The only real solution is to change laws and pass sweeping reforms of the system,
Right. So what’s your plan for doing this then?
…
Oh, right, you can’t do it because $200 Billion are leveraged against you being able to do this.
Violence is the authority from which all other authority is derived. We respect laws and governments because we have ceded them the right of violence to maintain and enforce those laws. Governments and corporations do not respect us because governments (and by America’s extension, corporations) hold the monopoly on violence.
Therefore, the credible threat of violence is required for a fair and equal negotiation. We don’t need to go in and gun down every C-level executive in the country, the same way the cops don’t need to arrest every single person in the country to impress upon the rest of us what they are capable of. The opponent merely needs to think that you might do it in order to fear and respect the prospect appropriately.
This assassination hasn’t solved any problems directly, not in the least, but what it has done is hand us a bargaining chip that is now ours to squander. We have proven that we, citizens as a block, are capable and perhaps willing to exercise the authority of violence, and the corpostate no longer holds the monopoly. This has the corpostate immediately scared, and puts us in a position to negotiate to prevent more of these, or even for someone else to wield us in their own negotiations (think some politician in a back rooms talk with insurance reps, “look do you want the citizens to keep taking pot shots at you forever or do you want to actually do something about it?”)
We, the people, don’t want violence. It isn’t ours to wield. We gave it up intentionally when we wrote the laws of our lands. But it is the last tool left to us when all others are taken away. The lesson that should be learned here and the real solution we should be looking for is to return to us the other tools we had for negotiation, so that violence isn’t the only remaining way for us to voice ourselves. When corporations were busy union busting and warping tax code and shrinkflating and lobbying down the minimum wage, they forgot that the reason all those things existed was to keep the people happy so they don’t rise up. We already had a corpo hellstate in America once before, and by the end of it, companies gladly instated all these worker benefits after mass general strikes and the third or so time all their corporate offices were firebombed. Skip a few generations and they’ve either forgotten why those policies existed, or they’ve ignored it completely in some show of demented grandeur.
But if I’m being honest I fully expect this opportunity to be thoroughly wasted and for us as a whole to generally learn nothing. It is possible that I will be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not really holding my breath for anything these days.
Right. So what’s your plan for doing this then?
…
Oh, right, you can’t do it because $200 Billion are leveraged against you being able to do this.
Violence is the authority from which all other authority is derived. We respect laws and governments because we have ceded them the right of violence to maintain and enforce those laws. Governments and corporations do not respect us because governments (and by America’s extension, corporations) hold the monopoly on violence.
Therefore, the credible threat of violence is required for a fair and equal negotiation. We don’t need to go in and gun down every C-level executive in the country, the same way the cops don’t need to arrest every single person in the country to impress upon the rest of us what they are capable of. The opponent merely needs to think that you might do it in order to fear and respect the prospect appropriately.
This assassination hasn’t solved any problems directly, not in the least, but what it has done is hand us a bargaining chip that is now ours to squander. We have proven that we, citizens as a block, are capable and perhaps willing to exercise the authority of violence, and the corpostate no longer holds the monopoly. This has the corpostate immediately scared, and puts us in a position to negotiate to prevent more of these, or even for someone else to wield us in their own negotiations (think some politician in a back rooms talk with insurance reps, “look do you want the citizens to keep taking pot shots at you forever or do you want to actually do something about it?”)
We, the people, don’t want violence. It isn’t ours to wield. We gave it up intentionally when we wrote the laws of our lands. But it is the last tool left to us when all others are taken away. The lesson that should be learned here and the real solution we should be looking for is to return to us the other tools we had for negotiation, so that violence isn’t the only remaining way for us to voice ourselves. When corporations were busy union busting and warping tax code and shrinkflating and lobbying down the minimum wage, they forgot that the reason all those things existed was to keep the people happy so they don’t rise up. We already had a corpo hellstate in America once before, and by the end of it, companies gladly instated all these worker benefits after mass general strikes and the third or so time all their corporate offices were firebombed. Skip a few generations and they’ve either forgotten why those policies existed, or they’ve ignored it completely in some show of demented grandeur.
But if I’m being honest I fully expect this opportunity to be thoroughly wasted and for us as a whole to generally learn nothing. It is possible that I will be pleasantly surprised. But I’m not really holding my breath for anything these days.
Vote against privatized healthcare, you stupid assholes. Vote against the GOP. Vote Dem.
and how’s that working for you? and everybody else?
Everybody else voted for the asshole, so now they get to deal with the asshole and I’m continuing to try to educate people on asshole anatomy.