Preemptive Class War

And other uncomfortable phrases and thoughts

Today the CEO of an insurance company was gunned down in New York.

Specifically the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the most reprehensible, amoral, atrocious insurers to ever disgrace the field.

Most of the breathless coverage is focusing on the death of the man, on his family, on the search for the killer, on what an affront this is to a civilized society, where we, after all, solve our problems with words, not violent action.

Like, say, when an insurance company sends a denial letter to a child for anti-emetics when they are being treated for cancer.

Like the person in charge of billing talks to you when you come into the hospital afraid you’re going to die and tells you about your billing options.

I’m sure you see where this is headed.

Never mind the bought and sold news apparatus. The public’s reaction, and my reaction, was one of abject joy. Maybe these fuckers will now understand that if you are awful, there are consequences. Maybe they’ll think twice before denying everything now.

We don’t condone murder, but that’s not what celebrating this is. We’re celebrating a vile human being no longer being on the planet and the potential for change in medical policy this represents. Or at least, I am.

“But he had a family.”

So did everyone his policies and actions killed, and fuck you, collaborator.

“You can’t advocate for murder.”

I’m not. I want the shooter imprisoned. A crime is a crime.

When Mitch McConnell spaced out on live television, I sent vibes hoping he’d die of natural causes. When Donald Trump got Covid, I hoped it would take him naturally. When Donald Trump was targeted by assassins, I did not (and do not) advocate for political violence, yet I would have cheered had they succeeded.

Most people are too cowardly to admit that they feel this way, for fear of how ooky it feels. You’re right. It’s ooky. Sometimes our society and its failings push us to a position where a thing we absolutely know is good feels bad.

Let’s try thinking about it another way. Killing is wrong.

Had the Russians or the Allies stormed Hitler’s bunker and killed him, would you want that killer jailed? Would you feel for Hitler’s family?

No. Because that’s an easy moral dilemma. We were at war with Hilter. Hitler was a purveyor of atrocity. His policies and actions killed and brought misery to hundreds of millions, and he declared a war on civility.

Now what if your policies and actions kill and bring misery to hundreds of millions, but you don’t declare a war? What if the only difference between Hitler and this dead motherfucker is the illusion of civility?

When Dick Cheney suggested that we needed to go to War in Iraq to stop Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction on the world, his fear was both groundless and, more importantly, a lie. The administration knew that there were no such weapons, and they fabricated a case for them in the name of the war they wanted.

Many people, nonetheless, were persuaded in the necessity of that war, even if their claims were a lie. Saddam was a bad guy. Stability in the Middle East was important. Democracy must spread, or whatever your racist uncle who has the Trump sign in his yard said back when the fascists pretended they actually gave a shit about whether their opponents should agree with them.

How they felt about the impending threat meant more than the reality of that threat, and this is why the notion of torture and preemptive war was both morally bankrupt and a stain on the national character. One we’ll never recover from.

Yet here I am, celebrating what is essentially a first strike in a preemptive war, save against the deadly, real, demonstrable, measurable consequences of unfettered capitalism.

The argument for Iraq went, if we go in there, even if half a million brown people die (and let’s not delude ourselves, if it had been more than the half million it was, they wouldn’t have blinked), it’s worth it if just ONE AMERICAN LIFE was saved.

I am then inclined to ask, given today’s news, what if more than half a million Americans could be saved by the death of one man?

What if, as a hypothetical thought experiment solely, not as anything I’d actually advise anyone to do, random assassins killed the CEO of every major insurer, and promised to continue to do so unless more claims were approved. And consequently, more claims were approved.

Is that not a preemptive war that will save millions of lives over time? What is the theoretical difference save the delusion of civility derived from a declaration of war, of soldiers on a field, of a piece of paper saying it’s okay?

And are we already in the beginning stages of a war, I wonder, just one that no one sees yet. A new kind of war. A war with no legitimate combatants, only isolated incidents with no direct aims save justice?

A literal class war, as opposed to the one that the Fox News people scare you with.

Because we are dying, make no mistake, and shots are being fired, from the corporate side of things. We are worked to death for endless debt and no health care and fascist rule, and the companies control everything. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, and there is no future to the American Dream. We are on an inexorable decline.

To be abundantly clear, I do not advocate for murder as a solution to a political problem. This is not a coded essay. I am not saying, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” I sincerely abhorr violence as a response.

This perspective exists in the same world where I know that a bullet through the forehead of about a hundred people might save a few hundred million from lives of misery. Even a homicidal bullet, not a bullet fired in direct self-defense.

If those hundred people were the leaders of the Third Reich, we would not bat an eye.

When these hundred people are fascists leaders of the Alt-Right, we would call it heinous, and disavow the killers no matter the benefit of their actions.

There is disparity there, though I am hard pressed to see it more and more by the day.

At what point is it moral to fire the first shot if the person killing you and yours refuses to admit that they’re trying to kill you? If they disguise it as a profit motive? If they enshrine it in the law as legal, per the kings of old, in our new feudal order? When every path to moral redress is cut off utterly?

These are uncomfortable questions. I don’t like asking them. But no one else is.

They’re writing columns about the nationwide manhunt for the killer of one CEO while giving nary a written fuck for people forced to choose between fingers, or live in pain, or die so their family can continue to have a house.

Though liberals do not see it, war has already been declared on our way of life. On democracy. The question is more how far it will be allowed to proceed before a moral defense must become a literal defense, and where that line stands. Or if we will simply let everything we hold dear be taken away in the name of servicing a system that doesn’t care for us and will not save us from the coming conflicts.

Today I saw the first death that I would call a legitimate enemy combatant felled, though I would not sign on to the soldier’s army, and though I think it was a war crime. Nonetheless, the comfort I feel with their actions, though discomfiting, is just, I truly believe.

We want to use our words. But when the enemy is killing us with words, it’s time to start considering action. But what action?

My preferred actions would be general strikes, political advocacy, and financial manipulation (boycotts and the like). But when those are prohibited or discouraged by law, disincentivized for fear of teargassing and nightsticks, and when we have no money to manipulate anything marketwise, what tools are left to the desperate but violence?

We want to use our words, but our voices have been stripped from us.

And those who hear other sounds come from the victims, even bangs, then need not express surprise when they have disarmed our other outlets.