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.
I don’t think we’re headed towards that society. This was one incident. We’ve lived with the billionaire boot on our necks for decades and decades, I think people have become complacent if anything and the vast majority of us go to tictok or places like Lemmy to vent and then never actually do anything about it. We vote, the billionaire class candidate wins, and nothing ever changes. We sigh, vent, and go back to work.
I wouldn’t take this one incident to mean anything larger.
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
And that’s how you get fascism!
From my point of view; death at the top of the pyramid is more of a symptom/resultant of fascism rather than it being the source.
I could be wrong though
I wouldn’t even say it’s a symptom of fascism, more just a symptom of the same things that give rise to fascism
Nuh uh. Oppressing and brutalising the bottom layer of society is how you get fascism. Assasinations of the rich and powerful is how you get freedom.
Robin Hood, famous fascist.
I know this question is silly but something about this irks me
they filled this country with guns and poor people with nothing to lose. its a powder keg waiting for a match.
ah in that case civil unrest might be reaching an unspoken tipping point
we had a near assassination of a ‘presidential candidate’ (we were so close to not having to… you know) and now this. just like with school shootings, once they start happening they happen more often.
its funny now the powers that be might see gun control as something that needs to happen. too little too late.
If we are it’s the rich’s own fault, which is what that phrase actually means.
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.
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.
I’m honestly not sure which party you’re talking about. It’s just vague enough…
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.
That’s the beauty of it, they’re not wrong either way.
John F Kennedy said that at a time when the majority of Americans weren’t overweight, undereducated, overworked, utterly dependant on their cars (which need the roads maintained by the government to work), and addicted to their phones. I don’t think Americans have the physical or mental capability to wage an effective protest like what happened in the 20th century.
Give it a decade and people might become a lot leaner and a lot stronger though, I hope. Admittedly I don’t have a lot of faith in my compatriots but it could happen.
Luckily for us we’ve set things in motion to destroy most of the benefits that allowed us to live such a sheltered existence, so it doesn’t look like most of us are going to have much of a choice about it. This isn’t self sabotage, it’s a training montage.
Considering the US (and most modern militaries) struggle against insurgencies and irregular militia (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam) there’s no reason to doubt the american public.
Much of the Vietcong were uneducated, underfed, impoverished rural farmers but they were a devastating force to GIs.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”
I’m a fan of this belief because it provides hope in that with the increase of peace and harmony, humanity could course-correct towards a realized utopia.
The publicized hope of increased violence is a scary indicator that we’re approaching closer to commonly associated fiction-based dystopias🫠
The publicized hope of increased violence is a scary indicator that we’re approaching closer to commonly associated fiction-based dystopias🫠
Honestly, I realized a few months ago that we’re already way into dystopia territory. It clicked for me when I read a news story explaining how there are people in Los Angeles that make it their business to rent old, beat up vans and RVs parked on the street for homeless people to live in, for several hundreds of dollars a month. I did a search and found another article about it, linked below. How much more dystopic can things get? In fact, any of the massive homeless encampments we’ve been seeing are already plenty dystopic.
It always does. The lords get too greedy, and the peasants revolt.
The US has done an exceptionally good job of propaganizing that instinct out of people. But the material conditions of American Life have brought the sentiment roaring back.
Basically there are 2 paths. Either way is going to be a revolutionary upturning of the status quo. Either there will be another FDR who reins in the worst impulses of Capital. Or the citizenry will do it for them.
That or GovCo goes full authoritarian to control the population. But that has the potential to spark a civil war. After all, we have more guns than people to use them. A few massacres around the country would spark a real resistance.
We know one thing for sure is that these parasites and their owners will never stop the grift on their own.
Also Trump ain’t FDR…
The rich have exceptional resources to protect themselves. Money is just another form of power.
For instance, even in a doomsday scenario (for them) of the French Revolution, the rich will have personal security guards. These people will be paid very well (relative to the general population), which will keep them loyal enough. They will eat at secure restaurants (similar deal), and enjoy activities in secure locations.
Beyond that, you already see the rich buying private islands (Larry Ellison) and preparing for an uprising (Peter Thiel).
But if you let your imagination run wild, they can even distort the blame, and set up patsies. Owning the media and controlling the narrative (propaganda) is highly effective and already happening in earnest. Plenty of blame is being shifted to immigrants and (because it works, somehow) LGBT+ groups.
I would even say the UHC CEO is himself a fall guy. The buck doesn’t stop at the CEO. There is a step above him. The board of directors is responsible, and they will replace him with another just like him. They are the ones that ultimately choose the direction.
I don’t think the guy making 12 million dollars a year off the suffering of the poor counts as a fall guy.
He’s a willing participant, for sure. But the board and shareholders make even more than that.
It’s hard to defend yourself from guns. Considering Trump, with the resources, intelligence and defense of the entire state still had 2 close calls with assassinations being an example of this.
The second time was in a secure, exclusive, golf resort.
Rifles can reliably hit a target within 200 meters in a single shot with practice. They maintain an effective range from 500 to even 800 meters.
Unless CEOs are okay with living and working in extreme solitude and isolation, there will always remain the possibility of assassination.
It’s mostly irrelevant to your point, but I’m pretty sure the second one at his golf course was an unrelated shooting where someone else got shot. I guess it could be a cover story where they shot the attacker and didn’t want to make it seem like a trend for the media, but I don’t think we have any confirmation that the was indeed a second attempt
200 yards is nothing for a rifle, I shoot at 500 yards on my range for fun. There are schools and ranges for 1mile shots which you can do in a few days learning from long range shooters.
A $1k AR10 or even a 700 will do 750 without breaking the bank.
Small arms are why we have lost basically every war the USA has been in since Vietnam. It’s basically impossible to stop gorilla warfare.
For instance, even in a doomsday scenario (for them) of the French Revolution, the rich will have personal security guards. These people will be paid very well (relative to the general population), which will keep them loyal enough. They will eat at secure restaurants (similar deal), and enjoy activities in secure locations.
In a collapse scenario, their money will be worthless.
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.
They love preaching social Darwinism but are they ready for some natural selection 🐸
I am surprised people have been tolerating the fuckening so well so far.
We live in a richest country and majority life is shit.
Fake news endlessly tells us to just accept it.
A dead CEO is a good message, it is provocative and it got people going.
School shooting copy cats were many… One can only pray that mentally unstable people can find a better targets going forward since shootings ain’t stopping.
Might as well be these parasites.
%100 gonna see more copycats on this. Those who want their name in history are watching this and seeing how the Internet is treating this guy like a hero.
Since most people would be too happy to be (very) rich themselves, I doubt that will ever happen. Or only if we were to live in a “eat the other than me rich” society? ;)
Maybe that’s why the US has gotten this far, because they’ve sold the idea to enough people that they could be rich one day so don’t mess it up for the rich people that you could be one day. Then convincing them to hate the other poor people, even hurt them. It might hurt you too, but remember, one day you’ll be rich and escape the pain.
“Rugged individualism” is propaganda sold to school children from the time they’re in grade school.
Yeah, I think the saying goes “every American man feels like a temporarily embarrassed billionnaire”
No one is even trying to assassinate space karen
No… Lemmy is, but Lemmy is not indicative of society at large, hell, the Internet is not indicative of society at large.
Look at the last US election, if we were going to Eat the Rich would we have elected a putative billionaire candidate backed by Elon Musk?
I mean, kind of. Conservatives don’t view Donald Trump and Elon Musk as the wealthy elite that they are. They view them as “political outsiders”. So yeah, people want change from the status quo, because the status quo is broken for so many.
That’s what fake news is trying to say…
Also, many people on here stated from the start kamala and her DNC komissars are incompetent imbiciles for which they promptly banned from politics and news subs.
So just because mods silence comments sense reasoning, doesn’t mean that it ain’t out there.
Plenty of comments in Politics about how dumb the Democratic campaign was, the bans were for calling them perpetrators of a genocide, which is false.
Love your continued moderation of your communities into an echo chamber by removing opinions that $ ~> murder could ever be considered perpetration of murder.
Don’t get me wrong you are free to disagree, but censorship of the opposing position is so toothlessly lame. Glad people are noticing how ineffectual and cringe your moderation practices are.
Fringe elements are gonna fringe, I get way more thanks for dealing with nonsense than hate.
“fringe elements gonna fringe” says the mod who gets pummeled with downvotes every time this happens
tell me more about that “fringe” in light of that fat ratio 💪💪😎🦅
I’m so hungry…
You know the saying, “death and taxes”? Well, they stopped paying taxes.
I think billionaires are entering a phase known as FAFO.
