Because yes, even complete monsters usually care about someone, they can be personally affable or charismatic or nice to someone they personally like or even just as a matter of professional decorum, but the important thing is that this changes nothing.
Example: The BTK Killer was supposedly a great dad, very loving and supportive of his daughter. Outside the torturing people to death, solid guy by the sounds of it.
I still think they’re just gonna kill some random person and say it was the shooter to save face for the whole thing.
My question: What constitutes a “real” Democracy? Is it leadership changing hands every few years? We don’t have that in the U.S. Is it secret ballots? All the nationa above have that. Is it that the people’s votes and voices actually change the government actions? We saw this in China unfortunately when people demanded ending the COVID lock downs early. It was the wrong thing to do but done for the right reason.
My view is that the most important definition of democracy is the one that highlights why people value it in the first place: the majority of people getting most of what they want, most of the time.
I think the way I’ve phrased it is quite generous, and allows a democracy to be pretty badly flawed and still count. As far as I see it, without most people getting what they want most of the time, democracy is basically the worst form of government. You as a citizen have more work to do, just to still not get the shit you want!
To me, that implies a consequentialist attitude towards it. Basically, democratic systems and processes are only valuable to the extent that they produce democratic outcomes (most people getting what they want). Maybe I’m losing my own thread, but as I’m defining it, a literal monarchy could be a better democracy that one with a “democratic system,” if the monarch in question was better about pursuing the interests of the majority of citizens. But, it would still be desirable to have a democratic system in place rather than one that will change with the whims of the next ruler, on the basis that it could more reliably produce democratic results.
I think it’s also important to consider the “ranking” of democracy compared to other values. To me, it seems clear that democracy (most people getting what they want) is good, but democracy doesn’t validate every shitty thing a bunch of people want to do. Consider a bigoted population democratically deciding to purge a minority population, or the citizens of an imperialist country democratically backing a war.
I think some of it is framed as “well the insurance company doesn’t have to give you anything, so it’s not murder to deny coverage when they don’t really owe you anything anyway.”
But that just indicates the person saying it doesn’t understand that our healthcare system is so fucked up because of the insurance industry. The price, the administrative bloat, the declining quality, all in some way directly traceable back to these piece-of-shit insurance companies and their fucking lobbyists.
There’s a quote from the Vietnam war (I wanna say Phil Caputo?) about morality being a measure of distance and technology. If you kill people up close with a bayonet, it’s horrible. If you kill people from afar by ordering an airstrike (or denying people insurance coverage they need), it’s more acceptable.
It’s a vision of morality where we judge actions by how icky they would make the perpetrator feel by doing them, rather than the harm the actions cause to the victims. The Master’s morality, I suppose?
Liberals trying to rag on people as “mentally ill” just lines them up for a “why don’t you dickheads support M4A then so people could afford that shit?”
Also, not even as a joke, United Healthcare has presumably denied a load of mental health claims. Shit, this shooting could have been over a mental health claim being rejected.
Best I can think of is to use it as an opportunity to expand awareness of the concept of social murder.
My gut feeling is they’ll kill some random poor / homeless person and just say it was them.
Basically, what I’ve gotten from the civility wanking is that the moral standing of violence is entirely about whether or not it was legitimized by people in power. Unsurprisingly, there’s no real moral underpinning to this, just another manifestation of class hierarchy.
Social murder is legitimized – even normalized – and fighting back is not.
We think they deserve to die for the tangible harm they cause to other people.
They think we deserve to die because we’re gay or trans or non-white, or because we think people should have equal rights and a good life regardless of the circumstances of their birth and their identity.
Do you think these justifications are really equivalent?
“Humanity’s problems are everyone’s problems, and I’m joining the war on the side of problems.”
Make a point, you fucking dullard. You can be self-righteous all you want, but if you cannot articulate a point or position, why should anybody give a shit about your whiny indignation over a rich murderer being murdered?
I like comeuppance. This person inflicted death on others, so I don’t see a problem with them dying. Just because their violence is considered socially acceptable under capitalism doesn’t make it acceptable to the people who suffer under it.
I welcome you to explain why the reasoning is wrong, bucko.
Then don’t comment on problems you don’t have to deal with. Our insurance industry is misery incarnate.
What in your view justifies people dying in the thousands because of health insurance denying them coverage?
Some depictions of hell make it icy-cold, as a consequence of being so distant from the light and warmth of god.
make this about the safety of the general public
In the video the hero specifically ignores a random bystander who even seemingly gets a decent look at their face.
I think California is basically the same way.
It’s like democrats just can’t help themselves, y’know?
I believe this is the bigger factor in the effectiveness of capitalist propaganda. It’s so pervasive that is becomes the whole of reality, and you can comfortably take it for granted for your entire life if you don’t encounter the right people.