A grainy image of his face drew comparisons to Hollywood heartthrobs. A jacket similar to the one he’s wearing on wanted posters is reportedly flying off the shelves. And the words written on the bullets he used to kill a man in cold blood on a sidewalk on Wednesday have become, for some people, a rallying cry.
Four days after a gunman assassinated a top health insurance executive in Midtown Manhattan and vanished, the unidentified suspect has, in some quarters, been venerated as something approaching a folk hero.
Some? I’ve yet to find anyone not on his side, the most I can find are people sarcastically saying “Oh no, won’t someone please catch him…”
What were the words written on the bullets.
Thing is, if they don’t catch him, it will inspire a copycat to repeat his tactics.
And I honestly can’t even bring myself to say it’s a bad thing; this gunman killed a glorified serial killer, a man who is paid to find people buying his product in order to get help for fatal yet curable illnesses, and kill them in order to save costs.
Violence is wrong and should only be used as a last resort, but well, given the circumstances it’s hard for me to lose sleep at night…
I legally cannot and will not advocate violence, I stress this, I AM NOT ADVOCATING VIOLENCE, IF YOU’RE PLANNING YOUR OWN VIOLENT ACT I BEG YOU TO RECONSIDER! Everyone out there has at least one other person who loves them, and most high profile violent acts backfire horribly on the perpetrator.
But I will say this. Some men can only be pushed so far until they’re at the edge, then they’ll grab onto the person who put them there so at least they fall together… And many MANY men are at the edges.
“Those who make peaceful resolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” - JFK
Deny. Defend. Depose.
They did the worst thing. They found him, named him, and published a glamour shot. This should have been the school shooting procedure if they didn’t want copycats. Instead of an unnamed killer they can vilify they now have the story of a normal, well educated, young man pushed over the edge. An Anti-Hero. I predict one of two things in the next 1-6 years. The death of health insurance or the death of more health insurance executives.
I’d like to take this time to point out that CEOs are cogs in a machine, important, highly placed cogs, but cogs all the same. They couldn’t run the place any other way without their majority shareholders firing them. Those are generally groups like Blackrock and Vanguard, (The largest shareholders in UHC). They have that status in many publicly traded companies. This gives them an outsized say in the board composition of companies across the economy; on issues like food, housing, and yes healthcare. If you’re looking for a deep state or shadow government, these guys are close as it gets. They don’t directly make the twisted policies but they do fire CEOs that don’t make the green line go up in any way possible.
Once Americans figure that out I think the rage is going to be surreal in it’s magnitude.
God I hope so
In an alternate universe, Joker is considered a hero because he killed the criminal and the corrupt while Batman allowed them to live. Joker, a hero against the system, the vigilante who is a vigilante and not just status quo, the vigilante the city needed but not the one it deserved. The Joker movie could set a pretty sweet alternate universe.
Have you watched the Harley Quinn animated series?
Childhood is when you idolize Batman, adulthood is when you realize that cheese is very expensive.
If they ever catch the suspect, he’s going to have a hell of a defense fund. That’s probably why the cops will end up killing him on sight.
I don’t see assassin as “hero” or “heartthrob”.
Our high trust society has eroded due to massive corruption at the highest level (SCOTUS popularity/trust plummeted) , late stage capitalism and catering to billionaires, and incompetent politicians. The incoming administration will be without a doubt no help in this aspect.
The assassin has unfortunately become “necessary”. I don’t praise his actions but I understand why this person decided to take it into their own hands (ie, family or loved one impacted by “deny, delay, defend” policies).
I am absolutely with you. I understand why someone would resort to this in America’s broken for-profit healthcare system, but I also do not think vigilantism should be encouraged. Especially considering all the “internet sleuths” that have ruined innocent people’s lives.
It’s been almost a week. And every day they don’t catch him the lower their chances. I’m starting to have hope they’ll never catch him.
Indeed, this kinda reminds me of Persona 5 where everyone’s freaking out about the Phantom Thieves because Kamoshida confessed to his crimes…
What was written on the bullets?
“Deny, Defend, Depose” is what was “officially” shared, but it’s earily similar to the title of a book ‘Deny, Delay, Defend’ referring to the insurance company policies to avoid making claim payouts.
In any case, the effect is the same.
That’s amazing. I’m glad it’s clear the reason why, no-one can deny it.
Someone killing thousands through corporate policies: Not grim.
Someone killing that person: Grim.
/s
Yeah fuck the title of this article. What a shit way to introduce bias.
Google, show me “CEO assassination rule34”
I’m a 40 year old straight dude with two kids and a wife. I think that guy is a freaking heartthrob! I mean first look at him, he good looking. I always rate people on how they look first but more importantly how they act second. And just look how this guy acted.
Doesn’t seem all that Grim to me
Nor a twist
You drive people to desperation and this is the result. What the fuck else could anyone expect?
Right?
When your business model is an engine that creates desperate people with nothing to lose, you have to expect something like this.
America is finally united
Corporate response is buy more security
Is the start of the first corpo war?
Cyberpunk main quest activated?
good time to start a career in security as a non-American because these scumbags literally can’t trust anyone in their country to not step out of the way at the first opportunity, but I can’t see anyone else taking a bullet for them either so … good luck to them.
After some recent events I read Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service. It includes bit on how well trained, extremely prepared USSS agents were unable to stop a single practice gunman whose identity they knew. All variables were in their favor and they were far more competent than hired security will be. I’ve included an excerpt at the end.
Corporate security will not stop someone willing to go to jail or die for it, such as someone terminally ill and fucked by their insurance. Media puff pieces overstating security effectiveness— spread through outlets owned by the ultra wealthy— would be far more effective in preventing another event like this. Presumably the more people that know, the more emboldened they would be to repeat this heartbreaking, earth-shattering tragedy. Which would just be terrible. Certainly I would be horrified and thus suggest suppressing this info. We should be spreading how corporate security is infallible to protect heroes like Mr. Thompson’s peers so they can continue to be upstanding members of society.
“In the wake of the Wallace shooting, the Service conducted more frequent and intensive drills on how to handle different kinds of attackers on a rope line. Agents and officers practiced over and over, playing the roles of detail agents and spectators on either side of the line. The drill instructor warned the agents ahead of time that a person in the crowd would play the role of the shooter and approach the principal with a gun. The drill instructor even pointed out who that person was.
“The agents were told who had a weapon,” said one former agent. “And the guys are working the rope line and they’re constantly looking at this guy waiting for the moment when he’s going to pull the gun. They know who it is.”
Agents swiveled their heads back and forth from the spectators in front of them to the mock gunman in the crowd. They tried to anticipate his move and readied themselves for the fastest dive or lunge. No matter how many times they did the drill, the result was the same. “They never once stopped him before two shots,” the former agent said.”
He’s not only hot; he’s making an example out of cruel millionaires … millionaires who prefer money and let people die, without ANY hesitation. So yeah, it’s not like being attracted to Dahmer, it’s more like being attracted to Katniss Everdeen.
Heartthrob maybe going a bit too far considering this guy might be a total loon whether or not you agree with what he did.
But then there are people who propose marriage to serial killers after they’ve already been incarcerated.
If the disaffected lunatic fringe can be redirected from shooting up schools to targeting CEOs instead, simply by the promise of becoming folk heroes as opposed to villains, that would be a massive improvement.
Sure, but I don’t think people should be falling in love with lunatics even if the lunatic does something they like.
And for all we know, this guy is a lunatic. Or has done some horrible thing that has nothing to do with this. He could be a rapist or a pedophile or batters his kids… or he could be a nice guy who couldn’t take it anymore.
And until he’s caught, we probably won’t know.
But apparently people love jumping to conclusions. If this guy turns out to be some sort of horrible person for other reasons, I will not be surprised. Hero-worship of anonymous people is not very smart.
If an awful person ends their life doing something heroic rather than villainous, maybe they can be remembered for that instead. Maybe not. Probably the circumstances will be complicated in how they are weighed.
As for this fellow, I feel somewhat confident that the public will not accept whatever person they pin the blame upon as The Adjuster or Spartacus or whatever we call him, alive or dead. They cannot be trusted, so he cannot be caught. He’s well on his way to myth.
I’m just talking about the heartthrob part. Don’t fall in love with someone you know next to nothing about.
Ah but we’ll never know for certain who he is! If they can’t find the real guy, they’ll likely pin it on some nobody with a problematic past. So we can’t fall in love with the real guy, but only a hero archetype instead. And that’s perfectly fine.
That makes no sense. If they don’t catch the real guy, he’ll be free to do it again. If he does it again, it will be clear that the nobody they pinned it on was the wrong person.
We do not trust the oligarchs and their police to actually catch the real guy. There’s a good chance that, whoever they kill and claim to have “got him!” the public will not accept that they really did. We already think they’re going to just murder someone in order to close the case. Maybe they’ll get him for real. Maybe they won’t. We will never know and the conspiracy theory machine will just keep churning out maybes.
If another CEO bites the dust, it will probably be a copycat. This guy is getting away, if not in actual truth, at least in folklore. He’d be a fool to strike again.
Grim
Grimm
