A doctor explains how he feels about the killing of a CEO. I agree with him — you can simultaneously believe that killing is bad and that a corporation and its executives are bad. You can have two bad things at once!
All these right-wingers fainting at the thought of the Left not joining them on the fainting couch fail to recognize that the last thing we want is swarms of armed vigilantes shooting anyone they don’t like — we’re not modern Robespierrists. What we’d prefer is a responsible government that checked the excesses of corporate capitalism without bloodshed…it’s just that it doesn’t look like that’s what we’ll ever get.
Two wrongs don’t make a right? Maybe we should try three…
PZ , Thank you !
Government controlling corporate capitalism excess won’t happen while the money from corporate capitalism controls the government. From both Houses of Congress to the Presidency and the Supreme Court. Until the voters smarten up and begin to vote for their own good, expect life to get more expensive with less and less rights and privileges (except for guns). I don’t foresee this happening because of the bumper sticker mentality deeply imbedded in the American populace. The Republicans have mastered this, using it on the country through their messaging. Pried from my cold dead hands, welfare queens, and MAGA to name a few.
Nope. The CEO is a murderer. If you believe in capital punishment then he deserved what he got. If you don’t believe in it in all cases then he shouldn’t have been assassinated.
The only reason we are talking about these things right now is because of the killing. All of the other approaches have done nothing and in fact things have gotten worse. So this is not a bad thing and violence is sometimes the only answer, unfortunately.
Maybe we do not need Robespierre, but Danton and Marat are beginning to look good.
…also, the guillotine is unhygienic. I am thinking of modifying the zombie virus so it only affects people who eat caviar.
The only reason the killing is not recommended is that it is impractical because a new asshole CEO will simply replace the old one. For as long as the “for profit” insurance infrastructure is running with very little checks the problem will persist and no amount of CEO whacking will fix it.
Well actually: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LZP6BVeLX0
Two wrongs does make a right.
If we have to sacrifice a healthcare insurance CEO every once in a while to improve healthcare or rollback harmful policies, that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
Bad translation by me:
Human bees,
did nature only give you honey?
Look at the drones around you!
Where is your sting?
But…I don’t believe in capital punishment.
SQB: you raise the interesting question why the Gods always seem to want sacrifices of virgins and rams, rather than of sinners.
Remember that two wrongs don’t make a right,
but that three do.
–Deteriorata.
National Lampoon
The thing about not believing in capital punishment is that there’s a very different dynamic involved between a state (which has access to an enormous amount of non-fatal ways to handle dangerous people) and non-state actors (which don’t). It’s not a contradiction to both think that states, with their near monopoly of violence and ready access to things like imprisonment, shouldn’t be in the business of killing civilians and to think that when the state is failing to handle a certain class of mass killer because they’ve decided that their killing is legal and not murder it’s fine for individuals to use lethal force as the one tool they have.
Maybe health insurance companies should not make decisions that inspire such a large number of people to have such a unpalatable(to them) reaction to the assassination of an insurance company CEO. Maybe we do not need to kill them but maybe we just need them to understand that they have no sympathy from the people if they do get killed for what they have done.
“Watering the tree of liberty yadda yadda yadda…” Where have I heard that before?
jheartney: reportedly, from right-wingers whose grass-roots are even happier to celebrate this murder than the left wing is.
What we need is capital punishment for corporations – legally dissolve the evil ones and then arrest those in charge.
Of course, most are evil – corporations exist so people can do evil without consequence – but it shouldn’t be hard to pick out the worst malefactors in a few key industries.
Urge everyone to watch The Corporation, a 2003 documentary. I had no idea capitalists hijacked the 14th amendment, intended to enshrine personhood to formerly enslaved people, to give their evil organizations personhood. https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/the-corporation/