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dan-robertsonyesterday at 10:49 PM3 repliesview on HN

I think much the reaction to the Brian Thompson killing also seemed ok with the violence despite it happening before the events you describe, though I guess that could be an outlier.


Replies

culiyesterday at 11:33 PM

I think more and more Americans have what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination".

We pour tons of effort into punishing visceral, direct violence like a stabbing or shooting. But if white collar crime is being committed that leads to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, it's rare that anyone sees jail time. Maybe you could argue the decisions of Brian Thompson made only account for maybe 10% of why XYZ died but when you scale that out, you could easily argue this to be a form of white collar mass murder.

I think the younger generations are increasingly aware of this disparity in justice. If you find it hard to understand the celebration of violent vengeance but don't feel the same inability to understand the celebration of Jeffrey Doucet's retribution, then perhaps you are lacking the sociological imagination.

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chaosharmonicyesterday at 11:57 PM

That's because Brian Thompson was functionally a serial killer.

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typonyesterday at 11:46 PM

And the reason for _that_ is because of the callous way American society accepts the deaths of thousands of people who die due to the Healthcare Industrial complex (of which Brian Thompson was a key member of). Just because those deaths don't happen with guns doesn't make them any less important.