Misplaced Rage
So, a man killed a CEO of a healthcare company, and now everyone’s clutching their pearls, screaming about morality, and demanding justice. The news cycle is flooded with his picture, your timelines are ablaze with outrage, and suddenly you’re all experts on right and wrong. But where the hell was all this energy when that CEO’s company killed thousands of people by denying them life-saving care? Where was your righteous fury when they sent someone to their grave because a computer said their life wasn’t profitable enough? You only care now because it’s convenient. Because it lets you pretend you’re on the side of justice without actually having to confront the systems you defend every day.
Let’s be real—this isn’t about morality. This is about protecting power. You don’t cry for the people denied cancer treatments because they couldn’t afford the co-pay. You don’t mourn the kids who die because their parents couldn’t shell out for insulin. You don’t even blink when an elderly woman has to choose between food and heart medication. But the second someone fights back, the second the system takes even the tiniest hit, you’re suddenly an ethical crusader. Give me a break.
You’re weeping for a CEO, but how many lives did their company destroy? How many people were told, “Sorry, your treatment isn’t covered,” and sent home to die? How many mothers buried their children because they couldn’t afford the medications sitting in that CEO’s billion-dollar stockpile? Don’t act like you didn’t know. Every time a headline pops up about healthcare bankrupting families or someone crowdfunding their chemo, that’s a direct result of the policies this man upheld. But nah, none of that gets your attention. You save your outrage for the man who finally snapped and took out the person at the top. You call it murder when it’s one person pulling the trigger, but what do you call it when a company systematically denies care to thousands? Profit? Business as usual? You don’t want to admit the truth because it’s ugly: the system you live in, pay into, and defend every day is designed to kill the poor while protecting the rich. And you’re fine with it as long as it doesn’t inconvenience you.
When the powerless die, you’re silent. When the powerful face consequences, you’re outraged. That’s your hypocrisy in a nutshell. You’ve been trained to think violence is only wrong when it goes up the chain, not down. A CEO can bankrupt families, force them to ration medicine, and leave them to die in their living rooms—that’s just capitalism, right? But let someone break out of the cycle and strike back, and suddenly you’re demanding law and order.
The law protected that CEO every time his company denied care. The law made it legal for him to profit off human suffering. The law is why a diabetic loses their legs while his company buys him a second yacht. Spare me your lectures about morality when the systems you worship are drenched in blood.
You don’t really care about justice. You care about keeping the world comfortable for yourself. Outrage over one dead CEO is easy. It doesn’t require you to think about the people dying quietly in their homes because they couldn’t afford healthcare. It doesn’t force you to confront the fact that you’re complicit in a system that kills people every single day.
But let’s make one thing clear: when people are backed into a corner, when the system leaves them no other options, they will fight back. You might not like it, but don’t pretend you don’t understand it. If the man who killed that CEO was your father, your brother, your friend—someone who watched their loved ones die because of corporate greed—you’d see this differently. You’d realize that this wasn’t senseless violence. It was desperation meeting injustice head-on.
If you’re more upset about one dead CEO than the thousands of lives they had a hand in destroying, you’re part of the problem. You’re the reason these systems continue to exist. Every time you pay your premiums, every time you shrug at another GoFundMe for someone’s medical bills, every time you defend “the way things are,” you’re choosing the side of the killers. So save your self-righteous outrage. It’s hollow, and it stinks of complicity.
You want to mourn someone? Mourn the people who never had a chance because a spreadsheet decided their fate. You want justice? Fight for the families bankrupted by medical bills, the kids who buried their parents too soon, the millions of people left to die in the richest country in the world because profit mattered more than their lives.
Until then, sit the fuck down. Your outrage is misplaced, your morality is selective, and your complicity is showing.