The direction of society lately

[echappist]

If you want an analysis of everything that Trump has said or been misquoted in the press, that would be a full time job. Same goes for Biden, his comments, outright lies, and misdirection would make a good grad level class. For pedantic points, I provided the link to the actual statement, and it was misused again, so I posted the actual quote. It's just an example, I could spend some time and come up with dozens, but the election is over and apparently they didn't sway enough voters.

For non-events that were largely ignored by the media and only briefly made the news, I offer President Biden's comments at the 2022 Naval Academy graduation. He claimed to had been given an appointment to the Naval Academy by: a) a Senator who was years away from taking office, b) he was beyond the age limit for an appointment, c) he was a senior at the University of Delaware, d) didn't want to compete against Roger Staubach even though Staubach was a senior that year, and e) he was never given an appointment, it was all a lie. I was there in the audience to watch my son walk across the stage and shake the president's hand. The most telling for me were all the parents getting their phones out to check his claims and the murmuring of "bullshit." He has since repeated the lie at other service academy graduations.

Other than your continuous attempt at trying to frame the political situation as "both-sides bad" and that somehow you alone see things clearly, I have no idea what you aim to achieve with your second paragraph. The topic was not lies, but rather coarsening of language, in particular language laced with violent undertones, whether overt or implicit. It's that repeated dehumanizing others (which is different from merely stating falsities) that was the point of discussion. "Finish [him]", degrading others to the level of vermin, seeking retribution, etc.

So once again, you avoid substantive engagement when you are called to task and attempt to shift topic of discussion when suitable so that you never have to own up to anything debating faux-pas, all the while taking others to task with the vigor of Inspector Javert.

It really isn't a good look to insist others to own up while you rarely do so, and it doesn't take a trained logician to spot the jedi mindtrick you tried to pull.

Back to the OP, I'm not sure where we cheapened life to the point that some would support the killing of a CEO. Where did we get the disconnect between respecting and destroying a life? According to United Healthcare, neither the shooter or his family had policies with the company. Was his behavior the result of painkillers? His back was putting him in constant pain, did the meds impact his reasoning skills leading to the murder? Is it a question of untreated mental illness? Would a sane person execute another person on the streets of NYC and then be arrested in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania?

Your first point was already discussed upthread. What more do you want forumites to say? We don't have that many active participants here, and those who care to participate have had their say or saw others posting cogent points such that repeating the same point isn't needed. Unlike you, many here don't see the point of repeating themselves and acknowledge that others have already made cogent points, most of which you have yet to acknowledge. In particular, the ones pointing to the cupidity and rapacity of large corporations squeezing gains for share holders basically went unaddressed by you (a tangential remark by you notwithstanding).

And really, society at large got inured when Sandy Hook did not result in any meaningful change but got the grieving parents the additional insult of being labeled as fabricators and conspiracists, the latter fanned by an actual conspiracist. This was a point well-articulated in post #7 above by @robin3mj, which you didn't respond to. On somewhat of a tangent, yesterday, a teenager in my county killed two others using a handgun before turning the gun on herself. 20 years ago, the novelty of such acts would have been "newsworthy", now it's prevalent enough that only those who are closely connected feel the full brunt of it, while everyone else just tries his/her best to trudge on.

Yet despite the increasing prevalence of school shootings, we still have the Dickey Amendment banning federal funding of research into gun violence. That's the country in which most of us live: one that cannot even begin to have an examination of itself, opting instead for the ostrich strategy. Post #29 by @Zachhateseverything made cogent points on similar issues involved, but again you didn't respond to it.

Your other points (the last four questions starting with "result of painkillers") fall into the category of speculative navel-gazing and not related to the point raised in your first post.

[Bob Ross]

I provided the link to the actual statement, and it was misused again, so I posted the actual quote.

Sorry Bill, but I gotta call bullshit on the idea of "misuse". You can argue that my only posting the first part of tRump's statement

"Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face."

...without including the subsequent sentence "They're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, well let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.'"


might be removing some "context" ...maybe.

But regardless of whether you "cherry-pick" [sic] the first part, or read both parts in their entirety to get the full "context" [sic], there is no way a rational person can hear/read those statements and not understand that tRump is explicitly advocating violence against Liz Cheney.

And we've all seen what some of his supporters do after they've heard him advocate violence enough times.

[bigbill]

Other than your continuous attempt at trying to frame the political situation as "both-sides bad" and that somehow you alone see things clearly, I have no idea what you aim to achieve with your second paragraph. The topic was not lies, but rather coarsening of language, in particular language laced with violent undertones, whether overt or implicit. It's that repeated dehumanizing others (which is different from merely stating falsities) that was the point of discussion. "Finish [him]", degrading others to the level of vermin, seeking retribution, etc.

So once again, you avoid substantive engagement when you are called to task and attempt to shift topic of discussion when suitable so that you never have to own up to anything debating faux-pas, all the while taking others to task with the vigor of Inspector Javert.

It really isn't a good look to insist others to own up while you rarely do so, and it doesn't take a trained logician to spot the jedi mindtrick you tried to pull.

I'm not insisting that anyone do anything, but the continuation of social media talking points as if they're factual or the assumption of what a person actually meant instead of what they said is disingenuous. Our society has become lazy in general, relying on bias confirmation from websites or news outlets instead of a critical look at events. Even now, previously discredited talking points are being recycled because they can be used to create doubt in a public that is willing to believe them again. People remember hearing the claims previously, but have forgotten that they weren't true, and will believe them again because they're familiar.

[thollandpe]

I’m with @bigbill in finding the praise of this shooter objectionable. If he killed another man in cold blood, shot him in the back, he is certainly no hero. And if United Heathcare’s actions are objectionable, wrong, or illegal, then they and their CEO should have been confronted in our courts, the legislature, and the press.

Hoping this messed-up infatuation is short-lived, like hot mugshots on the Instagram machine.

But it’s also worth noting what is not happening. The shooter is not being praised by our President and VP. They will not harass and threaten the judge and jury in the case. The shooter will not speak at a Democratic convention.

Contrast that with what happened in the subway choking case, also mentioned in the OP. There is no doubt that one man killed another. The jury deliberated for five days before determining that the defendant was not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. I do not envy them, and trust they did their job. Like the slain CEO, this dead man also deserved better. He was unarmed, and was strangled while others watched and some asked for it to stop. It must have been terrible for his family to hear cheering as the verdict was read.

But the other man is being praised as a hero by the President-elect and VP-elect. Pouring gasoline on a fire.

It is a sad, sad day when one person decides that they have to take another person’s life.

[vertical_doug]

I just think we are all living in the black comedy Network. In the end, we are either Howard Beale ranting, or Faye Dunaway and William Holden as executives exploiting it to improve rantings.

As a wise friend of mine always says 'Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.'

[takashi]

"It is a sad, sad day when one person decides that they have to take another person’s life."


Why is it any more sad than when the state decides that killing civilians with missiles is acceptable to keep oil prices down?


It's an interesting system, isn't it?

[thollandpe]

It's an interesting system, isn't it?

It certainly is. And I think the question that must be asked is “What if I am, or we are, wrong?”



Because you probably are.

[suspectdevice]

I’m so glad I didn’t see this thread until this evening.

It was April of my Senior year of Highschool, English class when Colombine happened.
In college I watched the Twin Towers fall with a grandson of their architect, that moment we witnessed the chyrons descend upon the news screens, never to leave. War came, 20 years of gasping, orgasmic profit and misery for most in the Graveyard of Empires, TRUTH was the first casualty.

Eventually, We lost.

[BBB]

"It is a sad, sad day when one person decides that they have to take another person’s life."


Why is it any more sad than when the state decides that killing civilians with missiles is acceptable to keep oil prices down?


It's an interesting system, isn't it?

Or the state just decides to kill people?

Setting aside the oil price issue (which one could also argue was associated with ensuring private military contractors also got a decent pay off when the state rumbled into action), what about when the Russians decided to down an airplane (by accident, or accidentally on purpose) or kill its own citizens in largely unpleasant ways on foreign soil? Or the Saudis butchering a critic in their own embassy on foreign soil? Or the Israelis using self-defence to butcher as many people as they like and then throwing out charges of anti-semitism to anyone who criticises? While not a state, Hamas deciding to butcher 1500 people and brutualise or kill 250 hostages?

A pox on all their houses.

[lumpy]

Back to the OP, I'm not sure where we cheapened life to the point that some would support the killing of a CEO. Where did we get the disconnect between respecting and destroying a life?

Interesting that when you talk about cheapening life, you are only talking about the CEO. When did we start cheapening life to the point where an insurance company can use an AI model to deny medical care to Medicare Advantage patients, care that a doctor has ordered, and the insurance company is allowed to profit from those denials? United Healthcare used an AI model so flawed that 90 percent of the denials that were appealed were reversed on appeal. How much is life cheapened when a company is allowed to use a computer model instead of a doctor to make decisions about medical care? People almost certainly died; we just don’t know who they all are. This is a corporate choice that Brian Thompson as CEO could have reversed at any time on his own initiative, but he chose not to. I expect that’s why some people see this differently than they do other killings. The State is supposed to have a monopoly on violence, but people react viscerally to something that looks like an eye for an eye.

[bcm119]

Murder is not the right way to deal with this problem. But if I were that CEO, directly responsible for that companies disgusting business practices, I would fully expect to spend my life looking over my shoulder. It's human nature: You can only push people so far before they begin hitting back. That's not a defense of the murder, it's a recognition of our new reality.

This should serve as an opportunity for political coalition building across previously at-odds factions to call for legislative action against these health care industry practices. But the small minority making a hero of this Luigi character with stupid posters and memes are sabotaging that possibility by creating a larger backlash. The way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if the coalition that emerges from this is actually pro-CEO, similar to how George Floyd created the pro-police coalition. If progressives could learn a little discipline and political strategy we would be in a better place.

[David in Maine]

I think many people are taking a certain amount of satisfaction with the idea of CEOs feeling some of the precarity that too many are experiencing in our society. Especially a health-care CEO. I don't think most are really celebrating the murder per se--they just can't seem to muster much sympathy despite the circling the wagons pundit class telling them they should.

David

[vertical_doug]

Historically, the notion that a monarch’s authority was divinely sanctioned—often encapsulated in the concept of the “divine right of kings”—served as both a moral and cultural shield for the ruler. The belief was that, by virtue of being chosen by God, the king’s legitimacy could not be simply questioned or undone by popular discontent. This idea aimed to deter rebellion by framing any violent action against the monarch as a sin or an affront to divine order. Even if not all subjects believed this wholeheartedly, it set a powerful cultural and religious precedent, making assassination or revolt more than just a political crime; it was also a spiritual transgression.

When creating shareholder value is a higher moral calling, than actually being moral, you run out of room to hide and questioning the legitimacy of the current system seems like an option.

[Mark Kelly]

Well, that's the -- ahem -- genius of tRump's exortations: They are always so vague (if not downright nonsensical) that if you take them at face value they are entirely meaningless. So you have to make some assumptions about what he really "meant" because if you simply read the syntax there's nothing there
...except possibility.

I liked this analysis of the different responses to the orange felon's campaign: his supporters took him seriously but not literally, his detractors took him literally but not seriously. The latter discovered their mistake on Nov 7th.

[BBB]

I'm not sure it is that simple. They took him literally when they stormed the Capitol building for example.