It basically boils down to: Brian Thompson grew up in a working class family in Iowa, while Luigi Mangione came from wealth and went to private schools. He compares Mangione to Osama bin Laden, and other "Angry rich kids jacked up on radical, nihilistic philosophies," who "cause a lot of harm, not least to the working-class folks whose interests they pretend to champion."
The author then mentions some polling that says people like their health insurance provider, actually. And then finally he says this:
Thompson’s life may have been cut brutally short, but it will remain a model for how a talented and determined man from humble roots can still rise to the top of corporate life without the benefit of rich parents and an Ivy League degree.
Without a stitch of irony. Thompson may have come from working class roots, but that ain't where he ended up. So if it's ok to become rich, but it's not ok to be born rich, then I guess this author supports a 100% inherence tax? Yeah, somehow I doubt it.
The fact that he came from working class roots and chose to become a massive piece of shit makes him even worse than someone who was born into privilege.
Likewise, Luigi Mangione came from a background of privilege, yet gave it all up in the fight for the rights of all Americans.
That's very true. Mangione sacrificed his upper class life to fight back against the system, whereas Thompson used the opportunities afforded him by the system to enrich himself at the expense of others.
Yes! Brian Thompson and Luigi were both class traitors for completely different reasons. Thompson betrayed the working class for his own selfishess while Luigi was like Engels in that he walked away from extreme privilege because he was disgusted by what his class was doing to us.
But it doesn't take that much effort to do some minimal self-education about power structures and injustice and see the patterns. I'd say given how mainstream those discussions are on much of social media these days, it probably takes active work to avoid a basic understanding...
But it doesn’t take that much effort to do some minimal self-education about power structures and injustice and see the patterns.
yeah, and my point is, that it doesn't change anything, it just makes you aware of it.
The human ability to be conscious of it's own existence brought us untold intelligent never before seen. And an unparalleled fear of death, that will never be sated. Neither of these things will ever change in human history, i don't see why this matters in this context either.
At the end of the day, it is what it is, what really matters is whether people are objectively bad people or not.