Those don’t exist anymore. Not in any real capacity, at least. More like utterly useless window dressing and decorative veneer, much like how North Korea is “democratic” simply because they put that word into the country’s name.
Corporations own nearly all the politicians short of ones like Bernie Sanders and OAC. Corporations write the laws and tell the politicians what to vote for. Corporations own and control EVERYTHING, and you have weapons-grade child-like naïvité if you think the working class has any real political power left in America.
The online fundraiser for him has already raised about 19K. Seems to have just started today.
Remember when in the french revolution everyone just asked the nobles pretty please?
Ted was spot on and I believe most of his predication became true.
The one time I resorted to violence, it 100% solved my problem. I slapped my bully in class so hard people’s ears rang. We ended up becoming friends later on lol.
I had a guy trying to bully me a long time ago, i got fed up with him pretty quickly.
I turned around, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against the wall after which i punched him.
Never bothered me again, his and my own parents both agreed: “he had it coming”.
Now that i’m more mature, i actually feel bad for him because even his own parents didn’t try to defend him. Seeing how he behaved, this was definitely part of the cause.
He needed his parents to be there for him, but they just gave up on him from the start.
Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
classic defeat means friendship trope
Right… But in all fairness a dude wound that tight probably would have had terrible time on acid too though
Wow. This seems highly suspect to me. I seriously doubt Luigi wrote this. It’s too perfect. Right? It spells out motive. Desire and intent.
It reads like it’s his manifesto.
It also reads like it could have been written after the murder.
This seems fake
The second they found him with a 2 page manifesto, the clothes, and the gun days after the shooting; I knew there were going to be Epstein level theories. That is just super convenient, and maybe the cops got really lucky. Or maybe they found the first guy that looked like him and didn’t have an alibi.
It’s consistent with his actions.
he’s just quoting stuff from a take he found online (its all written in the posted image)
So you’re saying it’s fake just because it matches what the guy did? That’s some mental gymnastics right there. I don’t know if it’s real or not, but I’m not just making shit up to support my imaginary conclusion
He’s right tho.
Dang, sounds like Luigi might have had a few oil CEOs in him as well ❤️🩹
There’s a world out there in the multiverse where he still does.
Except the problem is that humans are cognitively advanced than other animals. We should be able to find some way to reason out our differences, otherwise we’re always going to be stuck in a dark cave of our own making. What’s the fucking point of humanity then?
The problem is that there aren’t effective ways to curtail sociopathic behaviors which come to the surface because of our current economic tool of choice. Tbh, it will not matter what economic tool we use because the greed problem and self-preservation problem will remain. It always does!
We should be working towards developing safeguards and mechanisms to protect humanitarian ideals, and to curtail sociopathic behaviors. I think a big part of this is that people should elect better leaders. If you’re forced to choose “lesser of two evils”, then there should be a mechanism to organize an effective write-in choice.
If someone then comes to kill you for making democratic choices, as happens in autocratic regimes, then self-defense is valid and justified.
Ok but the CEOs are the sociopaths right? Because it appears to me that Luigi was applying irl solutions to the trolley problem
I stopped at “what’s the fucking point of humanity then?”
… Are you under the impression that there’s a point to living? Some grand plan or purpose that drives people?
The only reason I’m not in the ground already is because when I thought about it, my death would cause suffering to people I cared about, so I’d rather take on that suffering myself than put it on them. If everyone I cared about died, I’d petition for medical euthanasia, if that was denied, I’d go find the nearest bride and swan dive into pavement.
The only reason we exist is to have babies so they can exist and have babies. Human life, indeed all life, lives to procreate, and make more of itself. That’s it.
I’ve always questioned why we’re worthy of survival, but all the species we’ve killed off due to climate change, or hunting them to extinction, or destroying their habitat where they die off because they can’t survive in a different habitat, are not worthy of survival.
I’m not convinced that humans should continue to perpetuate themselves long term. Bluntly, I can’t point to anything genuinely good that we’ve done for any creature other than ourselves. We address environmental issues sure, but we caused them. The only thing we go out of our way to do, at all, and with significant disagreement and debate, is fix shit we fucked up. That’s it. Everything else has been a selfish pursuit of greed by humans.
What’s been happening, has not changed my mind on any of this.
I’m not crazy, and I’m not going to try to exterminate anyone because I don’t think humans should continue to exist. I’m still here to bring as much happiness and joy to the people I care about, and I don’t have the mental capacity to feel anything but contempt for everyone screwing everything up. I can’t spare the effort to hate anyone. It’s exhausting.
At this point, I just want everyone to leave me alone so I can live my tiny comfortable life with the people I actually care about, grow old and die… Hopefully in that order.
Sorry you had to write all that just to get downvoted. But what I meant to convey was that by some cosmic accident a cognitively advanced animal appeared, one that can seek to understand fundamental truths about the universe and its reality.
I just hold that cosmic accident in high regard, and think we have a duty as stewards of things we can understand using skills, talents and properties innate to us as a species. This is part of the reason that I think every human life wasted and not supported to its full potential is a failure of society.
Oh, I agree with much of what you say. I’m just not convinced that we as a society are valuable in any way that justifies our continued propagation.
Most of what I wrote was to qualify what I’m saying so that it’s understood. I expect downvotes because I’m basically calling humans as a species, not worthy of existing. Some people who are very ego driven proud homo erectus, can definitely take offense to my statements; so down votes are generally expected.
I suppose that some downvotes would also come from those that believe that humans were created by God, under that pretense, I would be insulting their God by saying we’re not worthy of existing. So yeah.
Between those two, I’m unmoved by the fact that some decided to down vote.
Well ours is the only species which can probe and understand why there is something instead of nothing. There may not be any intrinsic value in anything, but the act of discovery is meaningful.
Oh there’s still plenty of ways short of violence against people to solve this. This guy 100% echo chambered himself into thinking there was no other way. The spectrum does not jump straight to killing people after peaceful protests are ignored.
Sociopathic behaviours are always going to be a huge problem in large societies. They’re not even exclusive to humans anyway. Just look at all the parasites in nature.
All of our cognitive and social abilities break down when you get into large groups. We’re evolved to be able to work with extended family units where we have a reasonable ability to build personal relationships and trust networks among all of the people we interact with.
In large societies everyone becomes anonymous and we’re stuck with societal laws and norms which are constantly under attack. Our usual mechanisms for punishing betrayal through reputation damage and ostracism fall apart in an anonymous society. In more recent history we relied on societal institutions (democratic and judicial as well as private societies) and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV news) to cover some of this role but it was imperfect and only applied to the most infamous offenders.
Now we’ve lost even that limited media function due to the post truth revolution (thanks to the internet) and its acceleration of the breakdown of trust in societal institutions and the decline of the media.
All of our cognitive and social abilities break down when you get into large groups. We’re evolved to be able to work with extended family units where we have a reasonable ability to build personal relationships and trust networks among all of the people we interact with.
Our usual mechanisms for punishing betrayal through reputation damage and ostracism fall apart in an anonymous society. In more recent history we relied on societal institutions (democratic and judicial as well as private societies) and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV news) to cover some of this role but it was imperfect and only applied to the most infamous offenders.
Cool and agreed, but the original point holds up that greed and self-preservation always ruin things for groups of people trying to do anything together. Everything you mentioned is a symptom of corporate interests subverting democracies. Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with corporations having an interest in their success, but govts. need to be able to curtail their worst tendencies because it makes sense to prioritize long-term benefits over short-term gains.
If people really give a fuck about monied interests and their control over democracies, then they should be pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy (like 250K or more per year) like it’s an existential crises. Because it is. Tbf, 250K is pretty normal in a HCOL, so higher taxes should take that into account.
I view governments with the same suspicion that most people around here view corporations. Look at history. The worst atrocities were committed by highly motivated and ideological governments.
When it comes down to it, it’s all just different ways of organizing groups of people and they’re all vulnerable to some of the same problems to do with anonymity, accountability (or lack thereof), and control.
It hasn’t been established that intelligence is a requisite for survival.
If we think of intelligence as goal-directed and adaptive behavior, then natural selection will select for competitive traits, and so whatever ended up losing was less intelligent in some sense, even if it’s a single-cell organism.
Actually, there’s a lot of evidence that points to intelligence being a sexually selected trait rather than naturally selected, so in that sense it may actually negatively correlate with survival. In other words, your big brain is the human equivalent of peacock features; it will get you laid but doesn’t do much good when a tiger comes around.
Think of it this way: to sit around doing math problems all day, you have to have the basic necessities for survival dealt with, which shows you’re a good mate within the current environment. Which is all well and good until times change, the going gets tough, and you need to kill something to put food on the table.
it will get you laid but doesn’t do much good when a tiger comes around.
This is categorically false, sorry
There’s a pretty reasonable societal model (that scales beyond 10 people living in a cave) that has so far prevented sociopatic behavior.
We have laws and we have democracy to establish them. Whatever happens in your dumbfukistant, in western Europe it’s unimaginable to be able to use violence and physical power to claim territory or food. Even a drunken fight in a bar will get you in a lot of legal trouble. E.g. being a stronger ape gets you exactly nowhere in life if you use want your power to dominate. You could use it to create, and you’d be rewarded.
Very similarly the economic system could be trivially adjusted to conform the societal values and violations would be prosecuted. All this requires is a democratic choice.
The societies so far democratically have no chosen to abolish capitalism. Although a lot of western-european democracies have severely limited the potential for abuse from this system.
We don’t need to develop mechanisms, we don’t need violent protests, we don’t need vigilantes. We simply need for people to choose differently. And if they don’t, it’s their choice.
Ah, yes, you in your default country definitely need a better democratic system, although Trump did win the popular vote, so I wouldn’t hope for that much change tbh.
We have laws and we have democracy to establish them. Whatever happens in your dumbfukistant, in western Europe it’s unimaginable to be able to use violence and physical power to claim territory or food.
Haha, read any historical account of western civilization. The west has always been great about backstabbing its non-west allies, or even each other.
People are people, don’t fall for some us vs. them bullshit, you’re just being a tool for someone else. It’s also pretty funny to me that half the countries some Americans look down on have had more women presidents or prime ministers, lol.
And you can’t seriously say democracy is working as intended when we don’t have campaign finance reforms, and have citizens united in the U.S.? You’re literally living in a world where a billionaire bought a country’s presidential election outcome! What a joke.
How well is “western” Europe doing at curbing the global corporations ability to turn the earth into wasteland?
The majority of people in an average western European country want to drive their car and fly to their vacation destination. They also might heat their homes with gas.
Destruction of climate is not anti-democratic. There are green parties in every parliament and they get 15-30% of votes. E.g. only that many voters consider the issue of climate change to be pressing. The others believe things are fine, or that moderate measures are enough.
You keep preaching “evil corpos oppress us poor”. But this is simply not true. The majority of the population is pretty content with the status quo, and if they weren’t they could change it any election cycle.
You are making my point for me. They couldn’t do anything about the current system of they wanted to within the system. Consent has been manufactured, packaged, shipped, and bought.
They perfectly can. It requires them to make a collective choices that will require individual sacrifices in order to achieve collective gains (assuming people actually see it that way).
And that’s clearly not in anyone’s interest. And you’re one to tell them what’s wrong or right.
There’s no system. There are free individuals living their lifes as they see fit. But you somehow keep imagining an evil monster that suppresses everyone’s free will, while you, the hero, are unaffected.
If you actually believe there is no systemic oppression, and personal choice can change the world, I have no idea what to say except
Sociopathic behaviour is not prevented, it is rewarded. Stepping on other people to claim more wealth is encouraged. A decent person has no money, in general, and most people are decent. Nobody chose this. Nobody voted for this, and there’s no vote which will put an end to it. We are, like it or not, in a situation where we cannot change the system to benefit us (us=the working/middle classes) by peaceful means. The ruling classes are extending their monopoly with every move, and will never willingly give power back. I’m terrified by the prospect, but looking at similar situations in history, I think violence is inevitable.
What are you on about? You can easily vote for far left in pretty much any of the functioning democracies in Europe. And if a radical left party were to win, they could easily implement a profit cap.
You’re talking about some “ruling class” as if we’re in a society where such bounds exist by birth right of some sort. Anyone can become a politician and be elected to be the main voice of the country’s legislative and executive branches. You don’t need violence to radically change everything, you need a majority’s approval. And, I’m telling you, your ideas are already out there and they’re not selling. They’re not selling even peacefully, but you somehow dream that someone will die for them?
Here’s my experience as a citizen of the United Kingdom.
A vote for a party which will benefit the majority of people (which you are calling the “far/radical left”) is ignored because of our first past the post political system and because of the mass media, which is rabidly pro-establishment. A lower rate of further education exacerbates this effect. They form an impenetrable system which disallows anything but the tiniest of incremental changes, while the climate and the wealth gap worsen exponentially and relentlessly.There is a ruling class, and it does largely depend on birthright. None of these billionaires are self made, look closely enough and you will find seed money in their mercurial rise, usually from a family member. You have your eyes shut if you think we’re not ruled by the wealthy. It’s a fact. If you want to argue this point with me you can, but you will lose.
In my country, it’s difficult to become a politician, you usually have to get a specific degree from one of three specific universities, which are much easier to get into if you are -you guessed it- rich.
Which ideas of mine are you talking about exactly? Without some specifics on what you think they are, your last two sentences just don’t land.
A vote for a party which will benefit the majority
We can stop the discussion right here. You clearly know better than the voters themselves what’s best for them. In my opinion, it would be the most efficient solution for us to nominate you to be a dictator for life, as you will achieve a better outcome for everyone than them thinking for themselves.
The rest of your argument continues with insults towards the voters disagreeing with your political views “uneducated, influenced by media, etc”. You, obviously, do see yourself as a superior being and thinker.
I don’t think debating democratic choices with you makes any sense. You’re anti-democratic.
You are caricaturing my arguments. It’s interesting, because you must understand them to a sufficient level to do this whilst not understanding then to a sufficient level to actually consider them. That’s quite a mental effort. Either that or you are for some reason understanding them properly, yet choosing to misrepresent them for some reason.
I don’t disagree with a lot of what the Unabomber wrote. I don’t disagree with this person’s hatred of the healthcare system.
But you cannot assassinate your way out of capitalism.
It just does not work that way. You cannot assassinate corporations into putting people over profits when they are legally required to do the opposite and you cannot assassinate your way into a law being changed.
The current system was forged with violence. What so you think is gonna beat it? Thoughts and prayers?
Whether or not it can be resolved with violence, it will not be resolved with targeted assassinations by a handful of people.
There is no example where a capitalist system was toppled with targeted assassinations. There are lots of examples where the security state got a whole hell of a lot more oppressive after them though.
I’m sure that totally won’t happen this time in the U.S. for sure.
That’s such bullshit, security escalation happens either way, they don’t need any excuse, just see the track record. Also, it’s not like anyone is saying this killing solved capitalism, they just know its impact has shaken the ideological foundation a lot more than finger-wagging at people on the internet
People are absolutely saying that this will change everything.
I never implied that, but it’s definetely something that didn’t seem possible in many mines before
The Internet has not changed the ideological foundation in the slightest. It has sparked some calls for reform, but the capitalistic ideology hasn’t been changed at all through this murder.
I said shaken, change takes longer, but things like this are part of it
It doesn’t hurt to remind the ruling class once in a while whose boss.
But yeah. A revolution will take a lot more than a targeted assination of a couple CEOs.
Does it help? Because I’m guessing what will happen here is CEOs will just get big security details and less-discerning copycats will end up killing innocent people.
And rates will continue to rise and not one less person will be denied.
In the short term yes you’re right.
But look at the populist anger this action sparked. These kind of extrajudicial killings that rile up the population, are very much associated with revolutions and changes in power. (Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad).
Dude, America just elected a plutocrat dictator. There’s not going to be socialized medicine any time in the near future and insurance companies will pass the cost of their security teams on to the people forced to pay for their needless existences.
That plutocrat was elected through a manipulation of populist rage.
Check out the policy proposal forums RFK and Trump set up for their supporters. Expanding Medicare has more upvotes than downvotes
Paul Krugmann wrote an interesting piece touching on this yesterday (Gift Article) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/opinion/elites-euro-social-media.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gU4.cSdP.OL0VogKNmVT3&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
What difference does that make now? Why do you think they actually care what their supporters want?
I don’t. But it means that these people may not be so far from the same ideal as us. Which matters in convincing people for a revolution, and elections later on (if they still will be free and fair after Trump).
In fact, polling showed, a substantial number of people in 2016 and 2020 went from Bernie voting in primaries to voting Trump. The people want someone who isn’t scared to criticise neoliberal elitism.
Expanding Medicare has more upvotes than downvotes
You really think this represents US society at large? I think you’ll need a better source than that.
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No security is foolproof, and a security detail has precious little ability to withstand a raging mob. Importantly, there are only so many former spec ops for hire. Most of these psychopaths will have to settle for 3rd rate rentacops.
Anda security detail has previous little ability to withstand a raging mob.
Which, again, is not targeted assassination.
The same method probably won’t work again.
Not with that attitude you won’t…
Not with any attitude regarding assassinating your way out of capitalism.
It simply will not work.
And if you think healthcare in America is going to get cheaper or fairer because of this, you know nothing about America.
Is there a historical precedent you can point to that proves your statement here?
Are you serious? How about World War I?
How about it? Literally nothing to do with ending capitalism. The assasination of Franz Ferdinand was done in the name of Serbian nationalism. How does it apply here? You are grasping at straws, try again.
Gavrilio Princip was an anarchist. Despite what libertarians might have you believe, they are not and never have been fans of capitalism. So no, I’m not.
I agree with you.
Imo, we need something besides assasinations/sabotages. We have to educate ourselves and others into trusting each other, working with each other, having empathy and understanding solidarity.
But I don’t see a way out of capitalism without violence, sadly.Violence? Maybe. Targeted assassinations? No way. This will just make insurance premiums go up because the companies will all hire huge security details and pass those costs on to the people forced to pay for insurance.
As much as people are disagreeing, you’re right. The systemic pressure is too great to fix it using fear of assassination alone. We need to change the rules if we want to change the game.
Tell that to the French
That was a massive popular revolution, not targeted assassination. So why would I tell that to the French?
People also always leave out the fact that it took only 15 years to go from that popular uprising to an emperor being crowned who had just as much power as the king who was executed.
In that vein, revolutions have as much of a chance to end poorly as to end well. Look at what is happening in Syria right now. There are a lot of players. The ideal arrangement would be peaceful power sharing inside of a democratic framework, but there is every chance that Assad will be replaced with another violent authoritarian regime.
Yeah French revolution didn’t have any lasting impact on global society
Should just kept the king and worked within the system lll
I didn’t say any of those things or even imply them. Why are you putting a bunch of nonsense in my mouth?
You were down playing its impact and making these implications by omission.
If you disagree with my assessment you are free to clarify your position on the French revolution and its impact on the class relations;)
I disagree with you putting words in my mouth. If you don’t understand what I meant, ask me. Don’t lie.
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You can’t ‘thoughts and prayers’ your way out of capitalism either.
And you will find that out when your rates go up because all of the insurance companies will hire massive security teams to protect their executives and pass that on to you.
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But you can kill innocent people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Bombings
Because I don’t know what a computer store owner or a secretary or a graduate student did to deserve having a bomb go off in their hands.
And people here seem increasingly willing to let innocent people get hurt or killed in this new war against CEOs. I find it really, really disturbing.
Me too tbh. I really don’t wish to abandon lemmy as I left reddit, since I prefer a federated system to it but all these posts are making me think. I just have this ethical principle where murder in most cases is bad and don’t like seeing violence being advocated.
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Car accident kills innocent people all the time and nobody’s blaming car drivers for it.
What the fuck are you even talking about? What exactly do you think anti-drunk driving laws are about, targeting Chevrolet for their negligence?
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I see you haven’t visited a fuckcars corner of the Internet.
I am sure bootlicking will drive change
Who’s boots am I licking? Please quote me doing so.
You shill regime propaganda while pretending to on working class
It is uncouth
Please quote me.
Or are you lying?
What does that sentence even mean?
Mental therapy is the way. Our government is an expression of our massed anxiety and disconnectedness. Cure the insanity and society will follow.
The ubiquitous insanity that got Trump elected, and winning him the popular vote as well?
And you think assassinating CEOs will somehow cure that because it is somehow “therapy?”
I didn’t say that.
Then what was your point in relation to what I was saying about targeted assassinations not fixing capitalism?
now im wondering if this guy was MKULTRA’d
If he was then so were a bunch of people. I hear this take 5 times a day on Lemmy, 10 times a day since the CEO tragically stood in front of those bullets.
hmm interesting review.
I honestly don’t know if Americans have what it takes to change the path we’re headed down. I haven’t really got much faith left in our society. We’re pretty pathetic.
Hope I’m wrong.
With all the uneducated, divisive disinformation, and faith-based worldviews out there it’s hard to even get people to agree that a problem exists, and therefore even harder to convince the electorate how to appropriately address it. Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism for some stupid reason.
Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism
for some stupid reason.…because a group of politicians who need campaign funding to stay elected tell them “government bad” at every opportunity.
There is one party to blame here. Republicans. They made up the death panels bullshit. They made it so Lieberman could filibuster for the big insurance companies and keep them rich. They made it a goal to “own the libs.”
Democrats deserve criticism for their Neo Liberal bullshit too, but this wouldn’t have been pushed this far without the Republican propaganda and lies.
I think at this point it’s clear that there are problems to most people. The difficulty is more about agreeing on a) what the problems are and b) why they are problems, and c) how to fix them.
With the added difficulty that a decent portion of people have taken the “it’s hard to prove anything definitively” stance and for some reason decided that means they should believe alternative sources rather than the more logical “be skeptical of everything but also be rational about it”. If someone is able to get disinformation into official sources, they’ll have an even easier time getting it into alternative sources.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
Yeah there’s 350 million of us but only one of these incidents in the decade+ since Occupy Wall Street?
We don’t have the guts.
Remember who the big spokesperson for Occupy Wall Street was? Tim Pool remembers.
Are you shooting down CEOs? No? Then you’re part of the problem with being pathetically weak.
Friendly reminder that killing CEOs isn’t the only answer. Sometimes it’s throwing tea in a harbor. Or tarring and feathering a tax collector.
Just do your part.
All those things are from a past where democracy wasn’t a thing and indeed you needed to uprise to an oppressive power.
This is still the case for the majority of the planet.
It is not the case in the developed nations. And even in the US Trump has won the popular vote.
You feathering a tax collector is an act against the will of the majority. This is not a revolutionary act, because you’re not acting brave and sacrificing yourself to voice a majority’s opinion.
Contrary, your actions are radical activism. You represent a minority, and yet you so firmly believe in your own righteousness that you justify violence.
Those lead to violence though
All we can do it keep moving forward and try to take care of each other as we go.
By donating to each others GoFundMes for hospital bills.
We’re pretty pathetic.
I’m not some flag saluting, Lee Greenwood asshole, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence. Americans may not all have the best education. They may be apathetic at the polls due to distrust in the system. However, Americans are NOT pathetic. The media may have you convinced that we are divided on the left and the right, but we are divided up and down. You start to take away things and I’m sure you will find out how strong they can be. Americans have fought and will fight tooth and nail for what they believe in.
Americans are NOT pathetic
Buddy, we just RE-ELECTED a convicted felon and rapist who instigated an insurrection and illegally attempted to overturn an election AFTER we already fired him for massively failing, including in regards to the biggest crisis America has experienced since WW2. A guy that has openly stated he is anti-union and worker rights. We can’t even get on the same page about healthcare, despite having examples from other first world countries across the globe showing what we could do to better our situation. We targeted black people (still are), then gay people (still are), and now we’ve moved on to targeting trans people. Wealth disparity is increasing by the year. Billionaires OWN our politics top to bottom.
We’re categorically fucking pathetic.
I don’t think this speaks to how pathetic Americans are, but instead to how much the rich have us under their thumb.
We need to start working against atomization if we want things to get better, and I think this is/was a really good way to bring people together. Talk to the uninformed people in your life, be the healthy opposition to their beliefs that many people dont have. Make them understand who their real enemies are.
It is in the upper classes best interest that we close ourselves off, entering echochambers as we talk about how evil it is for someone to disagree with our own beliefs.
US politics are a ship. They don’t turn on a dime. We are headed in a better direction in the grand scheme. Short downturns happen. When Bush was president everyone thought the government was going to become a Christofacist regime. The end of times are not near. If you truly believe there is no hope, then why aren’t you taking to the streets with violence? I think THAT’S pathetic. You think the end is coming and you just sit and bitch online and do nothing.
You watched the news even once in the last ten years? What the fuck do you think the BLM and Antifa movements were about, planting daisies?
So we are in agreement, right? America isn’t full of pathetic do-nothings.
You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence.
Quote is crazy hard but I disagree with you so much lol
You can’t act like the Civil War didn’t happen. We put men on the moon. We developed the Atomic bomb. We have 11 aircraft carriers. Whether it fits your argument or not Americans have grit and we will take back our power.
You’re doing the country equivalent “I’m not pathetic, look at how big my muscles are”. Doesn’t matter if you have shitty public education, shitty public transportation, shitty worker rights, shitty health care and a shitty political system that makes change impossible, you can beat the shit out of anyone calling you pathetic.
Such a simplistic view I can absolutely believe you’re American.
“I don’t like the things republicans do, so all of America are shitty wimps.”
-You.
Assuming all of those things are inflicted by republicans, how can they get away with it? You’re supposed to have grit and take back power, but somehow you’re letting republicans run wild? How doesn’t this rub of on all Americans?
I find it interesting that nothing you listed is contemporary. Even the aircraft carriers. We’ve have a lot of aircraft carriers for a long time.
You’re reaching pretty far back to find anything of significance Americans have done that’s positive. And some of what you listed is decidedly not positive.
Maybe you’re thinking about what Americans USED to be.
And you are just as easily invalidating things they’ve done because it fits your narrative.
No, fucker, WE didn’t do any of that. WE are shitposting on Lemmy. I know for a fact you didn’t build any aircraft carriers yourself. So can “WE” stop talking credit for things less pathetic Americans have done?
Ugh…Yeah…we did. My fucking neighbor welds submarines. I work in manufacturing assisting in building cars, tanks, radar systems, military vehicles. You name it. You might be some tech nerd like most people on Lemmy, but most of us out here in the real world are doing hard shit.
A.) I don’t believe you. B.) I don’t care.
Pretty bold of you to claim us nerds don’t do hard shit. I’m only going to speak to my experience, but I’m only one small slice of the nerd demographic. My background is in network design, security, availability, and global network design. I started out life in a car parts factory, graduated to being on the line crew here, before going inside to work on computers.
How much of your logistics would crumble without us? Exchange of knowledge around the globe? Sales and interfacing with other corporations and customers? Security to keep personal information somewhat protected?
I’ve contracted with several fortune 100 companies in all sorts of different industries all over the world, from manufacturing to attorneys.
You sound a lot like my family. Only hard labour is virtuous, if you aren’t sweating you aren’t working. Do you look down on people who do what you consider menial labour? I doubt you’ll admit it, but I’m pretty confident you do.
Civilization doesn’t work if we think like you. Every single person in my life, from the guys picking up my trash to the surgeon that saved my life are important and necessary to making modern life what it is.
Trying to be divisive between blue and white collar in the working glass is definitely a suspicious fucking take in this climate.
So you agree then? America is not a bunch of pathetic people who are going to bend over to fascism?
There are a lot of points in history I’d bring up to show the grit of Americans before those specific ones. The Civil War was fought to keep the wealth-generating plantations under the federal tax jurisdiction, the moon landing was a cool thing that happened 50 years ago and produced no real tangible benefits at a point of time where those resources could’ve been put to much better use, the A-bomb was a war crime and our aircraft carriers are used to support illegal wars to kill brown people protect the interests of oil companies.
You are saying that these things are bad things. I’m not saying they aren’t. I’m saying Americans achieve things. Americans are fucking tough. Also, I will argue that you couldn’t pop a pimple of truth on this statement: “he moon landing was a cool thing that happened 50 years ago and produced no real tangible benefits”.
Oh, by golly, are you wrong.
These lists are completely disingenuous. Just because something was the first use case doesn’t mean it was the only use case for a thing.
For example. Freeze dried food. It’s completely impossible to say we would not have freeze dried food without the space program.
The atomic bombs and iarcraft carriers are for “Americans (people)”
You are wrong.
You just have to realize it.
That looks like something that could have been written on here or reddit a week ago and would have been met with at least modest approval in regards to the oligarchy.
Yeah, still really dumb though.
Keep bootlicking lol
Dude, read the bhagavad gita. It’s all about inner peace during violence. A soldier not wanting to fight his kin on a battlefield. When you recognize that sometimes the cost of peace is enslavement you can take extreme action without any attachment to the outcome and remain in peace in your heart. I used to abhorrent violence still do, but I will act without attaching and face rip any monkey that is hoarding and hurting my fellows. MFRA… monkey face rip association… even Buddha has stories stating no karma is incurred for some situations of violence. You might be stuck in good vs evil dichtomous thinking. There is no good and evil in nature just nature. We make the definitions and than we suffer them. Cast off your definitions and cultured personality and see the real that exist in many many sahdes.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about where I’m coming from here, so let me clarify a bit why I think it’s dumb: the OP essay inherits the flaws of the Unabomber Manifesto it is signal boosting. It’s hand waving rhetoric and rationalization, right wing extremist flavored. Its only argument that violence will be useful is to bake in an assumption that of course it will, criticize other, independent options, frame the debate as a moral one about whether saving the world justifies violence, and make that argument with name calling.
I recognize that many people respect this type of argument, but they are wrong, it’s bad and stupid.
What’s the alternative? The health insurers are actively killing people by denying claims. I’m curious.
An absence of a clear alternative isn’t a substitute for an argument that slaughtering corporate leaders will help the problem. There are practical differences between the circumstance of a wild animal literally fighting for its survival, and a member of a population being abstractly squeezed to death by systemic problems, in that killing is a clear immediate solution in the former but extremely questionable in the latter. Not bothering to acknowledge this makes it a bad argument. Also, all the other reasons I mentioned why it’s a bad argument. Kind of reads like edgy highschooler cringe bait too, though that’s subjective.
Maybe a better argument could be made, idk. But this one is dumb.
I hear what you’re saying. My issue with your position is that Thompson is not a mere bystander or segment of the ‘machine’ that is killing - or in your words “squeezing” - other humans. Thompson, by his own admission, was actively pursuing mechanisms by which denial of care and ultimately death are effected. Why does he get a pass, I’m curious?
My criticism is of the writing in the OP, and of Kaczynski’s writing, which while contextually relevant, isn’t actually about Thompson or even specifically health insurance.
To answer your question though, I don’t think he gets a pass, ethically. But I also don’t think justice trumps striving for better outcomes in society, and in fact it’s the other way around. This isn’t exactly being contested; the rhetorical focus is on means and results.
