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Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:01:20 GMT

How The Assassination Of CEO Brian Thompson Epitomizes Everything Wrong In Society (a thread)

Like many, I was shocked to hear of the assassination of UnitedHealthCare’s CEO Brian Thompson. But, perhaps like not-so-many others, I was more shocked to hear the cheers of online anti-establishment folks rejoicing in this father-of-two’s murder.

It seems the alleged assassin Luigi Mangione is now being hailed as a Robin Hood-style character, meting out street justice for the millions of health insurance-denied citizens the world over.

As an allegorical tale, I can relate to that. There is a massive injustice going on right now in the US and people are dying because of lack of access to care.

But this is not an allegorical tale. And real life is always more complicated than fairy tales. For one, Brian Thompson didn’t deserve to die, just as anyone wouldn’t reasonably expect a death sentence for carrying out their normal, legal business.

Shooting Mr. Thompson in the back was callous and cowardly. If one was hellbent on justice, many other ‘punishments’ could have been equally effective and less damaging.

Why not kidnap and ransom? Why not paintball him or inflict some minor injury and pin him with a warning note? Why not douse him with orange paint and make a video disgracing the man?

Of course I’m not condoning these acts either, but it seems to me they would make an equally strong point without resorting to taking someone’s life.

But this is all incidental of course. The fact is, Brian Thompson was merely doing everything by the book as expected of anyone in his position. It’s obviously not his fault that the health insurance system is such that it is.

He was just another cog in a giant machine. Not blameless, but small in the grand scheme of one giant heinous US insurance scam.

During the course of my own online discussions on this topic, I found myself repeatedly met by joyous celebration of Brian’s murder from people who I would have previously considered pacifist and reasonable.

But, for all that, I just couldn’t bring myself around to the idea that killing Brian Thompson was in any way a good idea.

Usually when I’m met with adversity to my ideas, I go plumb the depths of my consciousness to try and discover why it is I think so differently about something.

During this meditation of sorts, an idea occurred to me that explains my response, and also, from what I can tell, explains pretty much everything bad that goes on in our society. And it’s simply this:

We tend to ignore small problems until they become really big problems.

Or, in this case: we don’t address minor injustices until they become huge injustices. The US health system has deteriorated into an evermore disgusting for-profit racket over a long period of time, through many different administrations and policies.

It didn’t happen all at once. Expectations of the health and insurance system have steadily declined until one day, to people like Mangione, it appeared for the gross injustice that it has become.

It’s common sense that if you don’t address the minor problems in a car, some day you will inevitably be faced with a major, possibly life-threatening malfunction. So too in society.

Small injustices that continually go unchecked will surely one day blow up in your face into a brutal assassination, a riot or even a war.

What issues were ignored and steps not taken in the years preceding the Russia-Ukraine War to prevent it from happening? What minor injustices were never addressed in Gaza and Israel that could have prevented the ensuing terrorism and bloodbath?

What small policy decisions were taken in the interests of UnitedHealthCare shareholders that ultimately led to the deaths—not just of Brian Thompson—but of the many thousands of patients not getting the right care when they needed it most?

Let me be pragmatic. Brian Thompson is dead. There’s not much anyone can do about that now. But could we at least learn the more valuable lesson from this unfortunate incident before it creates more unfortunate incidents?

And I don’t just mean that health insurers revise their policies, but that more of us can understand that almost all major problems are the result of compounded years of minor injustices and taking a hammer to them as a solution is almost never going to be effective.

It’s true that sometimes you have to cut off the affected limb to save the patient, but the superior solution by far is to treat the festering wound before it ever reaches that point.

Think about this: what small injustices exist today that, if left unchecked, will create the next war?

And, if you don’t really care about that, then maybe you can understand how the big, bad things that happen are almost never out of the blue, but are a result of people ignoring little problems.

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:42:57 GMT

I have noticed a sharp decline in my online interactions since I’ve begun to question anti-capitalist tropes of ‘change the system’ in favour of ‘change us’ ideas. I understand that most of my online connections are perhaps disenchanted by my seeming abandonment of ‘fuck the system’ style rhetoric, and perhaps I don’t fit into their neat box any more.

But I can’t deny that I’ve recently come to find such rhetoric both dishonest and incomplete. In truth, I’ve always tried to hold fluid opinions on controversial topics and have no issue with reevaluating my ‘North’ if the weight of experience and evidence impels me.

I think the anti-capitalist movement is dishonest in that it disregards obvious improvements in people’s lives (less abject poverty, etc) in favour of decrying inequality. Now, don’t get me wrong, I fully concur on issues of inequality, but it is not honest to expect that levelling society to spite the rich would favour the newly-redeemed poor any more or less than current.

Also, there are efficiencies within capitalism that, even though, yes, such efficiencies also cause waste and exploitation, are *also* undeniably beneficial in significant ways to many people, and whether such benefits could really still exist without capitalism is a wholly incomplete ideology.

When I talk about ‘change us’ as a way to improve society, what I’m really saying is: it’s more complicated than we think. Everything about how our society runs is inextricably connected – from the billionaire jet-setter to the double-jobbing waitress. There is a massive, internal narrative going on in our shared consciousness that is defining the laws of our society, and by extension, the natural world.

I believe it is this mental narrative that needs to change, and all of us are equally responsible for it. This narrative is our basic rules of engagement with society and the natural world. And, frankly, it’s fucked.

In my emerging view, changing this narrative should be our top priority. And whether changing it signals the end of capitalism or not is not even important. Capitalism is not the problem, it’s the product. And we are the producers.

Next year, I am embarking on a very different and ambitious effort to tackle this maligned narrative in the hopes that we can all become better producers of the world we would like to see. I hope I can change the minds at least of some of my erstwhile ‘followers’ of no-moneyism towards an idea that I think has an actual chance of being realised.

Better is still better than an unobtainable best. ✨

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:42:06 GMT

Better is still better than an unobtainable best. ✨

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:41:03 GMT

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:41:01 GMT