Defenders of the health insurance industry reacted to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York by saying that murder and violence are never the answer because there’s always the option of working within the political system to reform a business based on profiting off pain, misery and death of sick Americans. In reality, however, the system does not allow any challenge to the status quo.
Work Inside Our 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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The discussion really does turn (much like the abortion “debate”) on a poorly defined term. In this case, violence.
As has been pointed out in various places, denial of claims for needed medical services is, very much, an act of violence. The Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month-long act of economic violence against a racist transportation policy. A boxing match is a form of highly controlled violence. An MMA match even more so. In “Starship Troopers,” Robert Heinlein has a character observe that “When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence.”
Violence is not always wrong. It’s just that so many of us have been conditioned to the simply binary of good-bad absolutism that it’s no longer possible to have an adult discussion about this. And that’s the way the masters like it. Creationism over science, identity politics over exposure to Marxism. (Wait? You mean evolution is a fact? Oh my God, of course economic class is a stronger unifier than a physical characteristic. How did I know learn any of this in school? I sure could go for a Pepsi. Let me tweet a tiktok video ad to my facebook.)