Breaddah

Hey you’re messing with our class solidarity posting that

Besides a one time donation y’all might also consider cancelling your Spotify and NYT and WashPo subs and putting those monthly payments to NPR/PBS/other great independant or local news sources.

They tamed those sandworms from birth

I mean the social contract is not always a physical thing and not always by explicit consent. Just by carrying out our part of the system and accepting the benefits of it (infrastructure/protection/stability) we are implicitly consenting to it.

That being said, I absolutely agree with you that it is always slanted heavily toward the wealthy and not to benefit the working class but only to keep them in line.

Agreed - the alarm bells should have been ringing long ago.

There was a social contract between the upper and lower class (the middle class is a lie used to further divide us) that was basically - we’ll let you have your mansions as long as our quality of life improves as well. But the rich have been hollowing out that agreement for decades. The highest tax bracket (the percentage taxed on income only above a certain amount) has plummeted since the middle of the 20th century. Regulations have been removed and replaced with weaker regulations (like Dodd/Frank) and then THOSE regulations have been hollowed out. Any sense of responsibility and duty the rich might have ever had to the people and place that rewarded them so greatly has vanished and in place of it is cynical and manipulative and greedy - because the only thing that matters is getting more and taking more - removing the safety barriers that keep them from getting more, no matter who it might hurt because somehow acquiring wealth has become the most important thing (not doing something great, improving the world, or helping others).

At each step, the social contract weakens. As long as enough people aren’t feeling the pain they’re going to abide by their part of the bargain because most of the rest of us ARE actually just trying to live good lives and make sure it’s good for those around us. But there will be a moment when enough people are feeling the pain and won’t have any other choice but to act. In a system where justice is only dealt to the lower class - that action is guaranteed to be carried out outside the system.

This incident is casting fresh light on norms that has basically become invisible to us in our lives - like the media’s natural tendency to side with the establishment.

Yeah I don’t get it either. Got this one because it was stupidly blingy. Guess what side this is?

Also - $2000 for vaccines?!

I didn’t think I’d find someone to top my 45,000 minutes

Yeah I feel like this is another thing that is fully normalized - the cops are there to protect wealth. Just like how the health care industry’s practices have been normalized.

Oh never mind - theory is that it’s referencing this book: https://delaydenydefend.com/

Is it preferable to status quo? It may even be morally justifiable. But the world I’d want to live in is one where people like this face justice through the same system you and I would.

I think the biggest thing to emphasize - and you mentioned it but I think it bears repeating over and over - is that when the system fails to enforce justice, people will seek justice themselves. This is the social contract you mentioned. I think we should expect more of this until the system is reformed and people like this do face justice within it.

This has vibes of something larger than someone unhappy with just UHC

Curous to know more about this as a person with very little understanding of the actual functionality of guns

I’d even say to consider it if you are American. There is so much great stuff out there that you only find outside the bubble.

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I think the powers that be underestimate our thirst for justice. This is the closest thing to justice for the rich we’ve seen in - maybe our lives?

I don’t want to live in a world of vigilante justice but this kind of thing is inevitable when the system fails us for as long as it has.

The thing is that none of us celebrate violence and certainly not murder, but when this is the closest thing to justice that we get for people like him?