The last thing Luigi liked on Goodreads

I know you want this guy to be cool and have radicalized since his last online spree, but I think its more likely that this guy is a total patsy than anything like that
He created one of the strongest moments of working class unity I've ever witnessed, though, I'll give him that
- for agitprop purposes, it is perhaps better that this guy is so all over the place. there isn't much actual ideology to point at so we can make the propaganda of the deed into something more useful.
  
  Indeed... if he was some sort of anarchist with long rants comparing modern health insurance CEOs to the Tzars or something and talked about tossing dynamite at them in public that immediately gives the media a "He was a nutter!" narrative
  If he was a right winger who tried to do it for, I dunno, crazy conspiratorial reasons related to covid or some shit, again the media could dismiss discussion through that route
  The more of a "normal" person he seems, the better for propaganda purposes
  I will be very curious to see how this plays out with a jury assuming it gets to that point and he doesn't just plead guilty to get like 20 years instead of potentially life no parole (no idea what a DA would offer, just out of my ass there). 100% of Americans hate rich pricks and health insurance companies. If it gets to a trial situation 12 people have the chance to do something very funny
- Maybe. I'm just putting this up here as I hadn't seen it here yet.
  Maybe he's good, maybe he's not. I don't actually think it matters. What matters is what he did and that people think that's cool and good. The rest is white noise in my opinion, people really won't care.
  It's probably better that there's no solid indication he's a raging liberal OR a raging chud. It means neither of the two halves of the working class will disown him on basis of being the "other team", which is always the biggest risk.
  
  What matters is what he did and that people think that's cool and good
  agreed
  
  It's probably better that there's no solid indication he's a raging liberal OR a raging chud.
  Lmao he literally liked Elon must/Anti DEI/anti woke slop. How far backwards do you need to bend over to keep this guy on a pedestal?
  
  To the extent it matters what is the most correct take, this is the most correct take IMO.

Americans, like human beings
Heh
- fuckin obliterated lmao

Important to note that Luigi had basically dropped off the map in the six months before the CEO shooting. Perhaps he was gradually radicalized like many other Americans. If Vonnegut can help to push more Americans towards socialism, I think that's a fantastic and worthy legacy for my favorite author.
- If Vonnegut can help to push more Americans towards socialism, I think that's a fantastic and worthy legacy for my favorite author.
  I think his writing has all the socialist frameworks and values throughout the text, and there's no way he didn't push people towards socialism.
  For instance, this is my favourite Vonnegut quote, from Breakfast of Champions. (For context, Karabekian is an abstract painter and Keedsler is a novelist. Both are wealthy, bougie and are minor characters.)
  "You know what truth is?" said Karabekian. "It's some crazy thing my neighbour believes. If I want to make friends with him I ask him what he believes. He tells me and I say 'Yeah yeah - ain't that the truth?' "
  I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, that it had a beginning, middle and end.
  As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more engaged and mystified by the idiot decisions of my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: they were doing their best to live like people invented in storybooks. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: it was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.
  Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.
  And so on.
  Once I understood what was making Americans such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.
  If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
  It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: it can be done.
  Adapting to chaos there in the cocktail lounge, I had Bonnie McMahon, who was exactly as important as anybody else in the universe, bring more yeast extract to Beatrice Keedsler and Karabekian.
  I don't think there's any way to not be a socialist if you start from the position that everyone is exactly as important as everyone else and you follow that thought to its natural conclusion.
- Vonnegut is a crucial early step in my own pipeline.
  I think it makes some of us uncomfortable that the Chuds we spend so much time seething about are, on an individual level, one crisis away from being a winnable comrade. Doesn’t mean we should handle them with kid gloves. It’s the same reason we critique each other and ourselves. Correct ideas are only arrived at through social practice. and it is incredibly frustrating that Americans are so empathetically stunted that it has to happen to them personally for them to understand, but still. We don’t get to get tired of making the case for socialism.
  It’s also worth remembering that all of your formative opinions being posted publicly and preserved forever is a fairly recent development in history and i would wager it has done more to harm working class solidarity than help it.
  I don’t agree with every position this kid has taken or probably still holds, but I don’t envy the hurt he went through to get where he is.
  o7 for having the heart and sense to know who his real enemies are unlike so many other young men like him.
- is definitely responsible for a good deal of "oh wait everything is pretty fucked up" that led to my radicalization.
- When I was was a teen I absolutely loved Vonnegut, he definitely gave my young mind some things to think about that probably influenced my politics as I aged.

Vonnegut is kind of right here, but the emphasis is wrong. It’s not that people ‘blame themselves’ for being poor exactly (in a moral sense), but rather the material condition of poverty strips one of dignity and self-worth, particularly in a society that is oriented around the petite-bourgeois middle class and relegates those below to a kind of wasteland devoid of opportunities for community and self-development
- people have existed with far less material wealth than the poor in the US do, its the system that chokes the life from us which imposes poverty, that system which blames us and raises us from birth to blame ourselves for this condition so that they may continue to leave us poor so they may be rich
  
  True, but people will always judge themselves relative to their surroundings. And it is hard in the wealthy West to be poor without feeling (and actually being) ‘outside’ of society, which most people will respond to by feeling ashamed. In so far as self-hatred exists I think that’s the primary source of it.
  Whereas it sounds like Vonnegut is saying the poor could love themselves except they have some kind of moral need to blame themselves for their condition, which (in my opinion) is not entirely accurate to what’s happening
- Yes I agree but in other cultures, such as here in europe, there is considerably more empathy because of the cultural history of folk supporting the poor. There's definitely something unique going on with the US and only having the settler history.
  
  Yes I agree but in other cultures, such as here in europe, there is considerably more empathy because of the cultural history of folk supporting the poor.
  Maybe before the complete neoliberalization of the last twenty plus years. There's no empathy for the poor here nowadays.
- This makes a lot of sense. If I ever make something of myself I’d love to write about this and make it a counter-thesis to Hillbilly Elegy, I’m going to call it Redneck Requiem.
  You nailed it on the last bit, while I know it’s not nearly to the same extent as the real thing. As far as I’m concerned, the boonies and the suburbs are just another form of ghettoization for a different section of the working class. I’d love to write how the modern suburb is now used as a “icky poor containment zone” now that the rich learned about walkable cities (and want them all to themselves.) Despite being mostly white and having some “privilege”, suburbs deny people growing up in them access to community and amenities and if all jobs are going to be nepotism hires from here on out, suburbs and rural communities also deny people access to connections that pull them out of poverty. Oh, and if you’re queer then it’s fucking over for you and even more isolating knowing you’re under the good ol’ boys watchful eye.
  Sorry for the rant, that last part really struck a nerve in a good way.