Brian L. Thompson has killed hundreds of thousands, and there is gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands and he becomes a martyr.
Luigi kills one and he is villanized as a vigilante and an outlaw.
Stalin was right kill one and it is murder, kill thousands and it is a statistic.
Corporations have killed millions and nothing happens not to the CEO's, the officers, the people who carry out the orders, nor to the corporation. Until the Charter wars in the early 20th century corporations had a death sentence, usually about 50 yeas, and to get it renewed they had to prove that they operated in the public interest. That all died with Dodge v Ford Motors in 1919, and the charter wars that John Davidson Rockefeller started when he declared that he would move his corporation to the state that produced the most favorable corporation charter law, NJ won, and we had Standard Oil of NJ, other states got the hint and Delaware came up with one better and thus 600 corporations, most of them financial are chartered in DE. Ohio got in on the act and we have SOHIO.
Union Carbide killed thousands of Indians in Bhopal, it filed bankruptcy was bought by DOW, and a corrupt Indian Supreme Court, let it off the hook for damages.
Every day United Health Care, Anthem, Regence all of hem kill people, after taking their money, and there is not a moan or a whisper of even discontent from pundits, editors, or substack authors.
I was not and am not justifying murder Melissa, but I am taking note of the ourtage over the murder of one father with two children, and the utter silence and lack of outrage over the murder of hundreds of thousands if not millions by the likes of Brian L Thompson and those like him.
And if if you talk of the disregard for human life, you must talk first and foremostabout the poster boy for the disregard of human life, Brian L Thompson and his peers
See my comment elsewhere about individualism. I think it's related. Collective action is OK for the wealthy and the corporations, but individualism helps keep the masses in line.
I agree Susanna. Better phrased the ideology of individualism is what keeps the masses disorganized.
The wealthy and corporations promote and protect their interests by acting collectively, Political Action committees, and also individually (Musk Theil, Andrew Mellon.
Mussolini chose the Roman fasces as a symbol on purpose, It was the symbol of the Senate, you can break one stick, but you can't break a bundle of sticks.. Mussolini's fascism was a Chamber of Deputies, in which the representatives were officers of corporations. Collectivism of the rich and powerful.
Lenin described the USSR as state capitalism or a corporate state. In reality it was a combine of seven trusts organized along lines of production and resources, Transportion, timber, mining, agriculture, industry and the most important Human manged by he KGB. When the USSR was dissolved in 1992, it's trusts and sub structures were auctioned off by the KGB, to KGB for pennies on the dollar and we wound up with the oligarchs.
Since Trump has managed to create a double standard for himself regarding the law, he may ultimately become the victim of the lawlessness that he has created. And that may just be the only way he will ever get the justice that he so rightly deserves. You reap what you sow!
It is ironic Melissa that you chose a song by Woody Guthrie, if Wikipedia can be believed, he and someone he was with had a problem with their landlord, about the time Arlo came into the world. Their landlord was the father of Mr. Trump.
In the aftermath, one thing I find infuriating, and I think fuels sympathy for the shooter, is how the NY police and prosecutors behave at each press conference. They carry on as if they are surprised, which seems terribly out of touch. At this point, there should be nothing surprising about Americans using violence to solve their problems, especially from career law enforcement officers in a big city.
In reality, this is just another person being killed, a statistic just like everyone else on that list, except with a more interesting back story because he was rich dude.
To quote New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said T “any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”
Indeed.
But you know what else is offensive to our deeply held principles of justice? Different rules for different people based on the victim’s wealth. The elevation to terrorism just reiterates that the wealthy are a special class and that the rest of us don’t matter. Having this thrown in our faces doesn’t seem like the best way to de-escalate the situation or rhetoric surrounding it.
Finally, it’s not hard to argue that the shooter’s a cold blooded killer. There’s video! But I can easily see a jury rejecting a terrorism charge. Because a dozen fearful healthcare ceos is not the same as blowing up busses and flying planes into buildings.
The song that came first to my mind was "Pretty Boy Floyd," also by Woody Guthrie and portraying the outlaw as a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the deserving, hardworking poor. The second-to-last verse ends with "Some will rob you with a six-gun / And some with a fountain pen," and the last verse with "You won't never see an outlaw / Drive a family from their home." Floyd was killed in 1934, age 30, by a vigilante group; Guthrie wrote the song in 1939 and included it on his 1940 album DUST BOWL BALLADS.
Worth exploring, I think, is the close connection between romanticizing outlaws and the U.S. cult of individualism, which comes joined at the hip with suspicion of collective action, including both unions and some amorphous entity called "government" that exists to steal your dough and make your life miserable. Absent collective action, individual acts are almost the only alternative, no matter how futile. And face it, organizing is hard, thankless, often dangerous work.
Brian L. Thompson has killed hundreds of thousands, and there is gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands and he becomes a martyr.
Luigi kills one and he is villanized as a vigilante and an outlaw.
Stalin was right kill one and it is murder, kill thousands and it is a statistic.
Corporations have killed millions and nothing happens not to the CEO's, the officers, the people who carry out the orders, nor to the corporation. Until the Charter wars in the early 20th century corporations had a death sentence, usually about 50 yeas, and to get it renewed they had to prove that they operated in the public interest. That all died with Dodge v Ford Motors in 1919, and the charter wars that John Davidson Rockefeller started when he declared that he would move his corporation to the state that produced the most favorable corporation charter law, NJ won, and we had Standard Oil of NJ, other states got the hint and Delaware came up with one better and thus 600 corporations, most of them financial are chartered in DE. Ohio got in on the act and we have SOHIO.
Union Carbide killed thousands of Indians in Bhopal, it filed bankruptcy was bought by DOW, and a corrupt Indian Supreme Court, let it off the hook for damages.
Every day United Health Care, Anthem, Regence all of hem kill people, after taking their money, and there is not a moan or a whisper of even discontent from pundits, editors, or substack authors.
None of what you're saying justifies a murder. And the glorification of crimes like this will only increase violence and the disregard for human life.
I was not and am not justifying murder Melissa, but I am taking note of the ourtage over the murder of one father with two children, and the utter silence and lack of outrage over the murder of hundreds of thousands if not millions by the likes of Brian L Thompson and those like him.
And if if you talk of the disregard for human life, you must talk first and foremostabout the poster boy for the disregard of human life, Brian L Thompson and his peers
See my comment elsewhere about individualism. I think it's related. Collective action is OK for the wealthy and the corporations, but individualism helps keep the masses in line.
I agree Susanna. Better phrased the ideology of individualism is what keeps the masses disorganized.
The wealthy and corporations promote and protect their interests by acting collectively, Political Action committees, and also individually (Musk Theil, Andrew Mellon.
Mussolini chose the Roman fasces as a symbol on purpose, It was the symbol of the Senate, you can break one stick, but you can't break a bundle of sticks.. Mussolini's fascism was a Chamber of Deputies, in which the representatives were officers of corporations. Collectivism of the rich and powerful.
Lenin described the USSR as state capitalism or a corporate state. In reality it was a combine of seven trusts organized along lines of production and resources, Transportion, timber, mining, agriculture, industry and the most important Human manged by he KGB. When the USSR was dissolved in 1992, it's trusts and sub structures were auctioned off by the KGB, to KGB for pennies on the dollar and we wound up with the oligarchs.
Since Trump has managed to create a double standard for himself regarding the law, he may ultimately become the victim of the lawlessness that he has created. And that may just be the only way he will ever get the justice that he so rightly deserves. You reap what you sow!
It is ironic Melissa that you chose a song by Woody Guthrie, if Wikipedia can be believed, he and someone he was with had a problem with their landlord, about the time Arlo came into the world. Their landlord was the father of Mr. Trump.
It's true! Been covered by current artists as well. https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Old_Man_Trump.htm
In the aftermath, one thing I find infuriating, and I think fuels sympathy for the shooter, is how the NY police and prosecutors behave at each press conference. They carry on as if they are surprised, which seems terribly out of touch. At this point, there should be nothing surprising about Americans using violence to solve their problems, especially from career law enforcement officers in a big city.
And for some reason that I’d love for someone to explain to me, they are charging him as a terrorist. People are killed in premeditated crimes every day. Here’s a list if all the homicides in Nyc last year https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/excel/analysis_and_planning/supplementary-homicide/supplementary-homicide-report-cy2023.xlsx Any terrorist charges filed here? Where is the breathless outrage for all these innocents and their families?
In reality, this is just another person being killed, a statistic just like everyone else on that list, except with a more interesting back story because he was rich dude.
To quote New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said T “any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”
Indeed.
But you know what else is offensive to our deeply held principles of justice? Different rules for different people based on the victim’s wealth. The elevation to terrorism just reiterates that the wealthy are a special class and that the rest of us don’t matter. Having this thrown in our faces doesn’t seem like the best way to de-escalate the situation or rhetoric surrounding it.
Finally, it’s not hard to argue that the shooter’s a cold blooded killer. There’s video! But I can easily see a jury rejecting a terrorism charge. Because a dozen fearful healthcare ceos is not the same as blowing up busses and flying planes into buildings.
The song that came first to my mind was "Pretty Boy Floyd," also by Woody Guthrie and portraying the outlaw as a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the deserving, hardworking poor. The second-to-last verse ends with "Some will rob you with a six-gun / And some with a fountain pen," and the last verse with "You won't never see an outlaw / Drive a family from their home." Floyd was killed in 1934, age 30, by a vigilante group; Guthrie wrote the song in 1939 and included it on his 1940 album DUST BOWL BALLADS.
Worth exploring, I think, is the close connection between romanticizing outlaws and the U.S. cult of individualism, which comes joined at the hip with suspicion of collective action, including both unions and some amorphous entity called "government" that exists to steal your dough and make your life miserable. Absent collective action, individual acts are almost the only alternative, no matter how futile. And face it, organizing is hard, thankless, often dangerous work.
“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”--H.Rap Brown, Black Panther Party minister of justice