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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   30276 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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If you look at who supports/doesn't support him, it's not on clear party lines at all. It's about the legitimacy of institutions vs individuals with respect to violence.

It's simple really: do you think the protagonist of John Q. was in the right? And as it turns out, a very large amount of people think so.

I don't really think comparisons with Joker, which ostensibly is more about how this sort of glorification is a form of performance and simulacra, are valid.

This isn't really simulated or done for glory or the exploitation of someone who's mentally ill for spectacle, there's no lurid livestream full of memes, his actual manifesto isn't the sort of self indulgent dramatic political thesis you might expect (and ironically people forged that because they couldn't get their hands on the real thing).

He plainly explains that he got fucked over by the system, which everyone knows fucks people over constantly, and wanted to make the system find out.

The only principled objection I've seen is that, well, we have rules and you can't just start killing people who wrong you. And very well we do, for good reason. But the legitimacy of those rules is always standing on the legitimacy of the institutions that enforce them, and those institutions have done nothing but continuously burn down their legitimacy over the past century.

Is it really a surprise then that people cheer when someone takes extrajudicial action, much like they cheer for parents who gun down their child's rapist when they get off with a slap on the wrist?

What endears the CEO to the masses? What's actually the story you can tell that makes people have any shred of sympathy for him? What sort of commonality does he share with the average Joe that would give him any sort of moral community? Even basic stuff like "he has a wife and kids and goes to church on sunday" doesn't work and is even laughable given the state of society.

Hell the McD's employee may not even get any of the promised reward on a technicality for reporting the assassin that killed because he got fucked over on a technicality. That's where we are.

We have destroyed the bonds that held society together and turned it into an atomized free for all ruled by managerial bureaucracies. Random acts of violence like this were quite literally predicted as the outcome of this absurdity. Nobody should be surprised.

Is it really a surprise then that people cheer when someone takes extrajudicial action, much like they cheer for parents who gun down their child's rapist when they get off with a slap on the wrist?

I'm not exactly surprised, given the nature of people. But I'm not sure this works as any sort of justification or equivalence.

He plainly explains that he got fucked over by the system, which everyone knows fucks people over constantly, and wanted to make the system find out.

I don’t see any explanation like this in the manifesto. The guy was from a very very rich family. He clearly could afford treatment. No one fucked him over! His grievances seem very murky and probably due to psychosis if I’m betting

We'll know more with time, and perhaps I have been primed by reading the fake one. But the whole back surgery thing seems way too à propos not to factor in. I still haven't seen any convincing evidence that drugs played a part here, however.

In any case this is my interpretation of:

I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.

Yes the back issue probably has some significance to his warped perceptions. Feels victimized, decides to blame insurers as somehow the ones causing his back pain. Maybe opioids triggered a schizophrenic break.

In that passage, what I see is thought disorder, delusions of grandeur, and paranoia

My understanding is that back surgery is very rarely helpful and usually makes the pain worse. People are always upset to find the surgery is not covered, but there's a very good reason for it. It doesn't work.

Back surgery works for severe disk herniations, but the mechanism is that it removes pressure on the nerves. The nerves die under pressure resulting in partial paralysis if surgery is not done within 48 (ideally 24) hours. Nerves don't regenerate/grow after age 30 or so.

I'm reading a lot of stories on reddit of people whose back surgeries were delayed 2 to 6 months over insurance stating that a surgery would not be paid for without a diagnostic MRI (which is fair), and a diagnostic MRI would not be paid for without weeks of physical therapy first (which is unconscionable).

aren’t private MRIs pretty cheap in America? I would just bite the bullet and pay for one if it was that dire

I think they’re about $1000.

Okay so not “cheap” but definitely obtainable

If you look at who supports/doesn't support him, it's not on clear party lines at all. It's about the legitimacy of institutions vs individuals with respect to violence.

I'm seeing professors and mainstream journalists openly supporting him and celebrating the murder. I would bet that both those specific people and their social classes generally would come down solidly on the "legitimacy of institutions" side in the last several societal conversations we've had on the issue: Donald Trump and Daniel Penny, for instance.

his actual manifesto isn't the sort of self indulgent dramatic political thesis you might expect

Do we have his actual manifesto? I read a manifesto that talked about his mother suffering chronic pain and getting screwed over by the insurance and medical system, but I thought that was the fake one.

No argument on the rest, you seem straightforwardly correct.

This seems the real manifesto (Klippenstein is a former Intercept reporter, so not confirmed by a second source yet, but he is decently trustworthy). It is super short:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.

This is the part that sticks out as what's broken in this otherwise reasonable and smart-enough sounding person. "This is a complicated problem that I can't say I fully understand but the answer is obviously violence." He keeps using adverbs like "simply, frankly, clearly", to try and drag violence within the realm of reasonable answers to a problem that is resistant to any other solutions. Violence is a reasonable answer when you are absolutely certain that it is the only way to resolve an issue with more severe consequences than the damage caused by the violence itself, which is why it's such a bad answer to complicated societal problems. But by his admission it IS a complicated societal problem that he doesn't feel like he has a good enough grasp on to explain himself.

Not even a personal grievance, just terminal Reddit-brain?

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