Sometimes, the best thing they can do is to not say anything. Walz could have said nothing, and pretty well nobody would have been upset about it.
Politicians have to say a lot of things whether they mean them or not.
I like ex-New York Mayor Ed Koch’s take on voting. “If you agree with me 51% of the time, vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, see a psychiatrist.”
Politicians do NOT have to run a dishonest campaign. They just can’t help themselves. Inb4 the obligatory BoTh SiDeS comment.
We do really seem to be selecting for it based on who wins tho
The winner always lies to get in. The fucked up thing is that the loser does too
no campaigning or politicking here, just pure statesman. his words are absolutely appropriate and expected from a government leader.
Which is part of the problem. This whole expectation that our leaders should hide their true feelings and motivations behind a veil of niceties only serves their goals of hiding such things from the people trying to figure out who to vote for. We should know who our politicians are as actual people, since it’s the person they are in private that will motivate their actions within the government, not the nice face they put on for the public.
As I understand it, that is a large part of Trump’s success with certain groups.
Admittedly, that turns off people who don’t agree with what you’re saying…
Does he comment on every death? If not, then he shouldn’t say anything here either.
United “Healthcare” is headquartered in Minnesota, and for high profile deaths relevant to the state, yeah he kinda does.
Wait until he hears about all the people who have died after getting denied by them.
In that case, I wonder just how much “United” “Healthcare” has put in his coffers.
I’m almost certain it’s not zero, I think I saw an article about that a few years ago. UHC, like a lot of companies, throws some money at every viable major politician in the state. That’s where we’re at with how fucked up US politics is.
Ah yes, the actual original meaning of politically correct.
His words were awful and defending a mass murderer that has killed at least tens of thousands of Americans just during his tenure because their boss decided to cheap out is beyond disgusting for a political candidate, much less someone in office that wants to remain in office with all their body parts still attached.
Agreed, I think that he should have said nothing or perhaps bring out the point that beyond how people may or may not feel we should not aim to live In a society that privilege vigilante that take justice in there hand as it can quickly slip into a very bad place… I see people suggesting a purge… I would recommend those people go out and meet some of the victims of the Rwandan genocide and see how they feel with there so called brave words…
It’s easy to spout such things using social media because we are anonymous but we do not want such violence to reproduce itself… This is how collateral damage happens. In Montreal an 11 year old child died because of a car bomb that was set by the Rock Machines as retaliation against the Hells Angel’s… No one won that day, we only lost a fraction of our soul as a society when we had to bury a child.
This is the problem, this time someone did a clean shot, what if the killer choses bombs and causes collateral damage. Will any of you sacrifice your children for this so called justice?
Funny how the politicians and the media react with horror, but the entire rest of the Internet has an entirely different reaction. I wonder why.
i find it’s always helpful to follow the money in these situations. obviously we were all paid off by Big Woke. we’re financially invested in these institutions being seen as murderous. obviously.
Careful not everyone gets the 😉.
this one passed the vibe check fortunately but u right, made a joke about class consciousness and it didn’t ring well
Class consciousness
idk what that is but sounds an awful lot like the term “woke” … blocked
beautiful downvotes
my sense of satire is too powerful for yall
Please don’t make a comment talking about your downvotes, it does not make people like you more.
Don’t be a Schrödinger’s Douchebag… Poe’s Law is still a thing, the comment you made, I’ve heard many times unironically/unsatirically.
Can’t hear tone in text, remember that. Next time, use the tone indicators, they’re there for a reason. No matter how obvious it may be to you, to most of us, you’re still a stranger.
Maybe because people on the internet are mostly anonymous?
edit = someone pointed out that many people post their actual names, so I added “mostly”
… you say under a post with their full legal name on display
Gork is their name?
The actual post. The picture. The OP. Original picture. That one. Not the one your talking about. The one in the picture.
Funny how the politicians and the media react with horror, but the entire rest of the Internet has an entirely different reaction. I wonder why.
Posted anonymously by someone calling themselves ‘Gork’
The thing I responded to.
If it means that much to you I’ll edit it to ‘mostly anonymous.’
That’s not what I nor the person you were talking to ment. We are talking about the person in the picture who put their whole name on the exact thing your talking about. Are you really going to try and pretend you understood that and replied appropriately?
How do you know what I meant?
I replied to Gork’s post because Gork posted anonymously.
I find this amusing, so I’ll keep responding.
Yes, I am the Original Gork. All others are pretenders.
Yes.
or maybe because they are working class instead of a sheltered Ivy League graduate elite
A person died, murdered in cold blood. They need to be respectful. Would you prefer politicians celebrate the execution of mass murderers on death row?
It’s a horrendous thing. To see a person killed before their time when they didn’t have to die. Just like what happens to thousands of Americans each year who are denied coverage. If we’re actually honest with ourselves, the only reason this one is seen as a tragedy by politicians and CEOs is that there was no profit to be had in it.
edit: spelling
John Brown Did Nothing Wrong
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That’s not a great comparison, because no mass murderer on death row has ever come close to the level of deaths this CEO is responsible for.
Yes but saying the mass murderers death is a terrible loss to society is kind of silly, no?
Who said that? I’m talking about the human, not the employee. We’re also talking about an official political statement, not public discourse.
He had a family. Seriously. Politicians publicly telling his children, “We’re all happy your dad is dead because of his career choice!” just doesn’t resonate with me.
I’m talking about the human, not the employee.
They’re one in the same, he had power, he could have changed things. He MADE the decisions he did, he CHOSE to pump up those denial numbers and profits at the expense of human life. Nobody is forced to be a CEO.
Fuck. Him.
That’s a one-dimensional reduction of a human being. I’m sorry, but I’m just not that closed-minded.
Imagine defending a sociopath and then having the utter gall to claim the moral high ground.
Tim Walz is a sociopath? He’s who I’m defending. I didn’t write a single nice thing about the CEO, only that his death likely devastated his family and politicians should be respectful for the sake of his loved ones.
Oh. So you mean exactly how insurance company CEOs and their boards do? Every. Single. Day.
They sure won’t care about reducing you to a one-dimensional number on an excel spreadsheet.
You haven’t actually suggested any way in which the guy’s work and behaviour could be viewed “three-dimensionally”. While I can agree that discourse especially online slips into dehumanisation of (real or imagined) enemies too easily… this is really not a case where this is the incorrect approach.
Edit: Regarding the guy’s family, I can agree that they did not deserve the death of the father/husband. But that does not really concern the guy by himself, his own moral character, it’s someone else’s problem. When a criminal gets sent to jail or executed, does anyone really give a crap about how much his family will suffer from that? Not really, the criminal is assumed to be a morally independent being that can tell right from wrong by himself, and his failure to do that is his own.
There are many stories of people being confronted with the fact that their beloved grandfather or uncle or whoever had been a nazi who killed hundreds of people in the holocaust. Should we soften the discussion of that evil to protect the feeling of their descendants? This man’s children should live with the fact that every comfort they have in life was purchased with the blood and tears of people their father considered worthless.
Hitler had children
Poor people get murdered all the time. It’s not what they said, it’s that they chose to say something at all.
Not a person, a CEO. Big difference.
Politicians and media celebrate killings or Arab leaders all the time…
Define what “cold blood” means to you. To me it sounds like you mean the assassin didn’t have a motive, and seeing as this CEO directly profited from denying people live saving healthcare, there’s a pretty fucking big motivation.
Loss? What loss, Tim? Besides the families that have been torn apart and sickened over the years by this man and his board of ghouls? I see none.
Here ya go! | || || |_
:.|:;miscarriage
😂
During the campaign I’ve seen Walz described as down-to-earth, approachable and attractive to the working class voter base.
Fucking yikes.
at the same time tho, this is legitimately the worst thing i’ve seen/heard about him. i wouldn’t be surprised if he was currently being groomed for a presidential run fucken 4 years from now.
if that’s the case they are clearly grooming him to lose again.
It’s all they know
remember when everyone thought this guy was gonna secretly turn bernie-bro the Kamala campaign into being good
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Idk why you made it gendered but ok
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I mean, it’s all there in your comment? Girl boss is about as gendered a term as you can get. Obviously you didn’t invent it.
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I have never heard or seen in all the election coverage Harris supporters calling themselves that. Nor do you need to get snarky when someone calls you out for maybe being a little flurmy, even if you didn’t mean to be. The bear, indeed.
The K Hive?
No.
If anybody ever believed that, they were a fool. Kamala’s campaign promises were to tax the rich and legalize weed, Tim Walz from a deeply conservative district was the moderate to balance her out.
Bourgeois parties support bourgeois fat cats? Nihil novi. A proletarian mass party must be built urgently. Revolutionary Communists of America do a lot of laudable effort in that direction.
google translates from latin
so true!
You can’t get elected in the USA if your party calls itself Communist.
Yes that’s why the rotten system of choosing a slave master every few years, of the duopoly of parties which are equally complicit in war crimes and are on the payslip of big business must be replaced with bottom-up system of lively democracy within worker, student and tenant councils
And nobody ever sees or hears from them.
The next time someone says “we gotta get behind the Dem nominee to stop ______” HUNT THEM DOWN AND BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THEM ON NATIONAL TELEVISION
Whether or not this is accurate about Tim Walz, it is accurate to say politicians, elected and appointed officials regard the ownership class as peers and vice versa.
This is also true regarding the upper management of news agencies, which figures in liberal or left-wing news sources that won’t go far enough left to jeopardize a status quo in which the agency and its owners thrive. And yet, they will underestimate the right wing and its willingness to let the leopards eat their faces once they are in power. The recent nods to the Trump transition by WaPo and the Los Angeles Times will not save either agency from Trump’s wrath against press once he is in power.
The Democratic Party is far right, just slightly more left-wing than the Republican party, and they are still beholden to the ownership class when it comes to campaign contributions, which is how we don’t have four-day work weeks, universal healthcare, social safety nets or any of the features that most developed nations enjoy, because it’s plutocrats that decide what our elected officials are allowed to do, not the public.
It’s also why communist and socialist are bad words, even though that means the only thing else you can be is a monarchist which is about as anti-American as one can get (at least if you believe the preamble to the Constitution of the United States). We’ve literally been indoctrinated against public-serving government.
But then it’s time to ask, what is the point of recognizing or serving the state at all if it isn’t to serve the public?
Socialism is not immune to monarchist or capitalist takeover, and the Democrats are not far right in this backwards ass country. They’re the big tent of liberalism, which is right wing, but not as right wing as I wish it was. It’s a distortion to believe that this country will democratically choose socialism. They’re too invested in selfishness for egalitarianism.
That’s where the permanent revolution would help. The workers must not allow splitting the revolution into stages of concessions and compromises but fight until total victory and the dissolution of the state.
Also this is the reason why communists are not pacifists — the working class has the right and a duty to defend itself and it’s gains. That’s what Marx meant when he wrote that under no pretense must workers be disarmed.
Not a fan of “permanent revolution,” as it has a habit of becoming the new establishment, but you’re correct about not conceding or disarming. That’s the bed that the right wingers kindly made for us ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So close to being a empathetic human while not being a corporate shill.
Politicians are almost all sociopaths, not even trying to be funny. Sometimes they do things you like and sometimes they dont, but that never has anything to do with the interests and priorities of citizens. They are just people whose job is acting their entire life according to some doctrine, they dont have real personalities.
The political system we live under is rotting. It’s holding us back, suffocating real democracy, and clinging to relics of an era we should’ve buried centuries ago. Why are we still pretending centralized power structures, dominated by presidents and parliaments, are the best we can do? It’s time to turn the whole thing upside down. Imagine power flowing not from the top down but bubbling up from councils—real, grassroots bodies in towns, workplaces, and universities where people directly decide what matters to them. No presidents. No untouchable elites. Just democracy as it was meant to be: local, participatory, and alive.
Critics say that direct democracy would be too costly and cumbersome in large countries. But that’s a lie told to make us think power belongs anywhere but in our hands. The truth is, it doesn’t work their way—infrequent, clunky referenda that barely scratch the surface of what real participation looks like. But why not councils that meet regularly, that use technology we already have to count votes and hear every voice? Why not frequent, transparent, and accessible decision-making? We have the tools. What we lack is the will—and that’s on us.
And about the politicians. They’ve turned ruling into a career. They live above us, pocket bribes, rub shoulders with CEOs, and laugh at the idea of accountability. Enough. All representatives should be recallable at any time, earning no more than the median worker’s salary. Partial sortition (random official selection) could ensure even more fairness. It worked in ancient Greece which was (for the free male citizens ofc) closer to actual democracy than the unaccountable neo-aristocratic order we have today, so why not today when we have the formal equality before the law and equal rights, but we know the reality.
But if no one will be above anyone because everyone will get their chance to actually change something about the world and their life without running into the stone walls of the system, it will be a complete revolution in human relations that will uproot the poisonous root of disdain so many feel for their fellow humans for simply being worse off than them.
Imagine a system where politics isn’t about who has power but about how power flows and where the needs of the people are actually heard and resolved. Blockchain (and no, I’m abso-fucking-lutely not a cryptobro. PoW is still useful for things like captcha replacements but the whole thing is the biggest example of capitalism’s way of turning useful and promising inventions into means of speculation and outright scams by and large) could be used to make the process more transparent than ever. It’s not the technology that hold us back, but their fear of us using it to take what’s ours.
Term limits, too. No one should sit in power long enough to forget what life is like for the rest of us. Politics should be service, not a career. If we’re serious about democracy, every single one of us—no matter how “uneducated” we’re told we are—needs to learn how to govern. Because democracy isn’t just voting for the lesser evil every few years. It’s taking the reins of your life, your community, your future. It’s about ruling instead of being ruled.
Here’s the thing: the ruling class will not go quietly. When we start to take real power into our hands, they’ll fight back. They’ll use every dirty trick in the book to claw it back. That’s how this game works. But if we stand together, if we build a united force that can’t be undermined, if we refuse to let fear or complacency stop us—then they lose. And we win something they can never take away: the power to determine our destiny. That’s what’s at stake. Let’s stop settling for scraps. It’s time to demand the whole damn table.
Any political that is praising that jackass getting what his due will get my loyalty, that’s for sure.
You and he were… buddies, weren’t you?
Dunno. Thoughts and prayers is seen as some as politicaleze for bless your heart.
I think Governor Walz is successfully threading the needle here.
i will believe this if at any point in the near future the man comments on the popular reaction to this event in relation to the need for national healthcare.
he won’t but that’s what i would believe if he did.
Deny, Defend, Depose
Maybe it’s because the guy is a relevant public figure, and if he were to say something along the lines of “the bastard deserved it” he’d face a ton of consequences for it? This is so much easier to do in an online space where you are anonymous, especially in an admittedly echochambery place like lemmy.
I do recall the Trump’s first assassination attempt, and some celebrities (can’t recall the names right now) did come out and say something along the lines of “shame the guy missed” which made the media start hounding and targeting them, with their colleagues being forced to disavow or kick them from their projects entirely.
It would be cool if Tim Walz or any influential figure went “rip bozo” regardless though
Instead of saying what he said here, Walz could’ve just not said anything and nobody would’ve batted an eye, aside maybe from some shareholders at “United” “Healthcare”
Yeah, fair point
nd if he were to say something along the lines of “the bastard deserved it” he’d face a ton of consequences for it?
Right because american politicians totally get consequences for their words lmao. Where have you been since 2016?
I had the impression this was a privilege exclusive to the conservatives
