I’m pretty sure that everyone used to understand that wealthy people were wealthy because they were born into it, and poor people the same, and that that had nothing to do with someone’s value as a person. Whether you were rich or poor was just your lot in life, completely unrelated to whether you were smart or kind or clever or loyal or anything else.
At some point, that changed. Now, conventional wisdom is that “rich people have a lot of money because they are or did something to deserve it, and poor people are poor because they are or did something to deserve it.” Wealth or lack thereof has become a shorthand for a person’s value, even though it’s still as true as ever that your economic position has everything to do with your parents and little to do with anything else.
The Thompson life story the media is trying to portray is all about this. He deserved to be there because he was born in Iowa and went to a state university and worked at a meat packing plant (I can’t find a source for that one but I swear I read it somewhere).
He was a rich farm kid. Almost as rich as it gets in rural Iowa.
He was crowned homecoming king in 1992 and graduated as class valedictorian, a State of Iowa Scholar and an All-State trombonist in band.
He attended the University of Iowa (UI) in Iowa City, where he met his future wife. He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in accounting in 1997. He was also valedictorian of his UI graduating class, and UI later said that he “graduated with special honors and with highest distinction, meaning his GPA was 3.95 or above.” [source]
His family was petite bourgeoisie, living in an economic boom for farmers, and the upper middle class in a low cost of income state and time, and this man is the definition of class traitor. He could have been doing something good and he straight up decided to kill people with bureaucracy for money. He could have been a fucking politician and fought for people’s rights to have health care but he chose this. He chose money over people and urged his company to do that too.
If there is a devine bad place, by many views of many religions, he would be there. And clearly many of us have judged him, by our own ethics and beliefs, to be guilty as well. I don’t understand the pacifists that say, “killing is just wrong” and don’t care about those that were killed by his actions. It just astounds me that they can know that, and still say “but, thou shalt not kill”.
The just world fallacy is a lot older than that though. You can blame good ol’ religion for that one (which has always been in cahoots with capital for the entirety of its existence).
It’s large organized religion that does that, not personal faith. Pretty much everyone here would agree Jesus was a great guy, but would also agree that his church has done a lot of bad shit.
This is coming from me as a Christian, just so you know.
That changed with the rise of right wing radio and a concerted propaganda campaign funded directly by these rich assholes.
You look at the Kochs or the Mercers or Thiel and you’ll find they spent ungodly amounts of money funding rightwing shills. There may have been 1 or 2 rightwing broadcasters that are actually somewhat supported by ads and products. However, now-a-days in particular it’s all just some rich assholes dumping a few million on these grifters to keep them in business lying to their audience.
The rise of cable news as the primary source of news has also had a big effect. Turns out billionaires aren’t likely to want their newscasters talking about raising their own taxes.
This is such an insane position that you mention these people accept because a billion dollars, a thousand million, is so unfathomably wealthy and disgusting that how could anyone ever deserve that much money without being literally Jesus?
I’m pretty sure that everyone used to understand that wealthy people were wealthy because they were born into it, and poor people the same, and that that had nothing to do with someone’s value as a person. Whether you were rich or poor was just your lot in life, completely unrelated to whether you were smart or kind or clever or loyal or anything else.
At some point, that changed. Now, conventional wisdom is that “rich people have a lot of money because they are or did something to deserve it, and poor people are poor because they are or did something to deserve it.” Wealth or lack thereof has become a shorthand for a person’s value, even though it’s still as true as ever that your economic position has everything to do with your parents and little to do with anything else.
The Thompson life story the media is trying to portray is all about this. He deserved to be there because he was born in Iowa and went to a state university and worked at a meat packing plant (I can’t find a source for that one but I swear I read it somewhere).
He was a rich farm kid. Almost as rich as it gets in rural Iowa.
His family was petite bourgeoisie, living in an economic boom for farmers, and the upper middle class in a low cost of income state and time, and this man is the definition of class traitor. He could have been doing something good and he straight up decided to kill people with bureaucracy for money. He could have been a fucking politician and fought for people’s rights to have health care but he chose this. He chose money over people and urged his company to do that too.
If there is a devine bad place, by many views of many religions, he would be there. And clearly many of us have judged him, by our own ethics and beliefs, to be guilty as well. I don’t understand the pacifists that say, “killing is just wrong” and don’t care about those that were killed by his actions. It just astounds me that they can know that, and still say “but, thou shalt not kill”.
The just world fallacy is a lot older than that though. You can blame good ol’ religion for that one (which has always been in cahoots with capital for the entirety of its existence).
🌍 👩🚀 🔫 👩🚀
Is that why Jesus the Capitalist said to give all your possessions away to the poor?
It’s large organized religion that does that, not personal faith. Pretty much everyone here would agree Jesus was a great guy, but would also agree that his church has done a lot of bad shit.
This is coming from me as a Christian, just so you know.
That changed with the rise of right wing radio and a concerted propaganda campaign funded directly by these rich assholes.
You look at the Kochs or the Mercers or Thiel and you’ll find they spent ungodly amounts of money funding rightwing shills. There may have been 1 or 2 rightwing broadcasters that are actually somewhat supported by ads and products. However, now-a-days in particular it’s all just some rich assholes dumping a few million on these grifters to keep them in business lying to their audience.
The rise of cable news as the primary source of news has also had a big effect. Turns out billionaires aren’t likely to want their newscasters talking about raising their own taxes.
It’s all those bootstraps, don’t you know? The rich have been pulling them up harder than you, that’s all.
This is such an insane position that you mention these people accept because a billion dollars, a thousand million, is so unfathomably wealthy and disgusting that how could anyone ever deserve that much money without being literally Jesus?