I wanted you to pause for long enough to hold one of your arguments up to the light and decide for yourself whether it was one that you naturally wanted to make, or whether your internal feelings were getting away with your reason.

I don't have the time or patience to write this today but I'm going to. Because I wouldn't shout until I was blue in the face if it didn't matter. And because I see something really common - hang on there's a graphic for that.

It's from here, BTW. The first thing I want you to notice is that everyone's expectations are wildly out of line with reality. We've all been sold a massive bill of goods. Obviously the younger you are the worse it is - millennials make about 2/3rds that average salary and GenZ makes half (the average GenXer makes $126k as of 2022). The next thing I want you to realize is that those expectations are choices.

The younger you are in America, the more you're choosing to be dissatisfied.

We have a patient. She's on medicaid. She needed some tests run that aren't available to be scheduled in the next six months. So the neurologist we sent her to said "just go to the emergency room and hand them this note." THAT is a protest. She did one better, though - she lost her car keys and didn't feel like looking for them so she called an ambulance. If she were insured? It prolly woulda cost her about $25k. But she isn't so for her it was free. Now THAT is a protest.

She'd probably much rather not have to deal with labs at all. Should millennials be satisfied at $40k a year? Abso-fucking-lutely not. But by assigning a mental goal of "I won't feel successful until I have five million dollars in assets" they're guaranteeing they'll never feel successful. Much like you and your sister: you've set the metric for success at "overturn the system" and you're salty that it's out of reach.

We're here because I said "just another TESCREAL dipshit" and what you said next was remarkable:

What could he have done to improve the lots of healthcare for those with less access?

You didn't even begin to investigate the situation before shooting your mouth off. You are so deep in your "nothing can be done" frame of mind that an Ivy League scion of a multimillionaire family that owns a half dozen medical facilities is justified in shooting a bitch. your level of satisfaction is thoroughly unattainable, so you wallow in helplessness.

Now in the first place, don't fucking feed the accelerationists. This is you and Steve Bannon, nodding and stroking your chins in sync. 'member Fight Club and how the hare-brained scheme was to take down the credit bureaus? There's a lot of air between "take down a credit bureau" and "shoot the CEO of a credit bureau" and you know it but as penance watch a trailer:

You know at a cellular level that the British East India Company was terrible. You have absolutely no idea who the kings were during their heyday and you don't even know how to look up who their executives were, though. So poof. You've got a time machine. You want to make the world a better place. Is your first thought "I'ma go shoot the CEO of the British East India Company?" Because corporations, since 1600, have been about absolving individuals of guilt through collective action and restricting individuals of morality through collective restriction. Maybe Walter Raleigh? Except naaah if it wasn't him it woulda been some other schlub, just following orders, because a bunch of board members wanted the Portuguese plundered and the Irish suppressed. Brian Thompson done got got and has the world changed?

But what really makes me offended is that you've convinced yourself that there's no point in doing anything short of throwing your life away and I've been out here, dozens of hours a week for like eight years now, managing a healthcare clinic that operates largely for the betterment of minorities. We fight insurance companies every.goddamn.day and you don't even realize how offensive it is for you to argue that what we're doing is pointless. You're so in love with your hopeless adolescent male fantasy of nihilistic destruction that you don't give a fuck about spitting in the face of people who are actually doing something.

Now - I'm not going to argue there was no point to capping Brian Thompson. For one thing, this sort of thing gains credibility when there's violence behind it. Terrorism? Mos def. A novel way to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the system? Also that. And see, putting up a poster doesn't involve throwing your life away.

Because here's the real deal, dude. Ours is a society of desperate inequality and that gets worse more often than it gets better, at least in my lifetime. And I appreciate desperate times for desperate measures. But instead of going "poof here's a time machine" I go "poof you have an ivy league degree, a state senator for a cousin and grandparents who own two country clubs and a chain of healthcare facilities what are you going to do to improve the future" and you go

What could he have done to improve the lots of healthcare for those with less access?

And fuck off, man. You can't even show me the courtesy of stopping to think before running your mouth. I deserve better. So does everyone you talk to. The purpose of discussion isn't to profess your ill-conceived emotional positions it's to dialogue and you aren't even trying to hear. It's far more important to you to wail about how hopeless everything is so that you don't have to fucking do something about it.