Is the US a dystopia?

Kinda wild to have a “normie” manifesto (first ever?)…. Has to be far more fearsome for the powers that be than your typical Dorner/Kaczynski affair

― H.P, Monday, December 9, 2024 9:09 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I was wondering about this, every time you see one of these from a mass shooter they're always nuts, lotta "well okay he has a point" here

The second amendment means I am my own chief executive and commander in chief of my own military. I authorize my own act of self-defense in response to a hostile entity making war on me and my family.

?

― treeship., Monday, December 9, 2024 10:12 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean sure why not its no more creative than the supreme courts interpretation

a well-regulated militia of one

this feels like a Taco Bell chef took the same ingredients of Steve Kerr's life story and made the Black Jack taco of life stories

the title seems to suggest his issue is with allopathic, or conventional, medicine in general and not just insurance. maybe it is just a cheeky allusion and shouldn't be read into too much

yeah, it refers to the allopathic (non-violent) solution to the healthcare problem

I agree it is a stretch

Could totally be fake

so much of it -- the potassium nitrate line, back pain, the pokemon image -- does seem to align a bit too perfectly with the small pieces of information about him that first hit the news

Yeah, if I had to bet on it I'd say this is fake. Using FurAffinity fanart of the pokemon on the guy's twitter banner is the tell for me.

if it's fake it's doing a pretty good job of making the case imho

When the imbalance of power in a society absolutely precludes the possibility of a just redress of grievances through legal and non-violent means, then seeking redress through violence is a tempting option. As a single act of defiance it is not a radical act in the sense that the primary cause of the injustice remains unaffected; it accomplishes nothing more than vengeance, along with implanting the suggestion in the public mind that vengeance is possible, if you are willing to attempt it. Given his isolation from organized collective action, he did what he could. It is something, but I can't see his act as leading anywhere beyond one man killing another man and perhaps inspiring a few similar isolated acts. It won't touch the system. That's much, much harder to do.

"It won't touch the system."

Well not with that fucking attitude.

i think it's very possible a lot people underestimated of how much these medical insurance people are downright hated. it's definitely not going to snap the industry into cleaning up their shit anytime soon. but more people are probably going to be spurred into some kind of action that doesn't involve gunning down CEOs in the street. if this makes it to trial, the media is going to have to talk about this a lot. a lot more people's stories are going to get out there about avoidable death and suffering at the hands of the insurance industry. more people pressuring politicians... etc etc
something like 2/3 of people are hunky dory with this guy getting gunned down and that's going to have some reverberations. i'm skeptical real change will come out of it, but i won't rule it out either.

let's pump the brakes on translating the response we see online into the real world.

these companies are hated, sure, but there's no way 2/3rds of people - or even half, or even a quarter, probably - are hunky dory with the CEO getting murdered. the vast majority of people out there across the middle of America would say something along the lines of "they may be bad / i may not like them, but that doesn't mean we can start killing people in the streets!"

the conversation is good, though. so far, Luigi has done a masterful job of stoking that conversation with the bullets, the monopoly money, etc., and trial coverage would certainly help.

these companies are hated, sure, but there's no way 2/3rds of people - or even half, or even a quarter, probably - are hunky dory with the CEO getting murdered. the vast majority of people out there across the middle of America would say something along the lines of "they may be bad / i may not like them, but that doesn't mean we can start killing people in the streets!"

― alpine static

i mean i'd be fucking terrified if 2/3 of people did think we could start killing people in the streets! how long has america existed in a "state of exception"? absolutely killing people is wrong, but surely under the circumstances we can make an exception for the decedent, right?

at this point i'm starting to get 2 am thoughts. it's not, maybe, that we live in a state of exception, but that we increasingly _don't_. having worked in the insurance industry... it used to be that the company i worked for made exceptions all the _time_, when it was genuinely a nonprofit. it used to be driven by values. the people who would make the decisions, one of them would cry and then they'd approve the treatment. those people aren't making the decisions, haven't been for some time now. it's a for-profit company pretending, badly, to be a nonprofit. rules are, in fact, good, but sometimes the rules are, like, arbitrary and stupid, and there's no appealing them, no exceptions, no alternatives. except... what? start a gofundme for your cancer treatment? there are a lot more people who do that than there are people killing ceos in the street.

vigilante "justice" is a poor substitute for justice. yeah, killing people in the streets? terrible idea. i'm absolutely, 100% opposed. this is, like, as close as i can think of to a "the bar is in hell" situation. somehow, though, for-profit healthcare in the united states manages to _sail_ under that bar. sail under it so cleanly that some massive chunk of americans look at what this guy did, shrug, and say, i don't know, something like "i mean, it's better than nothing. it is what it is. what're you gonna do?"

like, barely a month ago, i voted, consciously, for a genocidaire, one who lost, decisively, to another, worse genocidaire, one whose platform was, as far as i can tell, that america should genocide more people. perhaps that's why this guy killing a ceo makes me feel so relieved and hopeful, even though i'm pretty strongly opposed to murder. fuck, i don't know. usually i feel bad about people getting killed, and i feel good about this ceo getting killed. i'm relieved that i can actually say that out loud without a bunch of people shouting me down telling me how horrible i am.

https://i.imgur.com/ICxv8G9.png

open for a surprise https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ironic-suspect-unitedhealthcare-slaying-played-video-game-killer-rcna183550

lol took me a while to get to it

the manifesto: https://archive.is/7jUsF#selection-1051.0-1054.0

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, 10 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Poor guy, just awful. Painful and that's just reading it.

At least he got his revenge.

would like to see confirmation that it's real

Gotta say if the bit about his mum is fake then...that would be something.

Read this article for tips on how to evade law enforcement capture lol

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/10/us/luigi-mangione-shooter-unitedhealthcare-ceo/index.html

pic.twitter.com/6DNlUDvXT2

— Gritty is the Way (@Gritty20202) December 10, 2024

name, face, and hotness reveal means we should start a new thread, no?

yeah seems clear that if this hit had been carried out by a real professional the police would be dead in the water.

vladimir putin has the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever (assassinate all of america's top CEOs)

I saw some Fox footage of bumbling NYPD allegedly *searching* a park for the hitman the other day, it was v funny

"just kilt a CEO, think I'll go for a jog now"

This Fox segment on the search for the shooter is incredible. Look at how the NYPD searches Central Park lol pic.twitter.com/jnPXMK2ukq

— Read Abolish Rent (@JPHilllllll) December 8, 2024

LMAO. fucking pigs

very funny to make a big show for the camera and still do the shittiest job possible

Two old guys walking the track at my gym this morning. One says to the other: "They day he murdered the CEO, but how many people has the insurance industry murdered, do you know what I mean?"

old guys at gym otm

I'm on a year-end marketing Zoom call for a big red-state insurance company right now and let me tell you, the executives are scared.

xpost I heard the same conversation at work yesterday.

who murders the murdermen

I found the manifesto pretty affecting but it seems like it’s fake? Or doesn’t match what we know about the one found on his person

yeah I am seeing that as well, v confusing

Wait are the NYC cops in that footage wearing Guy Fawkes masks or is that my failing eyesight on a tiny phone screen?

they wore No-Face masks to lure him enthusiastically from the bushes

In the growing body of evidence against the industry, one of my best friends scheduled an evaluation with a counselor so she could finally get formally diagnosed with autism. She had to give up a work shift to do it, did all of the pre-work yesterday.

Gets a reminder one hour before appointment, which is virtual. Dude doesn't show to the Zoom call, doesn't give any head's up that he's running late, then shows up. She expresses frustration that he was late when she had to take off of work and he was demanding they reschedule and she said "no, i can't!" and he basically didn't like getting the feedback and hung up on her and refunded the money without comment

(He was like 15-20 minutes late)

Good Max post about the Type of Guy that Mangione is:
https://maxread.substack.com/p/what-type-of-guy-is-the-alleged-uhc

I’ve seen some people suggest that Mangione’s politics must be “insane” or “incoherent” or “irrational,” and that may be true in some abstract sense, but I think the cultural and ideological portrait painted by his Twitter account is actually a fairly common and intelligible one, and would be pretty familiar not just to anyone who spends a lot of time on Twitter but to anyone who works in tech or frequents a gym weight room. It’s a loudly non-partisan, self-consciously “rational” mish-mash of declinist conservativism, bro-science and bro-history, simultaneous techno-optimism and techno-pessimism, and self-improvement stoicism--not left-wing, but not (yet) reactionary, either. The basic line is something like: The world is getting worse and phones are killing us; politics won’t save us but technology might; in the meantime, lift weights, take supplements, listen to podcasts

Life in These United States xpost

So the end result was that her mild expression of frustration was warranted to terminate the call even though they're aware her autism contributed to the directness of her response.

What a country.

if I'm Luigi I'm wanting this to go to a jury trial obv.

I think part of the anger at the insurance industry now w/sharing of stories, and the support of Luigi or at least the ambivalence many feel about this story is also tangentially related to the events of the last couple of months, w/a small select group of megawealthy tech giants/publishers/moguls tipping the scales of the country in their favor, and this feels like a reaction to someone finally striking back against someone who was yes a minor league player in the lower rungs of the upper-upper class, but it was nonetheless someone striking back brutally against a behemoth that constantly grinds most of us down.

Luigi Mangione on his way to his extradition hearing shouts: "This is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people" pic.twitter.com/GXSEGBuGpn

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 10, 2024

Possibly a review of Gladiator 2?

I can't remember if this was posted here, but hfs
https://www.propublica.org/article/thomas-weiner-montana-st-peters-hospital-oncology

that manifesto may be real, but it definitely feels a bit like something someone would write if they were faking a manifesto for this guy.

a little too even-keeled, y'know?