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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

While it's very unlikely that someone has a definitive answer, this question popped into my head after the assassination of the UHC CEO and it's been bothering me that I can't shake off this feeling that more is likely to happen (maybe not in higher frequency but potential).

Usually I could provide counter-arguments to myself in a realism/(should I buy apples or oranges comparison) kind-of sense but this one I feel more unsure about.

I wish I had more diverse exp in systems analysis as these kinds of questions that linger in my head really irritates my OCD brain as I just want to know what's the most likely answer.

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[-] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago
[-] Pandantic@midwest.social 8 points 1 week ago

I’m honestly just glad it brought the left and the right together! 🥰Give more CEOs bunnies, get more unity? Working class solidarity, ya’ll. 🥳

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

as an outsider I would think no. you don't have much political force to cultivate this sentiment. democrats are already acting shocked and devastated for their buddies. they're on the side of ceos, don't forget. insider trading party can hardly pretend to give a shit about the average person. they will wait for the flame to burn out. return to business as usual: protecting the rich, losing elections and all that.

[-] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

Don’t eat shit, mulch the rich.

As John F Kennedy said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable"

Either we fix this peacefully through the democratic process, or people are gonna riot.

[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 0 points 1 week ago

Billionaires: yeahhh I'm just going to buy all the media, all the politicians, and make sure enough of my guys win that they stop any legislation that would cost me anything. Nothing could ever go wrong with effectively taking away people's choices right?

I'm thinking all we have left is roit. We've already lost the democratic process through propaganda outlets and bought and paid for candidates a while ago. There is no party for the working class. There is a party that likes to talk big, but when push comes to shove they don't do shit and have their chosen "enemy of the term" to pop up and take the fall to stop anything from passing.

[-] proudblond@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

I’m honestly not sure which party you’re talking about. It’s just vague enough…

[-] thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

as much as i hate the "both sides are the same" argument when it comes to actual individual politicians, their actions, and policies. this is the one thing that the vast majority of them do have in common. taking billionaire money and letting it affect their decisions.

we were fucked as soon as citizens United passed. that was probably the inflection point that made violent revolution inevitable. when political bribes became legal.

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[-] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Feels too good to be true. It's only one shooting.

Now if some second evil CEO were unfortunately victimized, I might be tempted to call it a trend...

[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

two is just a mere coincidence; but three would be the start a pattern or trend.

[-] moody@lemmings.world 2 points 1 week ago

And if there were FIVE evil CEO's suddenly victimized, why we could have a movement!

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[-] vinnymac@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

But is it? This same year a kid was an inch or two away from making a bullet enter Trumps brain.

He’s not the CEO of a healthcare company, but he’s certainly at the helm of many companies, and will soon be president of the states.

[-] Sabin10@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago

I feel like victimized is the wrong word for someone reaching the find out part of fucking around.

[-] 5wim@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

It was tongue-in-cheek, along with "unfortunately"

[-] yarr@feddit.nl 3 points 1 week ago

Short answer: no.

One CEO getting shot is not going to change much. The American public's attention span is two weeks, if that. Another CEO in the endless line of corporate douchebags will take the spot of the murdered one and so on. All the lousy crap that led to our fucking useless health care system is still in place: CEOs with no heart/conscience, health industry lobbyists, spineless politicians for sale to the highest bidder.

For sure, this was an exceptional event, but it's not going to lead to any lasting change. Disagree with me? Post your prediction for what will change one year from now and let's see what happens. My guess is NOTHING.

[-] reddithalation@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago

in a year from now, ceo's will probably have a bit more private security and do less walking around in cities at 6 in the morning alone. I agree with you on the rest though

[-] yarr@feddit.nl 1 points 1 week ago

Go price out the cost of 24/7 coverage for an individual and then think about the need to restrict your life to places that can be easily secured. These CEOs will be jumpy for a few weeks and then life will go on. I predict this is not going to be a trend. We aren't going to see 10+ CEOs shot a year. If I am wrong about that rate, then the rest of what I said would no longer be true. I believe this will be an isolated incident.

[-] tomatolung@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

Look to history for some answers.

The Denver Post had a opinion piece that talked about how America has seen something like this before.

The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.

The era survives in the public imagination through still resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awestruck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.

Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence. In 1892, an anarchist tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after a drawn-out conflict between Pinkerton security guards and workers. In 1901, an anarchist sympathizer assassinated President William McKinley. And so on.

As historian Jon Grinspan wrote about the years between 1865 and 1915, “the nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections ‘won’ by the loser of the popular vote and three presidential assassinations.” And neither political party, he added, seemed “capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives.” No, not an identical situation, but the description does resonate with how a great many people feel about the direction of the country today.

It’s not hard to see how, during the Gilded Age, armed political resistance could find many eager recruits and even more numerous sympathetic observers. And it’s not hard to imagine how the United States could enter another such cycle.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

No.

The killing of the CEO was a one-off event.

There would need to be readily apparent will to revolt, or a slow buildup of tit-for-tat escalating action/reaction between have-not and the rich…. More killings and active attacks, more police trying to crush any protest or anyone rebelling, harsher and harsher punishment for resistance or protest, and a wealthy class protecting themselves as much as possible while telling everyone (most likely through the press and government they own) how bad it would be for everyone were they to be killed or the system disrupted.

[-] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

There are plenty of alternatives to eat the rich.

UBI does not make the rich any poorer. It just decentralizes power so that all can survive and eliminates crime.

While our electoral politics is divided between either "pro business" or "hamas supporting communist radical left", it could seem reasonable to constrain oligarchy and Israel first rule while still being pro economic growth and prosperity. This requires an "eat the media stooges" who refuse to tell the difference along with a forceful message that the DNC doesn't support.

Understanding that DNC are worthless pig fuckers meant to fundraise and not empower ordinary people is step 1 to progress.

[-] xylogx@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

[-] gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just curious but are we heading towards an "eat the rich" society?

I guess we should be, but that's just my personal opinion.

Realistically, no. The people have clearly expressed how dumb they are and what they desire in the November election. They want dumb Republicans, they get asshole CEOs. I don't see it any other way.

Honestly, I believe voting is the best way to bring change about a society that wants to change. It's just that I have given up the thought that the US wants to change in the direction that I would go. So no, it's not gonna happen.

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[-] nl4real@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Hopefully we will move towards a more equitable society, but Fascists also have a track record of exploiting the sort of instability American society has been faced with during this century so far. If we don't handle this carefully, it could go badly. Which is saying a lot, given the last decade.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 points 1 week ago

Nah. That won't happen until the Resource Wars begins in earnest.

[-] nifty@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If people can protest for higher taxes on the wealthy, and ensure that money is spent on social services that would be a great start. I don’t know about other countries, but why the fuck can’t America do a Nordic model of socialism?

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

Swede here, first of all, we don't have socialism here, we have a social democratic system here.

Secondly, the words socialism/communism have been tarnished over decades in the US, people have been taught to immediately reject those words regardless of their context.

So if the US can ever get a social democratic system, it needs a rebrand.

It needs something like "The Great America Deal"

[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

"Make America normal again"?

[-] stringere@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

MANA from heaven. But without the god bullshit.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Couldn't agree more. Socialists with their hammers and sickles and Che Guevara t-shirts are accomplishing nothing. People need to let go of their fantasy of having people they disagree with them someday saying "I was completely wrong about socialism, you were right, I will never doubt you again!"

Though at this point Americans don't even like the term "New Deal" because they've been told the economic policies of FDR (which pulled the country out of the Great Depression) were bad. So "Great America Deal" may not work. Biden tried "Build Back Better" but that was too lame. But yeah, gotta find a phrase people like and put it on a hat.

[-] veganpizza69@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's certainly part of the catabolic stage in the system's decay. Due to many reasons, both at the input side and the "drowning in waste" side (example: GHGs waste causing climate destabilization), growth is going to falter which means that the "sharing" strategy of the rich, of the oligarchs, is going to stop working. You may know it as "grow the pie" (instead of "share the pie"). The rich get richer, the rest get poorer, and there are going to be a lot of poor people. That means a lot of desperate people and a lot of people with nothing left to lose.

What you have to watch out for is perhaps two strategies that can stop this:

  1. Scapegoating: vulnerable minorities and more. The rich of a certain ethnicity may become the scapegoats, instead of .... you know, ALL of that class. This would be a misdirection of attention.
  2. Jingoism, chauvinism and various forms of ultra-nationalism. This would be a misdirection of violence... instead of "punching up", it becomes "punching the foreign threat", which means war.
  3. Combined 1 & 2. It's usually called fascism.

Something to print:

On a related note, I really liked the recent season of "Arcane" (both seasons are great). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11126994/

[-] enbyecho@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Never underestimate the laziness of a disaffected but mostly not quite yet starving population.

tl;dr: Patience, grasshopper.

[-] Sabre363@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago

I really fucking hope so, the world has too many rich morons in charge and we genuinely need to do something about it right now if we want to have a planet anymore.

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this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
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