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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: September 6th, 2024

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  • The example I prefer is Bin Ladin. The United CEO killed more people than Bin Ladin. Bin Ladin was just a drama queen and made his killings a lot flashier. Does someone care so much for the rule of law, on such a deep principled level, that they objected to Bin Ladin’s extrajudicial execution? If there is such a rare and gentle soul that they were willing to be offended that even Bin Ladin didn’t get a fair trial, then I will be willing to listen to that person’s objections to celebrating a murderous CEO’s death.

    Personally, I am not that good a person. And I am glad that both Bin Ladin and this CEO are out of the picture.


  • What I’ve been asking people is - “did you weep for Bin Ladin?” If anyone is hand wringing about people mocking the insurance CEO, you should ask them if they wept for Bin Ladin.

    This CEO killed far more people than Bin Ladin. And he didn’t even do it out of some misguided religion - at least Bin Ladin thought he was making the world a better place. This guy just killed thousands of people for the money. Yes, the insurance guy never got a fair trial in court, but neither did Bin Ladin - OBL was killed in an extrajudicial assassination by armed US government agents. Now, in Bin Ladin’s case, capture wasn’t really an option. But with the UHC CEO, it’s not like there was any other way to bring him to justice either.

    If someone really just is that principled that they actually wept for Bin Ladin being killed without trial, then I will take their hand wringing about this guy being shot seriously. Otherwise, I’ll have to believe that the person only objects because it was a wealthy and powerful American that was killed.






  • I mean they’ll do an investigation. The most likely thing is a protest/revenge killing, but there are other possibilities. One I thought of - what if someone actually wanted him killed for reasons completely unrelated to him being an insurance executive? For a hypothetical example (which I have zero evidence to believe to be true), what if the wife wanted him killed for the insurance money? Maybe he was as cruel to her as he was to his customers. Maybe the wife hires a hit man to take the guy out. That hit sure looked pretty professional. Again, I have no evidence to suspect this is true. But what if? Anyone who had a motive to have the guy killed could easily try to make it look like a protest killing. And you rarely get to that level of corporate power without having a few skeletons in the closet.





  • We have a justice system so that we don’t need to use vigilante violence. Make no mistake, this man was a mass murderer. He was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. But because of our corrupt legal and justice system, he was able to get away with it.

    We no longer have any legal method of holding the wealthy and powerful to account for their crimes. The courts are crooked and the politicians bought and paid for. Again, we implemented courts and a justice system so that we didn’t have to use vigilante violence. In olden times, if someone killed your loved one, it was perfectly acceptable to kill them in revenge. We in time implemented a formal legal system to prevent this kind of retributive vigilante violence.

    Well, what do you think happens when you break that legal system so thoroughly that the wealthy can no longer be held to account? At that point, your society goes right back to the law of might makes right.

    It’s actually very similar to the violence that occurs between gangs. If you’re a drug dealing mafioso, and someone cheats you in a drug deal, you can’t turn to the courts for relief. So instead, you have to use violence.

    The people no longer have any real way of holding the wealthy responsible, even for literally murdering innocent people. We’re going to see a lot more such attacks in the future. And it will not end until we reinstate the old peace treaty that is our justice system.





  • Seriously. This article is an embarrassment. Yeah, no shit, our disability payments have gone through the roof. A decade of the War on Terror will due that. Ironically, much of this has come from better medical technology; many people now survive with disabilities that previously wouldn’t have come home at all.

    I tried to look up the author of the article, but they seem to be cowardly not sharing it. How much you want to bet it was penned by some neocon who was pushing for the Iraq War before it happened?





  • That’s going to be damn-near impossible. The Black Panthers existed in a social setting that is completely different from the physical and social reality of trans people here in the early mid 21st century.

    Black panther organizations were extremely local affairs. They were based in black neighborhoods and were built around engaging with those in the immediate area. That’s the kind of setting that an armed militia actually makes sense in. The Black Panthers existed in dense, urban, majority black neighborhoods.

    Compare that to trans people, who are a scattered 1% of the population. There are no “trans neighorhoods.” Even the broader LGBT “gayborhoods” of the 20th century are now mostly memories. Now, if discrimination against trans people really did get bad enough, history suggests that you might actually start seeing some trans-specific neighborhoods form. But we’re a long way from that point.

    I mean, just think of the logistics. So you want to get a group of trans people together and form a militia. You find a group of people; they live scattered across a broad suburban metroplex. Where exactly are you going to patrol? What neighborhoods will you seek to protect? Where exactly, physically, is the home you’re supposed to all be defending?

    That’s the problem with this. An armed Black Panther-style movement really needs to be confined to a certain geographic area. And there is no such area for the trans population.