The quote in this cartoon is adapted from an employee of United Healthcare interviewed by the New York Times. It is remarkable for its lack of self-awareness. If the system is the problem, it’s immoral to work for the system.
Doing Your Best Within an Evil System
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Meanwhile Ted would give his left boy to be back at the L.A. Times.
I’d give MY left boy if this goddamned homepage carousel would stop.
The problem with the immorality argument is the inherent absolutism. There is no realistic way for enough people to exit the system to cause it to fail. We’re all bound to it. Unless you run off into the middle of nowhere and live off the land, you are part of the system. Right now, the media is scrupulously avoiding the real discussion about the CEO and the shooter. It’s the one in “Starship Troopers.” Heinlein argues that “When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
Voting, however, doesn’t work anymore because the system has been corrupted by the sharpies. The dems will never get around to voting on single-payer health care. The Greens? Look at their websites and tell me these are organized people. Lobbyists and CEOs and bought politicians have turned this into a paper democracy.
So what’s left? Heinlein again: “Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.”
I suspect they’ll have to shut down the internet once it really gets going. Mustn’t let the videos circulate of the gated communities being burned to the ground.