Well, you know, I read the uh, the review, the book review written by Luigi Mion on the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, which he

gave four stars and he appeared to admire Kaczynski's analysis of modern Western society.  The manifesto was called the

Industrial Society and Its Future, and Mion quotes a Reddit post that talks about the book or about

Kaczynski, uh, which says, among other things, "Peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere." It says that when all

other, uh, forms of communication fail, then violence is necessary to survive. He said, "You may not like his methods, but to

see from his perspective, that it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution." He said, "Peaceful protest is outright

ignored. Economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence

against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense?" He says, "We're animals just like

everything else on this planet, except that we have forgotten the law of the jungle and we bend over for our over-

lords when any other animal would recognize the threat that we're under and fight to the death for survival." 

"Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators. That's what he said; that's

what Mion quoted in his, uh, uh, book review. Now again, this is this is Mion quoting someone else, but he's quoting it

because he agrees with it, presumably. There's a lot to dissect in that. I mean, a lot of the

conclusions, uh, that drive the opinions are themselves opinions. I mean, the conclusions are themselves opinions, such as the conclusion that peaceful protests

have gotten us nowhere, which leads to the opinion that violence is necessary, and the conclusion or the assumption that all other forms of peaceful

Communication has failed; that's an opinion, not a fact. Peaceful protest is ignored.

Economic protest is not possible. Okay, these are all opinions, and I would suspect that they're actually afterthoughts, being used as

justifications for violence, rather than violence being something that has been determined as necessary after thorough reflection. Because look,

powerlessness is very seldom an actual state that exists; it's a mindset, a defeated mindset, a defeated

mentality. It's a mentality that perceives the enemy as overpowering and almost omnipotent. This is a mental state.

Powerlessness and helplessness is a psychological condition, not a real-world condition in most cases. Because look at

Magon himself; he's a rich kid, valedictorian from a big, influential family in his area. He's from the elite

class. Of course, he isn't powerless; he isn't helpless. Kazinsky was from the same class, a mathematical prodigy, genius, what

have you—Ivy League and whatnot. These are not working-class people; these are not struggling people. Violence is the resort of those who have no other resort, generally. So I wouldn't normally expect to see a rich kid from a rich

family, who has all sorts of resources at his disposal, to resort to gunning someone down in the street as if he was

someone with no resources and no options. He, by nature of his wealth, his education, his family, and so on, had options. The

killer and the killed, in this case, are both men from the same class and from the same economic strata. I think that's

interesting. Now, his action is being received by the working class as an act of vengeance, but the only working-class

player in this drama so far has been the McDonald's employee who called the cops because a $10,000 reward was promised to

solve a lot of problems for anyone who's living paycheck to paycheck, so I think it's fascinating. You know, there are

theories going around that Magon had back problems or that his mother had chronic health issues, and that therefore

this was some sort of a personal grievance by him. But again, he's rich; no one in his family is going to die

because they can't afford health treatment or health care. I mean, who knows? That McDonald's employee,

McDonald's worker who snitched on him might need that $10,000 to pay for their

own medical bills. But no one in Magon's family is going to go without health care. On one hand, this incident has the

potential to help redirect public attention towards more appropriate targets of opposition. I've literally been saying for decades now

that the proper focus of activism and opposition and resistance and political organizing and so forth should be the

corporate sector. And indeed, this action that was allegedly committed by Magon has been largely received by the

working class in America as justified, which should terrify the ruling class. And this is one of the most

interesting aspects of this, I think, because I do not personally believe that peaceful protests, economic protests, and nonviolent means of communication and

engagement with power are useless, and I don't believe they are ignored. In fact, I think that the idea that these types of

efforts are futile is propagated precisely because power does not want people to engage in them because they

are useful, and they can be useful, and they can be effective. They want you to feel powerless; they want you to feel

helpless; and they want you to become radicalized and commit actions that will get you in prison. In my opinion,

Views that were expressed by Magion and the Reddit post that he quoted actually reflect complete intellectual subjugation to power because it's based

on a perception that absolutely nothing can be done; a perception that the power structure is completely impervious

and invulnerable and cannot be moved in any positive way whatsoever. Well, okay, you transferred power from the public

sector to the private sector, and then you made the private sector immune from any sort of public accountability, from

any sort of so-called democratic mechanisms. And it's precisely because your so-called democracy only applies to

government and not to the private sector that that's the reason why you move power away from the government and gave

it all to business; precisely because you did not want to be democratic in the management of your society. So now you do

have tyrannical power in your country; now you do have a dictatorship in your country. You are ruled by autocratic

oligarchs and by corporations, and yes, you do need to do something about that. You do need to resist that; you do need

to oppose that. Because look, UnitedHealthcare, HMOs, insurance companies, and so on—all of these are among

the most powerful industry lobbies and campaign contributors in the United States of America. But these companies only exist

and only have the power to oppress and to harm you because you don't have socialized healthcare in the United

States. And you don't have socialized healthcare in America because those companies—those companies that have commodified public health and who profit

from your sickness and profit from your death—have captured your government, along with the rest of the private

sector. Your government is completely owned. I don't personally see how whacking a CEO of a health insurance

This company is going to lead to socialized medicine in the United States. I think there are any number of

more effective and more productive efforts that could be made in this regard, but that's exactly what I'm

talking about. You have been indoctrinated, apparently even at the highest levels of academia, to believe

that nothing can be done. That's why Mag's class status is significant because, as I said, in theory his privileged position

in society puts him within the power structure, but he took the action of someone who's outside the power

structure, beneath the power structure, which means that even he has been made to believe that the power structure

is invincible, and he's not the only one. Wasn't it just a few months ago that we

saw the sons and daughters of the elite protesting on Ivy League campuses for Gaza? The upcoming generation of the

ruling class are rebelling against the power that they are on track to inherit, but they haven't figured out any

ways to reform the system. That's a very serious problem for America. The fact is that people turn to

violence when non-violent methods—not that they don't work—but they require too much effort; they require too much

patience and time and energy. That's the case most of the time in a country like the United States and in many others.

What it comes down to is their money and our masses. In other words, the only equalizer in terms of power between us

and the elites is collective action, organizing, solidarity, and patient, disciplined, focused, persistent action. And that takes a great deal of effort,

but most people don't have that kind of time or energy. So someone like Mag, theoretically, had resources; he had time.

He had energy and he could have pursued organizing; he could have funded organizing; he would have had the tools

available to him to do that. But instead, he did what he did—allegedly, he killed a CEO who will be immediately replaced now.

Maybe his hope—again, if he's the actual culprit—might have been that his action would ignite a countrywide

movement, a revolution against corporate domination, maybe. But we can probably uh, put his action in the same category as

what Ted Kaczynski did and what Timothy McVeigh did. McVeigh believed that blowing up the Federal Building in

Oklahoma would start a revolution, to one extent or another. Ted Kaczynski also thought that his bombing campaign, as the

Unabomber, would start some sort of movement that would collapse the uh, system, collapse the power structure. But

none of these actions uh, inspired copycats. Now compare that with the mother of all school shootings at Columbine High School in

Colorado. There have been literally thousands upon thousands of copycat crimes since then; over 600 school

shootings uh, so far this year in the United States. So are we going to see uh, an avalanche of CEOs getting

whacked? Not very likely, because you don't actually get to outsource the heavy lifting when it comes to

grassroots popular movements. You know, you don't get to just be the guy uh, who does some dramatic action that then

inspires a mass movement to emerge fully formed because of your uh, heroic act or your martyrdom or what have you. That's

probably why uh, you have school shooter copycats, but not copycats of so-called revolutionary violence, generally. Because ultimately, both are

just acts of extreme rage, despair, hopelessness, frustration, and an inability uh, to address grievances with any sort of wisdom or maturity or

patience, but none of this can inspire a movement. This is a very American, very Western approach to problem-solving.

You know, violence. "Eat the Rich." When that CEO got killed, the next scene in the movie is supposed to be all the peasants

marching out, you know, with their torches and their pitchforks to storm the penthouses and the gated communities. You

know, set up the guillotines, start eliminating all the corrupt, greedy super-rich by the dozens. That's the movie

script, but it's not the real world. And you have completely disabled your own, uh, population's ability to know

how to address problems in the real world, even the children of your elites. Because look, Magon is basically

from the TikTok generation, the social media generation. He's from the generation of young people who barely consume mainstream media, which means

that he has grown up on a less controlled narrative, and he's been exposed to the perspectives of people

outside his class—traitor perspectives about his class—traitor, meaning people subject to the power structure that he's

a part of. So he's exposed to the experiences, the views, the attitudes, and the opinions of the people

that he's never supposed to be exposed to, while also growing up within the power structure. Okay, that's an

Luigi Mangione & the American System Meltdown

Luigi Mangione & the American System Meltdown