Comment on Two in one stupidish question- Debate about United Healthcare CEO and best place to have it

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zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I’ll go a step further and say that, while I agree that vigilantism in general is bad for society, I don’t think that’s a universal truth. Targets and motives and effects matter. Sometimes vigilantism is both necessary and good. And that happens when the system itself becomes badly biased against true justice - where things are so bad that the people perpetrating the mass injustices aren’t even considered to be breaking the law, let alone just not being prosecuted for it. Not to Godwin things so quickly on purpose, but it would have been considered vigilantism to kill nazis as a German citizen in the 30’s and 40’s. I think most people today would agree that it would nonetheless have been completely justified. I’m not saying we’re that far gone just yet - but I’m saying when things get to the point where vigilante justice is the only justice, and when the system itself is structured to support injustice…

I’m also not sure what Luigi did fits a strict definition of 'vigilantism", but that’s kind of irrelevant to the point. In a way he’s kind of an anti-vigilante? Using crime to handle horrible people who technically aren’t legally criminals?

Either way, there are a lot of things deeply wrong with the US currently, on a systematic level, and it’s clear to almost everybody that the justice and healthcare systems are are major parts of that unwellness. The system as a whole has been getting worse and worse for decades. It’s frankly surprising that it took this long for something like this to happen - but I’m sure it won’t be the last time.

It’s clear that a lot of people are feeling the same sort of way - it’s not often that a law-abiding citizen is publicly murdered and the nation, as a whole, celebrates and sends their well-wishes to the shooter. People wouldn’t react that way if they already felt the system was serving justice acceptably.

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