The violence is already normalised!

Many people are fretting over the public response to the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and what it means for civil society.

In modern so-called democracies, we like to think we should not have to resort to violence, especially when the target is a pillar of the corporate establishment. These are supposed to be the balanced and level-headed people going about their important business in our societies. The thinking sort of goes that they are just doing their normal business thing, so why are they being gunned down? The thinking continues that just because we may not agree with them, that does not mean we should kill them.

Within that naive context, that thinking might seem to make sense for those who don't like killing in the open streets. However, the proper context is much much wider, and is the real element in the room when taking into account the total violence happening in our so-called civilised societies. So let us look at the wider context of total deaths, including those due to corporate operations. Just because their executives have not been charged with crimes does not mean they are not responsible, nor that those deaths should not be part of the total picture.

By continuing to produce, promote and lobby politicians for the continued mass availability of their products that they know is killing people in these numbers, these executives are knowingly committing mass murder, yet are somehow absolved of any legal culpability for them. This is violence on a Nazi Holocaust level per year, yet there is nowhere near as much publicity or pushback about it than a mass shooting that involves a handful of people. That is not just normalising violence, but just dismissing it altogether if corporations do it is perverse.

It is this distorted view of responsibility of deaths that is giving rise to praise being heaped on those who dare to take down corporate executives whose egregious actions result in masses of deaths. Unless concrete steps are taken to remove such dark triad CEOs from being able to commits such mass murder, expect far more murders of them in future. There is no rational basis for giving CEOs such free reign just because they want to make money, yet punish those they have aggrieved as if what they are doing is far worse. Hitlers cronies were hung, yet murderous CEOs are lauded.

Normalising any violence damages societies. There is no moral high ground in condemning the one who took down a mass murderer. The writing on the wall is that if we as societies do not actually stop the dark triads that are destroying our societies, there is no recourse for ordinary people but to take that law into their own hands. We have politicians campaigning for office proudly claiming the right of another country to commit genocide, with mass media help, and yet somehow think that is not normalising violence. It is not just CEOs normalising violence, the whole upper strata is doing it.

We are coming to the time of reckoning about what sort of societies we really want. We cannot continue to pretend we have democracies when the rich and wealthy can cause the deaths of millions with impunity. That only sets the stage for revolution, and those do not really end up well for anybody, except for the dark triad types who thrive in such chaos. If we are to ever actually have civilised societies, the dark triads must be neutralised, either by restricting their access to power, or others will take them out permanently. After all, they are only the 0.1%

Those in power have kept their place by picking on a disadvantaged group to blame for what those in power have themselves created. This has often been effective in mobilising the oppressed under the identity label given to them, so that they get to claim some power and say in their society. Basically, the powerful nominate who to challenge them, but usually end up unintentionally improving the strength of those they target. In this latest paradigm, if they continue to be blatant exploiters of others for profits, the CEOs might just be predisposing one of those others to shoot them in the back.