The new American awakening
On December 4, in New York, a gunman shot and killed the CEO of United Healthcare. This week, a suspect was arrested and charged. But even before the arrest, the attack provoked a response across the internet and society unlike anything I remember ever seeing before.
Given the number of deaths routinely caused by America's for-profit health insurance companies denying vital coverage on one pretext or another, their body count dwarfs that of any serial killer. Many Americans have a friend or relative who was killed in this way, and a great many more have heard the horror stories. We don't usually refer to such killings as "murder", and I'm sure that someone can cite legal technicalities to justify that, but the fact remains that these denials of coverage are deliberate acts, taken in full knowledge that they are likely or certain to result in human deaths, and motivated purely by profit. The obvious assumption was that the gunman was acting to avenge such a case of denial.
The news of the attack unleashed an explosion of pent-up feeling (seriously, do look at that -- I've seen far, far more that's just like it). The unknown shooter inspired fan art and even erotic fan fiction. Sober commentators, and even recent Senate candidate Lucas Kunce, while quick to assure us that they were not condoning violence, pointed out that the rage against the system was easy to understand. Beyond online reactions, wanted posters have appeared in New York -- and the banner depicted above, representing a non-trivial investment of work and risk, was put up near Chicago.
Such an outpouring of feeling doesn't happen from a standing start. There is a vast sea of anger and hatred out there, and it's not only about health insurance. People know well that more and more of the wealth produced by American workers is going not to those producers but to a tiny class of oligarchs -- the big investors, corporate executives, and other parasites who now constitute the ruling class of what may be the most unequal society in history. The worst among them have heaped up obscene fortunes in the tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. Wealth in the US today is even more concentrated at the top than it was in France just before the Revolution.
Seeing this eruption of mass public feeling in response to the shooting, the American parasite class suddenly realized what they had somehow failed to notice all along -- that the masses literally hate them -- and they and their media proxies and toadies swung into action with a furious campaign of scolding and condescension. People are having none of it. Right-wing media figure Ben Shapiro fumed online that "the EVIL revolutionary left condones murder", only to have his own comments flooded by his own right-wing audience declaring "we feel the same!" This phenomenon extends across the political spectrum. It doesn't belong to the left or the right.
Indeed, it's not really political at all -- certainly not on the level of our dreary, sclerotic, polarized, left-vs-right surface political scene. It's a visceral response, the primordial rage of a nation backed almost as hard against the wall as the French more than two centuries ago. No politician or party can possibly stop this, or control it, or speak for it.
The message may be getting through. Earlier this month, Blue Cross in several states announced that it would no longer pay for anesthesia for surgical operations that exceed specified time limits -- a shocking but typical enough example of the heartless cruelty of the system. Almost immediately after the shooting, they reversed that decision. And at the same time, companies began purging or hiding information identifying their executives from their websites. They're getting scared.
This could be called a mass movement, but it's really deeper than that. The man behind the curtain is clearly seen. Millions are now looking past the tired old paradigm of party politics, left vs right, Trump, racial and ethnic prejudice, and all the rest of the distractions, to the struggle that really matters -- class.
posted by Infidel753 at 7:14 AM
12 Comments:
There's certainly a lot of anger and hatred out there as people see more and more billionaires and more and more poverty (and medical debts). It could very well erupt into violence, especially if Trump does nothing to stop such glaring inequality.
There is no easy fix to this. We had an opportunity for joy and uplifting (calm), we chose anger and revenge; that train has left the dock. Would a different election outcome changed Luigi? No; his mind was set months if not years ago. It would probably have still occurred. Would it have changed the system that brought him and thousands to a breaking point? No, but it might have calmly tampered down the vitriol and rhetoric and perhaps finally opened an honest dialog on inequity that I doubt will ever occur in this new administration.
But hey, Zuckerberg just donated from Meta $1M to the Trump inauguration gala.
Birds of a feather.
Nick: And I don't see Trump doing anything about it. As a wealthy con man, he's an extreme example of the parasite class. His party just wants even more tax cuts for the wealthy -- and cuts in the social safety net for everyone else -- which will make the problem even worse.
Rad: There certainly is no easy fix. I don't believe electoral politics is capable of having any impact on this problem. Over the last few decades and especially the last few years the concentration of wealth in a few hands has gotten worse and worse, completely unaffected by which party held power. I had hoped that a strong Democratic trifecta would have led to restoration of more reasonable tax rates on the wealthy, but even that was only ever an outside chance. Biden proposed such a policy and the oligarchs used their wholly-owned media and their donation-bought Democratic politicians to force him out of the race. The possibility of a political solution to the problem of oligarchical dominance over the nation seems to have already been closed off.
I also do not believe electoral politics will have any impact other than setting the tone and temperament for the people to follow. And we see what is waiting in the wings...
This time, watching the global stage, makes me want to sit down and watch some "Feel-goodie" movie... like "Don't Look Up!".
"That's funny! It says I am going to die by 'Brontroroc'!"
People have big feelings about insurance companies and the people that run them and I don't blame them.
Healthcare is not just another good in the marketplace. What are the incentives supporting the medusa? and the n is so much larger than 535. Rewrite ERISA to insist on lifetime rights to participate in any prior employers health insurance pool, or any public employees health insurance pool, and see what happens, and take a page from a former roommate who, in a different context(legal), insisted it needs to be the same for everybody.
I see another "Occupy Wall Street" happening. Maybe.
Rad: I really don't see electoral politics as doing even that any more. The political world seems increasingly out of touch with the country.
Feel-good movies are a good thing. We can't spend all our time obsessing about world problems we can't even do anything about.
Mary: It is horrifying what they get away with. Violence in response was probably inevitable.
Anon: Unfortunately I don't understand most of what you said. I don't think convoluted reforms of the current system will do much good. We need a national system like other advanced countries have.
Ricko: I hope it won't be like that, since Occupy Wall Street really made no difference in the long run.
Considering Trump is filling his cabinet with Billionaires, I expect the problem to get way worse.
It will mean more people pushed to the wall, more lives destroyed, more people feeling they have nothing left to lose, and thus more people resorting to violence against the oppressors.
Two years before the ignorant have a chance to correct what they have put in place with their vote and nonvotes (the latter is roughly 7 million if we add in the votes for others). And even then, Trump did not bust 50% of the vote.
infidel, they know Trump will do them no good. They did not like a different color woman in the presidency the same as they did not like a white woman in the presidency. Could it be just gender as the defining issue of who occupies the White House? I have not done the numbers yet. It is distinctly different than when Hillary ran.
Luigi was born into money, wealth, power, prominence, philanthropy, and privilege. What right did he have to be angry? He had healthcare and a lot of it. He does not look like the type (to me) to be an angry socialist seeking revenge.
Back pain and brain fog were the issues he was suffering from. Is that enough?
Wrong. I've linked to evidence that racism and sexism had nothing to do with why Harris lost, and I've posted extensively on what were the real reasons. The Democrats made, and are continuing to make, serious and substantive mistakes that they need to address. Calling the voters -ist and -phobe names will just mean more lost elections.
As for the Messiah, first, we don't know for sure yet that Mangione was the shooter. Second, whether he was or not, his background and political views are irrelevant. Everybody has a right, indeed a duty, to be angry with the billionaire oligarch parasite class and how it exploits and abuses ordinary Americans, whether via denial of healthcare or in a hundred other ways. They are waging a war of mass murder upon us.
Please try to take a broader view. You're trapped in outdated thinking which has become pretty much irrelevant now. The people are, as so often happens, out ahead of the "leaders".
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