Was Discussing elsewhere that he probably went to the GW bus station from W 86th rather than to perhaps Port Authority because at that hour traffic would be easier (since he took a cab) to get to the GW one than to try to get to midtown manhattan in the 7-8am time frame. He could have been stuck in traffic at that hour, and sitting in a cab in stop and go traffic when one is trying to make a getaway seems like a colossally bad idea. This guy knew his way around NYC.
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The posts I am seeing on social media with people laughing about this or things like he deserved it and that healthcare is terrible etc…. Gross. If this was due to an enraged customer then what did he think killing this guy would do? Does he think that’s gonna make the system change?!
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An argument could be made that he already has, at least a little bit:
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Yea IMO any change would be a temporary thing and this CEO is eventually gonna be replaced with someone else. As I saw posted “He is merely a puppet in a machine”. Violence isn’t the way you make change happen. And to the people laughing at his murder- disgusting. This is a human being with a family.
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Perhaps you should contextualize your comments against the thought, “would I have posted this if I knew the murder victims kid was going to read it”.
This is a more general comment, I am amazed at the tone deafness exhibited by many that seem to either justify the violence or glorify the murderer.
It’s becomes a very dangerous slippery societal slope when we start allowing ourselves to justify killing those in leadership roles at businesses whose practices we disagree with.
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I apologize, I in no way meant to justify, excuse or rationalize violence of any kind. I also didn’t mean to be flippant; it did seem (to me) that those two changes did happen as a result. I guess that’s the definition of tone-deafness- I didn’t realize I was being tone-deaf
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In my opinion, suggesting that the cold blooded murder of someone has created positive change serves to minimize (or justify) the violent act and potentially inspires others towards similar acts of violence. I don’t think this is a tough concept.
Avoiding specifics but apologies as this can really hit home for some.
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I wasn’t saying it was positive change, I solely meant it had caused change. Again I am sorry for causing pain to anyone on these boards or anywhere else. Thank you for making me aware of this.
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Unfortunately, the US seems to have been slipping down that slippery societal slope where an increasingly larger percentage of people cheer for violence against those whom they do not like (whether in politics or business or for some other reason), or otherwise adhere to more extreme viewpoints, because they have given up hope with the normal political processes in terms of solving the various problems that they face (such as the various problems in US health care and insurance, as well as more general problems like the decline in upward economic mobility and increase in downward economic mobility).
Obviously, this societal direction is a generally undesirable one that can eventually lead to very unpleasant results for most people, but it may not be all that surprising if one looks at recent economic history of the last few decades.
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Do we actually have any data that there is a larger percentage of people exhibiting these behaviors? Or does it just seem so because of the many social media outlets where people can more easily make their beliefs known? (I am not denying the US has issues)
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CNN:
“A post by UnitedHealthcare’s parent company mourning Thompson’s death received more than 82,000 reactions as of Friday; 76,000 of them were laughing emojis.”
The demonization of CEO’s has been been accelerating for a long time, including here on CC. It is hard to imagine that this will be the last such incident, perhaps even by Thompson’s killer.
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Don’t y’all think most of these “reactions” are bots?
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Across social media platforms are written and video responses that are definitely not bots that are disturbing.
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I have had to two FB friends who have written on their timelines something along the lines of, “I’m not condoning this, BUT…” and continue on with their thoughts which were callous and insensitive at best and made me question their morality.
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Nah. There’s a lot of very real people using this moment to express their frustration over their personal experiences with our broken healthcare system. Horrible cause-and-effect timing on their part, but the sentiment is real, not manufactured. There’s been a number of articles this week on it in major publications with plenty of people going on the record about it.
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I have two on my Facebook timeline as well. They are both MDs.
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Conversations about the health care system belong in the political forum (thread already exists).
Please get back on the original topic as it’s been narrowly defined on the Cafe.
Thank you!
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I had not realized how many security cameras in NYC. (We watch a lot of UK detective shows, so I knew lots in London etc). Recent article / gift link with timeline.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/nyregion/brian-thompson-gunman-timeline.html?unlocked_article_code=1.■■4.1PML.XfBei2igVbe4&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
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I have been reading this thread without replying (until now) because I have been trying to figure out how I feel about it.
It occurs to me that when an insurance company denies coverage, they are in some cases killing people, for profit. This makes this appear to be a case of a vigilante killing a murderer. I do not want to live in a world where vigilante’s go around killing murderers. There are too many ways that this could go wrong. I would much prefer to live in a world where law enforcement arrests murderers and the court system deals appropriately with the result, or at least where our legal system deals with the original issue appropriately one way or another.
There is also the issue that allegedly the United Healthcare CEO was about to testify in an insider trading legal case. There may be motives here other than revenge for denied health care coverage. The issue of denied health care coverage might just be a cover for the real motivation for this murder.
Perhaps this case reminds us of what might be a breakdown in common sense and fairness that is much wider than one dead CEO.
I hope that we will eventually find out what was really the motivation in this case.
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