The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting
The People Cheering the UnitedHealthcare CEO Shooting
A cold-blooded murder has become, to many, an opportunity to vent.
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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