"An Astonishing Level of Dehumanization" Sucks
=> The article
Peter Wehner delivers a late entry for 'biggest glaze job of 2024' in "An Astonishing Level of Dehumanization" -- extolling the family values and humble origins of assassinated United Healthcare CEO Brian Johnson -- a man who ran up billions in profits for himself and his shareholders by denying coverage at a higher rate than any other health insurance company.
While thousands of innocent children are bombed to death in Gaza, The Atlantic reserves the term "dehumanization" for a man who is at minimum guilty of shortening the lives of thousands of his customers.
You would think that Peter Wehner, author of such seminal works as "The Iraq War is Redeemable" (penned in 2007, no less!), would know a thing or two about the effectiveness of violence as a political tool.
But unsurprisingly, Peter believes in political violence for me, but not for thee:
No one can plausibly argue that the murder of [Brian] Thompson will do a single thing to fix the problems in America's health-care system.
I guess Executive Editor Jeffrey Goldberg (an ex-IDF soldier who argues violence is an effective tool to fix Israel's problems) also has selective memory about political violence, unable to imagine someone who could even plausibly argue that violence could do a single thing to fix America's health-care system.
Thank your lucky stars because I am going to try.
Just hours after Thompson's assassination, Pop Crave tweeted out a potential new policy from a different health insurance company.
Inquiring minds wanted to know the identity of other health insurance CEO's.
CEO's were concerned.
And Blue Cross Blue Shield reversed their policy.
What really grinds my gears about this article is the sanctimony. This man, who actively fought for the Iraq war, which killed a million people and destabilized the region, is writing about how the hundreds of millions of americans from across the political spectrum who justifiably hate healthcare CEO's are somehow worse people than him.
He is the one capable of an astonishing level of dehumanization.
The rest of us are pissed because we care about the actual dehumanization that goes completely unmentioned in Peter's elementary school morality tale: that millions of americans are reduced to statistics, have their health coverage denied at rates far higher than any developing nation, that we are less healthy and live shorter and are more bankrupt because Brian Thompson maximized profit margins at our expense.
I think what is most pathetic and sad about this paltry "think" piece is that it refuses to actually engage with Luigi's assassination seriously. He gives lip service to "social murder" -- but refuses to engage with the actual arguments for why Brian Thompson himself was guilty of social murder. He argues that every healthcare system rations care, even single-payer systems, and of course people will be mad about care rationing. This obvious straw-man ignores the massive caveat that Brian Thompson made a shit ton of money denying care way more than he had to, directly profiting by reducing care, a feature completely missing from single-payer systems like Britain's.
These counter arguments are so obvious and so basic that it begs the question: is anyone editing the Atlantic? Or are they just posting shit-for-brains takes from any moderate republican who will declare in sober tones that 'Trump is a danger to democracy?'
Bring back James Bennett.