- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
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UnitedHealth Group’s Facebook post sharing its statement on Thompson’s death received more than 46,000 reactions, with about 41,000 of respondents clicking the platform’s “haha” option displaying a laughing emoji.
Holy shit.
57k and climbing.
That’s compared to 2.3k “sad” and 1.9k “care” reactions.
That is astonishing. Imagine being this guy’s grieving family, and finding out that 9 out of ten people are going out of their way to let everyone know they’re glad he’s dead.
Probably, in their minds, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. I’m not trying to defend him, since he clearly was doing something wrong, and the world is almost certainly a better place without him in it. But holy shit. Even when Nixon died, a lot of people tried to come up with nice things to say about him.
Even when Nixon died, a lot of people tried to come up with nice things to say about him.
They shouldn’t have. Simply being dead doesn’t make you a good person and washing away crimes because they’re beyond personal shaming ignores the benefits of establishing that you can do things that will forever taint your name and legacy.
I said the same thing when Rush Limbaugh died. If you never did one thing to make me respect you when you were alive, suddenly being dead isn’t going to change your score. It’s just going to make you dead and hated instead of alive and hated.
I dunno. I think as a dead person he will hurt a lot less people than he did while he was alive. So that’s a personal Improvement for him. But you know what they say. Never speak ill of the dead. He’s dead, good.
Y’know to an extent I get the whole “but he was a father and husband!” angle
But how many thousands of parents and children died so this man could get another yacht? How many of them died slow, painful deaths from awful illnesses that could have been cured or prevented while he didn’t? He, along with all his executive friends, was a mass murdering psychopath. There is zero moral difference between committing murder with a gun and committing murder with the stroke of a pen.
Completely agree, zero sympathy in my case for anyone in this man’s orbit. That’s not to say I find them culpable, I simply do not care, at all, I find it irrational to the point of absurd to care about them. This man’s actions are some of the vilest crimes against human life, inflicting so much misery and death on so many, purely for the basest greed. People often say the fight against the insurance companies is worse than the (terminal!!) cancer. Let that sink in.
Meanwhile, this guy’s family led, and will lead, lives of extreme privilege, forever.
Lemme put it this way - if there’s any kind of cosmic balance sheet, even be it just the pedestrian moral reckoning of we humans…the limited suffering of anyone in this guy’s life as a result of this…in comparison, I mean it’s a fuckin rounding error. Nothing.
Another thing is how most of media talks about his wife and kids, failing to mention the wife was estranged and they already were separated. The kids are adults too, so the Picture they paint is highly misleading. The reason seems. … manipulative.
Huh, weird! It’s almost like they see some value in trying to rehab the least sympathetic crime victim of maybe our whole lives!
They damn sure aren’t telling stories people want to hear, we’ve echoed pretty loudly, from about every corner of the Internet, something to the tune of “lmao fuck that guy”.
Apparently he and his wife have been living in separate houses, so there was some mind of problem there. The ones I feel sorry for are the kids. They look to be mid-to-late teens, so they likely have a poor understanding of exactly what their dad’s company did, and they certainly have no standing to change things - and they’re the perfect age to be spending lots of their time on the internet.
They wake up one morning and their dad’s been shot and literally the entire internet is celebrating? That’s absolutely brutal.
They wake up one morning and their dad’s been shot and literally the entire internet is celebrating? That’s absolutely brutal.
Imagine instead if they’re like “nah, yeah, I get it, I get what you mean, he was kind of a dick”
lol
Ted Cruz’s kids hate him. There’s some good videos of them doing it at functions in public.
Yeah, I thought about that after I said it. It would stand to reason if his sociopathy in business also corresponded with some sociopathy in his personal life and people around him had experience with it.
Imagine being this guy’s grieving family, and finding out that 9 out of ten people are going out of their way to let everyone know they’re glad he’s dead.
Do you give this same consideration to other people who get shot? What if he had been the kingpin of a drug cartel - would you still be saying ‘Oh, won’t anyone think of his family!’ if the police raided his meth lab and he got shot?
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.
The fact that you only remember one of their names should tell you that you don’t have a valid comparison. If Thompson was as bad as Bin Laden, you’d remember it.
$10 says you and everybody else in this thread didn’t even know this dude existed 2 days ago.
Everyone knows Bin Laden because his name was plastered all over the news for months on end. People have been angry at United Healthcare for a lot longer but it was always a faceless corporation. This event has put a name to that corporation and a focus for that anger. If the media covers this like they did Bin Laden I guarantee everyone would remember his name.
If Thompson was as bad as Bin Laden, we’d have been talking about him already. It’s not like United anonymized their CEO position or anything, there’s been a face to the corp the whole time. It’s just that nobody cared.
I get that people are glad he’s dead. But be realistic; he’s a piece of shit, but he’s not fucking Bin Laden. Gross indifference to suffering patients and flying planes into buildings are both despicable acts, but on two completely different orders of magnitude.
Not being notorious doesn’t make somebody not a bad person.
I’m not defending Thompson. I’m just saying that comparing him to Bin Laden is asinine.
$10 says you and everybody else in this thread didn’t even know this dude existed 2 days ago.
You’re gonna lose that bet. As soon as my mom started working for UHC I knew which evil fuck was the CEO of the worst healthcare insurer in the country. Their own employees refer to it as the Walmart of healthcare, and it’s lived up to that description in every comparison imaginable. I’m not surprised at all that someone decided to take doing something about it into their own hands.
The problem with capitalism is there are thousands of bin ladens running around and we’re not aware of the misery they inflict, because it’s normal. This guy is a hero for reminding us of that.
I think what I meant is pretty self-evident. Read it again, and lose the knee-jerk reaction where you assume that I was saying, “Oh, won’t anyone think of his family!” I was just saying it was a mindfuck.
Probably, if the head of the cartel got shot, his family would be shattered but they wouldn’t think it was shocking to hear everyone cheering for it. This guy lives in a world where he thinks he’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing. He and his family probably thought he was really doing good, and everyone else should be getting on his level. Maybe not. I have no idea. It was just a mindfuck for me thinking about it.
What if he had been the kingpin of a drug cartel
Big pharma is next.
His family knew this already. They just didnt care. Obscene wealth will do that to a person.
They were enjoying the fruits of his actions, so I have no sympathy for them.
In all likelihood, they hated him too.
Here are the latest numbers. I logged into Facebook to contribute.
Damn, put Kyra on blast for no reason lol
not enough?
Yeah. What were the remaining 5,000 thinking?
My uneducated guess is that 4k were love hearts
The future is weird.
Would this be a bad thing to catch on? Scumbag gets offed, platform for everyone to laugh at?
This is how the bees attack you
“I’m worried about the fact that violence in the country is just escalating so much,” she says. “That this is a symptom of everyone thinking violence will solve their problems, and that I find tremendously frightening.”
I don’t know if violence can solve our problems or not, but I can guarantee that not changing anything, and maintaining the status quo, absolutely will NOT solve our problems, in healthcare or otherwise.
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The violent revolutionaries added an “or else” to Ghandi’s message.
I thought in Gandhi’s case what he preached was to just not cooperate with the British occupation and let it collapse under its own weight, which is kind of its own or else. Where can I learn more about the violent revolutionaries?
Dunno about the Ghandi situation, but a book that talks about how unions were forced into violence to get their pay from thieving industrial barons, among other examples of violence being the only way people claw back what they’re owed from the ruling class is A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
I like that even the doctors and professionals they found to interview for the story went out of their way to point out that yes, of course violence isn’t a good thing and this probably isn’t the way, but he’s been hurting people left and right, and they see it every day, and they’re glad he’s dead, and so is everyone they know.
The status quo is violent.
Murdering people with a pen is still murdering people.
Biden in 2020, Harris in 2024: “Nothing will fundamentally change if you vote for us!”
Obama (“Change you can believe in”): Come on, you know why you are having such trouble at the ballot box
And even if it doesn’t solve the problem it at least makes people feel a bit better about it.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
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How is this an escalation? It’s just one murder.
Violence is on their side lol
It will.
If a mass shooter kills a dozen people then gets shot and killed, people applaud the one who shot them.
If a CEO directly contributes to the suffering and death of an untold number of people, then gets shot and killed, why should anyone respond differently?
The fact that the deaths he caused were within the bounds of our legal system should be seen as a condemnation of our policies, not as justification for what he did. When other avenues have been exhausted, what did they think people were going to do - just sit around forever and say ‘Well, that sucks’?
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.
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.
For accuracy’s sake, I’ll just point out that Bin Laden didn’t do 9/11 for some misguided religion; he did it because he correctly considered the West with America at its head the cause of the state of the Middle East at the time (and right now), and especially the state of Palestine. Therefore, he targeted what he considered (whether correctly or not I can’t tell you; I wasn’t born at the time) the symbol of US capitalists who direct policy and profit from American warmongering. Not saying he was right to kill 3000 people who are almost all innocent along the way, or that it was an appropriate or even smart way of expressing these grievances, but it was nothing as simple as misguided religion that led him to blowing up the towers (and Pentagon, which I think was a lot more appropriate as a target).
Definitely putting an end to his violence was good
I’m not going to say how I feel about this, but I will
