Assassinations and pacifications

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Watching the internet erupt in glee after the assassination of that corn-fed health insurance CEO in Midtown Manhattan really drove home how much anger and hatred there is towards the shitty corporate extraction culture that powers this country. If anything can heal America’s bitter culture war it's stuff like this: the cool and confident murder of a healthcare exec, a representative of the most blatantly evil industry there is…an industry that makes money by methodically and purposefully denying medical coverage and condemning people to suffering and early death.

The internet is awash with people telling stories about how his company killed their moms, dads, and siblings by denying necessary medical care. The guy who pulled the trigger became an instant people’s hero. To many, justice has been served. People are simping for him all over the internet.

That brings me to something I imagine a lot of people are thinking, too: Why aren’t there more hits like this? America is awash in guns and ammo. It’s also awash in misery and suffering…suffering overseen by a very comfortable and very secure ruling class that goes about its daily business without a care in the world. Yet when people snap and go on rampages, they rarely punch up to the source of their oppression. Instead of hitting CEOs and billionaires, they lash out at their schools, their coworkers, their mid-level bosses, or, more likely, they don’t go after anyone at all: they use their guns to blow their brains out. I think more than half of all gun deaths are suicides. So all the weapons that people have, all the talk about how guns are the last defense of political rights…and yet guns are mostly a suicide tool used by men to end their misery. Guns are no different than a bottle of pills, just a lot messier. It’s sad, really.

So the question still remains…Judging by the outpouring of hate for the med insurance business and support for the assassin…why aren’t there more crimes of retribution? Why aren’t people avenging the deaths of their kids, their wives, their parents, their friends at the hands of these goons? Why do Americans let the system grind them down like this? Where is people’s dignity?

One big case of retribution that comes to mind is the case of South Ossetian Vitaly Kaloyev, who travelled to Switzerland and stabbed to death an air traffic controller responsible for causing an air crash that killed Vitaly’s wife and two young children. Vitaly went to jail in Switzerland, became an international hero, came back home to Russia a respected man, and had multiple films made about him — including one in which he was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not sure if this case is the best example, as Vitaly’s revenge killing was basically a personal matter. It was about grief and a desire to make someone pay for a mistake. It wasn’t a response to systemic criminality — like it would be if someone targeted an insurance company exec. Still…Why don’t corporate revenge murders happen more often in America, especially in cases where the system is obviously immoral and corrupt and yet legal on paper, like it is with medical insurance companies denying claims?

Americans have this big sense of their own bravery. People are convinced this society is full of non-conformists who won’t take crap from anyone…that they are a people that will stand up to tyranny. And yet the reality is that the population is docile and meek when it comes to power. People let the system put their loved ones into a meat-grinder everyday and do nothing about it. Best case scenario they’ll walk away with a cash settlement. Paying people off with money…that’s how immoral acts are made good here, if they are at all. And people take it. What’s that Jefferson quote that Americans love to throw around online? Oh yeah, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Yeah, right. More like…

Growing up as an immigrant I always got the sense that America is by and large a very docile society. Everyone here is afraid of stepping out of bounds. We, as immigrants, were different. We defended each other…we had solidarity…we took matters into our hands…went against the law…carried out vigilante justice in our own small way. I remember breaking every window in a house because a woman who lived there maliciously had my girlfriend's car towed. Or I remember that when I was 15 me and my three friends stormed into a school to scare some kid who had been bullying my friend’s sister, barging into the yard at lunchtime and making a big show of it and then sprinting for the exits to avoid getting grabbed by security. It was petty stuff but serious for kids like us. I didn’t feel docile then. But the more time I spent in America, the more integrated I became, and the less I hung out with my Soviet immigrant peers, the more obedient and afraid I got. I felt this docility in my body. It had a psychical component.

I see now that America is a deeply pacified society. And Americans can’t admit it. All this gun culture stuff is just a front, a way of masking a grim reality. That’s why this assassination is exhilarating to so many. Someone actually did something.

And...the people’s will demands more.

—Yasha