bret is nyt's go-to cryptofascist. he's always got these bootlicking propaganda pieces.

Thomson hid behind company sponsored laws passed by bought politicians to legally kill tens of thousands of people despite valid insurance coverage. He is nothing more than a murderous villain, but it's not the least bit surprising that the NYT thinks he's a hero.

It belongs here for sure. What in the world ?

There's room at the top they are telling you still

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill

If you want to be like the folks on the hill

As soon as you're born, they make you feel small By giving you no time instead of it all Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school They hate you if you're clever, and they despise a fool Till you're so fucking crazy, you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years Then they expect you to pick a career When you can't really function, you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV And you think you're so clever and classless and free But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me

I had to look up who Brian Thompson was.

Another rich conservative asshole writing about the working class as if he has any idea wtf he's talking about. He doesn't, of course, but it's the NYT so that doesn't matter.

No sir

"Kill weeds with a knife"

... so like sneaking up to unsuspecting plants and slitting their that's throats? Fucking monster

Oh man, working class.

Stephens is known for his neoconservative foreign policy opinions and for being part of the right-of-center opposition to Donald Trump.

You guys, this is "The Point", it's supposed to be polemic. I'm not saying the opinion's not dumb, but it's literally the column's job to incite a ton of debate by publishing like journals on quantum gravity.

Brian Thompson, Not Luigi Mangione, Is the Real Working-Class Hero One of the more moving stories in The Times this week is an account of the life of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare chief executive who was gunned down on Dec. 4 outside of a Midtown Manhattan hotel. Thompson “grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa,” a tiny farming community north of Des Moines, Amy Julia Harris and Ernesto Londoño report. “His mother was a beautician, according to family friends, and his father worked at a facility to store grain.” Thompson’s childhood was spent “going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms.” Those details are worth bearing in mind as some people seek to cast his killing as a tale of justified, or at least understandable, fury against faceless corporate greed. One ex-Times reporter, Taylor Lorenz, said she felt “joy” at the killing. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator, offered that “violence is never the answer” but “people can only be pushed so far.” Pictures of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of Thompson, have also elicited a fair amount of oohing and ahhing on social media over his toned physique and bright smile. But if Mangione’s personal story (at least what we know of it so far) is supposed to serve as some sort of parable, it isn’t one that progressives should take comfort in. He is the scion of a wealthy and prominent Maryland family, was educated at an elite private school and the University of Pennsylvania and worked remotely from a nice apartment in Hawaii. And while Mangione, like millions of people, apparently suffered from debilitating back pain, excellent health care is not generally an issue for Americans of great wealth. All this suggests that Mangione may prove to be a figure out of a Dostoyevsky novel — Raskolnikov with a silver spoon. It’s a familiar type. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, was a lawyer’s son whose mother moved him to London before he went on to become an international terrorist. Osama bin Laden came from immense wealth. Angry rich kids jacked up on radical, nihilistic philosophies can cause a lot of harm, not least to the working-class folks whose interests they pretend to champion. As for the suggestion that Thompson’s murder should be an occasion to discuss America’s supposed rage at private health insurers, it’s worth pointing out that a 2023 survey from the nonpartisan health policy research institute KFF found that 81 percent of insured adults gave their health insurance plans a rating of “excellent” or “good.” Even a majority of those who say their health is “fair” or “poor” still broadly like their health insurance. No industry is perfect — nor is any health care model — and insurance companies make terrible calls all the time in the interest of cost savings. But the idea that those companies represent a unique evil in American life is divorced from the experience of most of their customers. Thompson’s life may have been cut brutally short, but it will remain a model for how a talented and determined man from humble roots can still rise to the top of corporate life without the benefit of rich parents and an Ivy League degree. As for the killer, John Fetterman had the choicest words: He’s “going to die in prison,” the peerless Pennsylvania senator told HuffPost. “Congratulations if you want to celebrate that.”

Why post this at all?

Paywall removed https://archive.is/DxLk8

The media represents world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world. (Note: This quote is fake and does not appear in Simulacra and Simulation. I tried to delete it, but the system doesn't allow that because this quote has "too many fans" lol.)

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation