Matters Of Consequence
The Real Reason Why People React Positively To The CEO Killing
As the authorities have finally managed to track down the killer of the United Healthcare CEO, the media and pundits have been up in arms at the reaction of many seemingly reasonable Americans who appear to be enjoying the fact that this executive, who has spread misery and death in the service of higher profits and shareholder value, had his own life prematurely cut short. The media is clamoring for an explanation as to why regular people are rooting for the man who killed the executive. They wonder, somewhat naively, where this hate and anger and heartlessness could have possibly come from. Their pearl clutching and worries are of course not based on the reality of the circumstances, or even an accurate appraisal of the feelings of regular Americans, but on their own fears and their reflexive desire to protect the rich and powerful. But Americans are not as soulless and bloodthirsty as the media fears and they do not want to indiscriminately visit violence on the rich and powerful. Rather, they are simply starved to see bad people finally face some sort of consequences for their terrible behavior, for once. Even if it is in such a misguided way as this.
To be clear, if Americans were really as bloodthirsty as the pearl clutching pundits thought based on this killing of the health care executive, it would be much more apparent to everyone. If Americans were outraged enough to kill bad billionaires, there would probably be way more dead billionaires. Now it must be said, that this CEO did not deserve to die, and most regular Americans do not wish death on others, even if they are bad people. But when a greedy, ruthless, soulless executive willingly chooses to do things that lead directly to the death and misery of thousands of Americans, all so he can get a slightly bigger bonus check at the end of the year, or so his company’s stock will go up in value, he does deserve to face consequences for those decisions. But the unfortunate fact is, none of these people ever do. And that is one thing Americans are starved for; the rich and powerful to face justice and consequences in the same way everyone else does.
Even in the rare cases where the justice system does try to deal with them, they usually, if not always, are able to weasel out of any real accountability. Maybe they get a fine (which they can easily afford from all the money they earned killing their customers). In many cases, it is only their corporation that will get “punished”, which amounts to literally nothing considering corporations are created as a way to shield the people who make the deadly decisions from any accountability for those decisions. More often than not they get acquitted, their cases get dismissed, or even if they do get convicted, they end up having those convictions overturned by higher courts. Or maybe the Supreme Court just decides it is ok for a certain guy to commit crimes. The justice system seems to always fail to deliver anything close to justice for these rich and powerful criminals and the American people continue to suffer at their hands.
Which brings us to our present moment. A healthcare executive, who has overseen the denial of care to thousands of sick and dying Americans over the years, who is in town for a shareholder meeting, presumably to brag about how much money they are all making, gets gunned down in the street early in the morning. The reaction among most people is shock that this could happen, but a fair number of folks also reacted positively. The pundits will have you believe it is because people are bad and have lost all morals and sense of right and wrong, but the fact is, they are reacting this way because they still do retain their sense of right and wrong. Nobody is cheering because a guy died, but people are certainly happy that a rich, greedy asshole that spread misery and death finally faced actual, albeit harsh and excessive, consequences for his actions. No fines, no finger wagging, no protests he can ignore, and no giant bonus to ease his pain. Just cold, hard, deadly consequences for the choices he has made over the course of his life. It is wrong that being killed was the manner he faced his consequences, but when the country and our justice system fails to deliver consequences to bad people over and over and over and over again, when one of these greedy, rotten people finally does experience consequences, many Americans will welcome it.
The lesson from this should be that if the government, the courts, and society itself does not deal with bad people doing bad things, if they do not administer the rule of law equally on everyone, then more and more individuals will decide to take the law into their own hands and deal with these situations themselves. And although that may be temporarily satisfying to some, it will be more destructive than helpful for all of us.