DISC1: Chief Executive Slaughterer
from forrest
I, The Hook
I want to watch the President die.
I want to watch the President bleed out on stage while surrounded by his goons, who are all hunched over his morbidly obese body, protecting him from further gunfire, totally unaware—in that very chaotic moment—that the president is now just a corpse, having given up the ghost after the first bullet ripped through his skin and shredded through the cartilage around his sternum and slipped right through his spine and then, finally, burst out of his lardaceous back; the bullet—blood, pus, and serous fluid twirling behind it like a little horizontal tornado—lodging itself into the wall right behind where the president once stood all tall and arrogant while giving some elaborate speech about how we’ll soon reach the Promised Land if we just rape the planet a bit more and get rid of all those nasty poor people in the slums eating all the cats and dogs, right before he collapses, simultaneously pisses and shits himself, and then twitches out a little bit in his own bloody-piss-poop juice before going completely still and just ceasing to be a thinking thing at all.
I want to see him D-E-A-D: DEAD. Of course, I’m talking about the President of the Shinra Electric Power Company from the hit 1997 video game, Final Fantasy VII—who else would I be talking about?
II, Let’s Kill the President!
Note that President Shinra is really more of a chief executive officer than a president; although his legal first name (according to the lore) is literally “President” (seriously), and his last name is indeed “Shinra,” which means that Shinra, Inc. is a corporate monarchy of sorts, and Little President’s parents knew exactly what they were doing when they named him. Shinra, Inc. itself functions as both a corporation and a government, as they exert complete control over the city of Midgar—the city in which the first quarter of Final Fantasy VII Disc 1 takes place—through both military force via their SOLDIER eugenics program and political maneuvering via their council of corporate suits who draft all policy for the city. What this means is, President Shinra is functionally the president (dictator) of Midgar and also the CEO of Shinra, Inc. But I don’t want to dwell too long on the semantics of all this—the important thing is that I want to see the President shot and killed, and I wouldn’t mind watching wolves tear up his corpse afterwards, either.
I mean, the guy is straight-up evil. At one point, early in Disc 1, after ordering one of his goons to destroy a section of Midgar, which results in the deaths of hundreds of people, he turns to the camera and monologues his entire mass-murder plot right at the player and even does the whole “I’m-obviously-an-irredeemable-monster-that-deserves-to-die” giggle-laugh thing.
“We'll destroy Sector 7 and report that AVALANCHE did it. Then we'll send in the rescue operation care of Shinra, Inc.... Heh, heh, heh...this is perfect.” —President Shinra
President Shinra, per his polygonal rendering, is an obese, blue-eyed, white dude with a comb-over (or close to it) that only wears cheap suits; all of this, combined with his insatiable lust for money and his political position and his business experience, starts to remind me of a certain someone whose name actually escapes me at the moment because I am just so focused on the video game here and totally not writing about killing anyone other than a fictional video game character who is absolutely not a real person or even vaguely similar to a real person in any way whatsoever (please believe me when I say this [i.e., these paragraphs are solely referring to President Shinra and that’s it—no one else; furthermore, all characters and events in this essay are entirely fictional; all celebrity voices are impersonated; any likeness to real people is entirely coincidental; even furthermore, any names that might show up later in this essay that happen to be exactly the same as real people on Earth are probably accidental or referring to fictionalized versions of those real people, and this is all assuming that we’re operating under the same definition of the word “real,” which is a metaphysical defense that I will use in court to protect myself legally, if it comes down to it]) and you can count on that.
Note that President Shinra is doing all this evil shit while also using the full strength of Shinra, Inc. to suck the life out of the unnamed planet on which the story of Final Fantasy VII unfolds, all in an effort to reach some supposed “Promised Land”—a process that will, no doubt, result in the loss of millions of NPC lives due to the eventual death of the planet. And to top it all off, in the middle of all this straight-up villainous behavior, he kidnaps Cloud’s girlfriend, Aerith, just to really hammer in the fact that he’s an absolutely terrible dude with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
The guy is as transparently evil as they come. If there were some sort of tier list of totally-not-real video game people who deserved to die, President Shinra would certainly be up there in the S-tier bracket, right there alongside Doctor Breen from Half-Life 2, Arthas Menethil of Warcraft fame, Caesar from the hit open-world role-playing game Fallout: New Vegas, Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI (who pretty much succeeded in nuking the planet), and, of course, Bowser from the much beloved Mario franchise (pronounced “maa-ree-ow” not “merry-oh” [this is very important]); granted, that last one is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get the point: President Shinra is a monster, and he lets you know very early on and in very simple terms that he is, in fact, a monster—and the game itself practically begs you to kill the guy.
And thus, the player is set on a path to kill President Shinra, simply by virtue of participating in this fairly linear role-playing video game released by Square in 1997 after having abandoned development for the Nintendo 64 in favor of Sony’s new PlayStation console—partially due to the increased storage capacity of Sony’s CD-ROM format compared to Nintendo’s cartridge format—and thank the computer game gods for that, because Final Fantasy VII is a masterpiece in the incredibly niche sub-genre of overthrow-the-government-by-whatever-means-necessary-including-but-not-limited-to-bombing-power-plants-and-killing-innocent-people role-playing games, and who knows what kind of watered-down kiddie garbage we would have gotten if the game had been developed under the draconic thumb of Nintendo instead of Sony.
So, naturally, in Final Fantasy VII, you control a group of end-justifies-the-means eco-terrorists who blow stuff up and kill people pretty much indiscriminately—and that's some pretty heavy, radical shit for a video game rated T-for-Teen that was released in the late 90s.
III, Let’s Blow up a Power Plant!
Stars swirling in inky dark space; young woman set aglow with emerald light, her skin is fair and her eyes are green and her long chestnut hair is tied in the back with a bow; she steps out of an alleyway into the bustling streets of a grimy cement jungle; she carries a basket of flowers in a flowerless world; camera zooms out; two motorcyles spit smoke; fluorescent letters spell LOVELESS; a silver pickup truck roars by; GOBLINS BAR; camera zooms out; the city of Midgar like a rotten pizza drenched in liquid chrome; cold industrial gloom; plated metal walls; gates locked; steel towers jutting from the city center like a malignant growth on the planet; 神羅 written on the central tumor; plumes of smoke obscure a dreadful skyline; the logo FINAL FANTASY® VII © 1997 SQUARE, blue-green meteor, flashes onto the screen, hangs there, fades; camera zooms into the city; high-speed train; camera rattles; jaw tingles; train cuts in again; sound of brakes; wheels kicking up sparks; camera flies in, train yard, bird's-eye view; our polygonal heroes, AVALANCHE, jump off the top of the train; punch out some Shinra bootlickers; a frenetic piano scale plays; high-pitched horns; locomotive percussion; digitized punching; billowing steam; clanging metal; a large black man, looks suspiciously like Mr. T, gun for a hand; he signals to someone atop the train; a young man, spiky blonde hair, purple outfit, single shoulder pad, flips off the top; ready to kick some serious ass; goosebumps; C’MON NEWCOMER FOLLOW ME; control the blonde; instinctively know how to move; no tutorial; run down the platform; intercepted by Shinra Military Police; screen dissolves into a swirl of pixels; battle scene fades into view; blonde posed all cool, holding the largest sword anyone has ever seen as if it weighs nothing at all; the bombing mission; the formula for the greatest computer game opening of all time.
Within the 2 minutes and 24 seconds it takes the CGI opening to go from swirling stars to controlling Cloud—the spiky-haired hero of Final Fantasy VII—we have already been conditioned to believe that Shinra, Inc. is corrupt and evil and just totally beyond redemption, solely due to the overpowering imagery of corporate-fueled decay evoked by their all-metal, heavily polluted city of near-perpetual darkness. And somehow, as we control Cloud, slicing through human soldiers and planting explosive charges in power plants and detonating those charges and narrowly escaping the blast, we, as the player, remain unquestioning of the whole thing, as if it’s just totally normal for video game heroes to commit brazen acts of violence against not only an evil corporation but also the people forced to rely on that corporation to survive—as long as it’s for a good cause, as long as the end justifies the means, right?
Too bad AVALANCHE has no “end” in mind, as not once throughout the entire game does a single member of AVALANCHE ask, “Hey, uh, how are we going to power the city once we blow up all the mako reactors?” And nearly all of them die in the process (R.I.P. Jessie). To top it off, the whole thing ends up being just a rage-fueled revenge fantasy carried out by the leader of AVALANCHE, Barret (the Mr. T lookalike), which only results in the deaths of his friends and the destruction of his entire neighborhood when Shinra, Inc. destroys it and blames it on AVALANCHE. Because, as eco-terrorists, AVALANCHE is the perfect scapegoat for any mass-murder scheme that President Shinra happens to concoct, and he concocts many such schemes. After all, it’s easy to make the public believe that a group of violent eco-terrorists is actually an enemy of the people, because, in some ways, they are an enemy of the people; AVALANCHE’s bombings do indeed kill innocent residents of Midgar, as evidenced by in-game text and the guilt some members of AVALANCHE feel later on (including Barret himself) when it’s brought to their attention that what they’re doing (i.e., bombing power plants in populated city sectors) is ineffective and maybe kinda immoral and wrong.
This is all before President Shinra kidnaps Aerith, an act that prompts the only surviving members of AVALANCHE—the main party of Final Fantasy VII—to storm the Shinra office in an attempt to save her. And after a series of dramatic set pieces sprawling 60-plus floors of vividly imagined corporate excess (which predicted the rise of the “Apple office” phenomenon, in which big-tech offices are decked out with several gyms, pools, foosball tables, saunas, bunk beds, game rooms, dog parks, &c., as if upper management is not-so-subtly manipulating employees to live in the office itself by virtue of the office having more quote-unquote cool stuff than the employees themselves can afford for their own homes [because instead of giving out raises, the company bought all of the said quote-unquote cool stuff that not a single employee asked for]), the party discovers that President Shinra has been murdered in cold blood by the true antagonist of the game, Sephiroth, who leaves the fat demon bleeding out on his desk with the Masamune blade stabbed through his back into the desk itself, effectively pinning the President’s corpse to the very desk on which he signed all the death warrants (and the poetic irony of it all).
Barret, the leader of AVALANCHE, immediately sees the President’s death as a good thing—“Who cares who did it!? This is the end of Shinra now!”—but he gets a rude awakening when the reality of succession slaps him in the face.
“I'll control the world with fear. It takes too much to do it like my old man. A little fear will control the minds of the common people.” —Rufus Shinra
So, just when AVALANCHE thought things couldn’t get any worse, they do: not only did AVALANCHE’s bombings of the mako reactors fail to stop Shinra, Inc., those bombings also allowed Shinra to scapegoat AVALANCHE, undermining their cause while simultaneously strengthening Shinra’s reputation among the people of Midgar. And when President Shinra was murdered, the role of President was filled by his son, Rufus Shinra, who ended up being worse than his father in every way.
And now we’re at the stuff I really want to talk about: the whole point of this essay; the stuff that confuses me and makes me uncomfortable and kinda weirds me out: the ethics of political violence The idea that if someone were to kill the CEO of a company or blow up an oil rig or kill the President or set fire to a factory farm or whatever, would any of that actually make a difference in our modern non-computer-game world? And, if so, would the outcomes outweigh the suffering caused along the way?
In Final Fantasy VII, Shinra, Inc. is eventually destroyed, but only after Sephiroth summons a massive meteor that nearly wipes out the entire planet. In this scenario, perhaps the meteor is a representation of violent revolution; a fuck-around-and-find-out of sort; a consequence of Shinra, Inc.’s raping of the planet. And, believe me, the irony of the main antagonist wiping out Shinra, Inc. is not lost on me, as it seems to imply that, perhaps, it takes great evil to combat great evil, like fighting fire with fire. But, surely, there must to be a better way—right?
Surely we can enact change without stabbing President Shinra in the back with the Masamune or bringing about the next mass extinction event.
Right?
IV, Prelude to Chief Executive Slaughterer
We’ve finally reached the Nobel Prize moment; the point at which I enlighten you—the reader—on the morality of political violence, once and for all; the point at which I answer the hard questions, such as: 1) Could it be the case that certain CEOs and/or political leaders deserve to die? 2) Should we kill all the rich people and redistribute their wealth? 3) Will killing these people actually make a meaningful difference in the world? And 4) If not, how do we enact change within unjust systems?
Well, the answer is going to disappoint you because: I don’t know. So I guess you can stop reading now. But if you want to keep reading, I have a lot more words typed up.
It’s clear to me that, in some cases of widespread suffering, political violence is necessary (e.g., the Haitian Revolution, the American Civil War, or maybe Sephiroth’s meteor, or, less so, the French Revolution), but other times political violence produces worse outcomes (e.g., AVALANCHE blowing up mako reactors but, as a result, strengthening Shinra, Inc.’s hold over Midgar; or Sephiroth killing President Shinra, only for Rufus to take his place; or the French Revolution, which gave rise to Napoleon Bonaparte, who quickly appointed himself Emperor, leading to the deaths of thousands of people in a [failed] conquest of Europe). And in some cases, political violence only functions as revenge, with no real goal other than to make the people who made others suffer suffer themselves (i.e., the classic “eye for an eye,” which, when taken to its logical conclusion, might just eradicate all life on the planet). It is true, however, that some cases of political violence have led to long-term positive change, but in nearly all of those cases, the violence was directed at entire institutions, not just one or two people (e.g., the Haitian Revolution, where the violence was directed at French colonialism). But, regardless of all that, political violence always erupts from the same root cause: suffering due to the failure of institutions to provide adequate well-being for all people. At the same time, I recognize that there may not be a system that can provide adequate well-being for everyone simultaneously, as natural resources do exist (and are not infinite), and people (supposedly) have free will and thus sometimes make bad decisions; so, it becomes important to critically analyze institutions to determine if violence is both necessary and advantageous long-term. It becomes doubly important that those using political violence against institutions have a replacement system queued up that is not only realistic but also better than the institution they are attempting to overthrow—so they don’t end up like AVALANCHE, blowing up power plants without any plan for how to power the city afterward.
So basically, what I’m trying to say is: the question of political violence is incredibly complicated and more nuanced than a Tolstoy novel. And I’m afraid there’s no easy answer. However, with this essay, I intend to lay out my own conflicting thoughts on political violence, and maybe you—the reader—will get something out of all this, or maybe not. Maybe you’ll end up thinking I’m some sort of pro-billionaire goon running propaganda for the rich folk, or maybe you’ll end up thinking I’m a dangerous psychopath. Either way, that’s fine because, to be honest, I don’t really care what you think about me.
What I do care about is crafting a coherent and realistic worldview that minimizes suffering for all people—so, if we’re going to start killing people, we better have a damn good reason for doing so.
V, Chief Executive Slaughterer
About a month ago, I decided—against my better judgment—to engage in debate with someone on an online forum. This someone—who we’ll call “Chief” for the purposes of this essay—posted a webcomic depicting a group of people locking a stageful of billionaires inside a conference room with a full audience and a guillotine; at the sight of this guillotine, all the people in the audience smiled real wide and had this crazy look in their eyes; the implication being that the audience was going to line up the billionaires and cut their heads off one by one, and, evidenced by the audience’s wide smiles and crazy eyes, they were going to relish every moment of this Chief Executive Slaughter, as if they were incredibly eager to soak their hands in billionaire blood and maybe even drink some of that blood and maybe even bathe in it while laughing maniacally as if the ghost of Elizabeth Bathory had possessed everyone in the room or something. This post got over 1,000 likes and was the top-rated post on that forum for the month of November 2024.
I responded to the post with the following (again, against my better judgement):
“This whole 'kill the rich' thing is counterproductive and needs to stop. Killing people has never been cool.” —Me, Posting on an Online Forum (Against My Better Judgment)
To which Chief responded something like, “Rich people have no qualms about killing us, so I don’t see the problem with killing them.”
My response received 129 downvotes before eventually being reported and taken down by forum moderators. And, after some back and forth with Chief (wherein your humble author here was actually being quite civil—by the way), my account was permanently banned from ever posting on that forum again.
As such, the rest of this chapter will be addressing a nebulous “you,” which is actually a simulacrum of this “Chief” character. So, when I use the “you” pronoun going forward, don't get all defensive, as if you—the reader—are being specifically called out, as if you—the reader—are the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, because there are many many you's, and one of these you's is probably some dude named “Chief” (and if you—the reader—happen to be named “Chief,” I apologize in advance).
Note that this whole thing with Chief occurred before the killing of Brian Thompson, the (ex-)CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on December 4, 2024#1; an event that has brought this issue of Chief Executive Slaughter to the forefront of American political discourse, with some lauding the killer as a hero and others not so much. And this is all quite coincidental, considering I had been planning to write this essay (about this very topic) since digitally stepping into President Shinra’s office only to find him dead with the Masamune stabbed into his back, and that all happened at least a few weeks before the real-life killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, which I only mention because I will be referencing that event quite a lot during this upcoming heart-to-heart with Chief.
I guess now is a good time to come clean: That first chapter up there—the one about watching the President die—was a ploy to hook you into this essay. It was meant to shock and awe. And it was also meant to seem kinda psychopathic and bloodthirsty while being so lurid and nasty and violent (think: bloody-piss-poop juice) that you were supposed to think, like, “Wow, this guy has some really fucked-up thoughts and might be a little unhinged and/or dangerous”—but not only that, it was meant to seem a little cowardly and pathetic too, as if I’m getting-off on fantasizing about people dying for a “good cause” but am not willing to do the dirty work myself. And I wrote it this way because, to me, when people post long paragraphs outlining how the world would be a much place if we just killed all the people we don’t like, all while they (these hypothetical bloodthirsty people) absorb blue light like UVA rays from a tanning bed while sitting behind three computer monitors—one of which is playing a political YouTube video on 2x speed, another idling in Dalaran, and another clicked into the text box of some social media echo chamber—all while barehanding the inside of one of those party-sized bags of Cheeto Puffs while their dad yells, “When are you going to get a fucking job?” from atop the stairwell of the basement to which they have been relegated due to all sorts of embarrassing stuff, including but not limited to really bad body odor (and not due to any sort of medical condition, but instead a serious lack of personal responsibility), I can’t help but think: “Do they actually believe what they’re saying? Are they LARPing? Have they really thought about this stuff? And, if they truly believe that killing rich people will produce good outcomes, why aren’t they killing rich people themselves? Why are they, instead, spreading pro-death rhetoric online and thus potentially influencing others to kill in their stead like some sort of President Shinra commanding the Turks to assassinate people in some roundabout way that basically amounts to stochastic terrorism?” And, at these thoughts, I am filled with an almost indescribable vitriol (which isn’t even the right word for it [hence indescribable; but if I had to poorly describe it: it’s more like a pit in my stomach, filled with some sort of righteous anger or something]) as if these people are the most cowardly, pathetic people on the planet simply parroting some cool buzz phrase (“kill the rich”) without thinking about it and, when challenged, they are compelled to work backward to defend it like some sort of writhing worm trying to get out of dark muddy water that felt good at the time but turned out to be far deeper than they ever expected, all because they are coping with a cognitive dissonance brought about by the fact that they have been espousing violent political propaganda without having the courage to perform political violence themselves, yet supposedly believing that this political violence against rich people is the only way to save lives and thus improve our society.
Think about it this way: If a literal monster were eating all the town’s children, and you had the magic sword that could kill this monster, why wouldn’t you kill the monster? In this scenario, wouldn’t you have a moral obligation to kill the monster?
And look, Chief, I realize that I might have gone off the rails a little bit there; I realize that calling someone a basement dweller who lives with their parents and subsists solely on Cheetos is, in fact, just a personal attack and does not invalidate any argument whatsoever. But the point I’m trying to make, Chief, is that you are telling people how much better off the world would be if we just killed all the billionaires (“even if we just killed a third of the world’s billionaires, we would be able to feed the entire planet”), but, when pressed, you A) have no idea how these billionaires’ wealth will be redistributed after their death, and B) will neverever kill a billionaire yourself because you’re obviously too chicken shit to do so, as evidenced by your subsequent wall of text explaining how “hypocrisy and/or inaction doesn’t invalidate the argument that rich people should be killed,” which, while partially true, is mostly just bad medicine for the cognitive dissonance of being a cowardly fraud. And I want to address both of these points (A & B & maybe a few more that I’ll think of as I go along), because maybe, by addressing them, I might prevent someone from thinking that, “If I just shoot a few rich people, the world will magically get better!” which is actually pure unfiltered nonsense juice that, once imbibed, only lands one in a maximum security prison and/or electric chair.
So, let’s get started.
But before we get started, I want to clarify something about my own personal values, just to get it all out there: I know that there is both income and wealth inequality, and I know that this inequality leads to the suffering of billions of people in the slums of Midgar while a fortunate few sit high in their Shinra, Inc. towers, relaxing in saunas, eating caviar, and drinking very expensive Malboro-vine Champagne. I believe that this wealth inequality is a serious problem for our modern society (and has been a serious problem for all of human history), leading to class-based problems both obvious and subtle. I believe that the hoarding of wealth is abhorrent. I think that the wealthy ought (not should) be taxed to oblivion and that their wealth ought to be redistributed with the end goal being to provide food, water, electricity, housing, and necessary medical treatment for all. I think that this redistribution ought to be forced on the wealthy (i.e., they do not get a choice in the matter, because their choice would be biased in favor of their continuing to hoard wealth [as I believe humans are inherently selfish]). Furthermore, I believe government exists to ensure the well-being of all people through the implementation and enforcement of rules and regulations (policy), and I believe that policy, ideally, ought to be implemented in such a way as to curb the inherent selfishness of humanity (e.g., prevent us from killing, stealing, deceiving, and just being assholes to each other), ultimately maximizing well-being, and I believe that if the government fails to maximize well-being, then we ought to restructure policy in such a way that it does maximize well-being. I believe this because I believe that all humans are, deep down, selfish—concerned, primarily, with self-preservation—and that, selfishly, I myself would want my own well-being maximized, and, I assume, everyone else wants their well-being maximized as well; as such, crafting policy in such a way to maximize well-being benefits us all. And, to put it simply, billionaires, millionaires, and even hundred-thousandaires do not fit into this worldview, as they are actively hoarding wealth when people are literally starving. So, if you want to label me, then I am a liberal with rule-utilitarian leanings or whatever—although I do not subscribe to this labeling system and just consider myself myself.
(Note that I am American, and as such, much of this paragraph [and essay] is America-centric, but in a perfect world, I would apply this general system of ethics to the entire planet, as I believe it would serve to help maximize well-being regardless of geographical location and/or culture.)
So, now let’s really get started.
V.I: What Happens After a Billionaire Dies? or: What’s the Plan?
How did the universe come into existence? Who was the Zodiac Killer? Does God exist? Why is there suffering? Does the body rule the mind, or the mind rule the body? Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart? What happens if you get sucked into a black hole? Who was the person on the grassy knoll? What is the meaning of life? What happens after a billionaire dies? These are some of the big important questions.
Sadly, I can only answer one.
To start, there seems to be a misunderstanding about what being a “billionaire” actually means (or a millionaire, or whatever)—yes, on a basic level, it means that the person being described as a “billionaire” has a net worth of a billion dollars or more (a frankly incomprehensible number), but this money is not just sitting in some bank vault or database waiting to be quickly accessed. Instead, a billionaire's money is spread across a number of different assets: real estate, stocks, bonds, venture capital investments, and, most importantly, shares in companies they have stake in. In fact, most billionaires are business moguls and/or CEOs that have most of their wealth tied up in the businesses that they themselves own a majority stake in.
So, as you can imagine, Chief, simply shooting a billionaire CEO in the head is not going to magically organize all of their different assets into a neat little stack. It’s not as if the death of a billionaire immediately turns one of their many homes into a pile of bills or liquidates their businesses into cold hard cash. And it’s certainly not as if killing a billionaire pops up some sort of loot screen wherein all their assets are waiting to be clicked into your inventory. And that dead CEO’s money is certainly not being converted directly into some life-saving medical treatment or food or water or housing or electricity for people who actually needs it. And it’s most certainly not the case that the dead CEO’s money gets loaded into a Roblox gift card for some kid to use on virtual t-shirts or whatever (obviously). And even if we did entertain the idea that a dead billionaire's wealth could be gathered this easily, how would this wealth then get redistributed?
The redistribution of a dead billionaire's wealth is even more complicated than their asset portfolio. The first complication is most obvious: a will and testament. In most cases, in the event of the billionaire's death, their wealth will be redistributed throughout their family, based on the structure of their will. If the billionaire didn’t have a will and testament, generally, inheritance laws kick in, and the assets go to the dead billionaire's heirs, still. But that’s not all. If a billionaire owned significant shares in a business (which almost all of them do), those shares go to heirs or other shareholders within the company, and, in some cases, the shares may be sold outright to other business moguls. Of course, all this is after an estate tax (death tax) is levied on the dead billionaire's wealth, and while the money collected from this death tax does in part go to social programs (depending on the country/state), many wealthy people in America leverage the Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT) and other legal loopholes that allow them to bypass death tax entirely.#2
All this is to say that, currently, when a billionaire dies, the majority of their wealth funnels back into their family and businesses, and much of it sits on the real estate market. A simple bullet to the head does not change this fact. What does change this fact, however, is systemic change. In order for a dead billionaire's wealth to be redistributed into the general population after their death, the capitalist system (simplifying here) would need to undergo significant structural change of the Marxist variety, or else the dead billionaire’s wealth is just going to go right back to another Rufus. And if we did manage to change the system in such a way wherein we could easily redistribute wealth, we would not need to kill billionaires at all, because we’d already be redistributing their wealth. So, Chief, what you’re proposing (i.e., kill the rich then redistribute their wealth) seems to be missing the fact that there is no system of wealth redistribution at all to begin with (which, if I understand correctly, is your main end goal here), thereby meaning that, after you kill the rich, you just have a bunch of dead rich people whose wealth goes right back to other rich people. Therefore, the “kill the rich” part of your plan seems like a totally unnecessary extra step, and perhaps that’s because your plan is more emotion-driven than logic-driven.
The CliffNotes version is that we ought to focus on restructuring the current system to allow for meaningful redistribution of wealth, because the problem does not lie in the specific rich people or CEOs or whatever, but in the system itself.
I am of the belief that people are selfish, from the simple fact that we tend to value self-preservation above all else (this is not unique to humans, mind you), and we have to fight our selfish nature every day, and some of us are better at fighting it than others. This is not to excuse a money-hoarding CEO’s behavior, but to examine that behavior through a realistic lens. As such, if a system exists that allows people to hoard wealth, inevitably people will take advantage of that system to—you guessed it, Chief—hoard wealth. Take the GRAT, for example, which allows billionaires (and anyone else, I would imagine) to avoid estate tax—this is just one simple example of where existing tax law allows one to hoard wealth. It follows that, since this system exists currently, shooting a money-hoarding CEO is like squashing a single virus-carrying mosquito instead of draining the foul swamp where they breed—while it might feel good to kill the mosquito, it does nothing to truly stop the spread of the disease. The target is incorrect. The system still exists, and as long as the system exists, it will continue to create more money-hoarding CEOs. Thus, if you insist on killing CEOs, you will have an endless amount of killing to do—because the system that creates them still exists—thus you will become like Sephiroth killing President Shinra, only for Rufus to take his place, and then, once Rufus is slain, someone else will take his place, and then once that new CEO is killed, someone will take their place, and so on and so forth. You will become a Chief Executive Slaughterer forevermore.
The title of this essay, “Chief Executive Slaughterer,” has a triple meaning. The first meaning is that I am hardcore intent on slaughtering your entire worldview, Chief. And the second meaning is that the title itself could apply to some CEOs (for example, Brian Thompson, the [ex-]CEO of UnitedHealthcare, whose company was responsible for a system of death via denial of insurance claims said to be done via artificial intelligence#3). And the final meaning is what we covered in the previous paragraph: if you insist on killing CEOs, you have your work cut out for you, and you yourself will become the Chief Executive Slaughterer. You may think your cause is righteous revenge carried out in the names of those indirectly killed by money-hoarding CEOs, but is your cause truly righteous when your slaughter produces no positive outcomes because you’re so focused on revenge that you miss the big picture?
Look, Chief—I get it. The first chapter of this essay might have been a hook, but it came from a place of truth in some deep, primeval recess of my brain. Brian Thompson, for example, green-lit some cartoonishly evil shit; he was implicit in the deaths of a stupid-high number of people through the approval and implementation of company policy that systematically denied insurance claims. So when someone shot him, I wasn’t upset; in fact, for a moment, I was overjoyed; I was even a little giddy. When I read that headline—“UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson Fatally Shot!”—my immediate response was laughter. And then I felt a little sick, because I have always maintained pacifism in the face of adversity, insisting that non-violence is the correct course of action outside of self-defense. Then I thought, “Well, maybe this is a large-scale case of self-defense?” And then I thought, “If so, if killing a CEO is truly a large-scale case of self-defense, as in, like, ‘If I kill this CEO, perhaps our dreadful healthcare systems will change, thereby saving human lives,’ then at that point, I need to scrutinize the truth value of that statement very closely, because I would then need to know if, when we apply that logic to similar situations, it consistently produces positive outcomes, or does it end up as a bloodbath because we are normalizing the extrajudicial killing of people to solve all our problems?” And then, at that point, as you might imagine, I became quite confused.
But then, in the midst of all my cognitive dissonance, like Barret getting that wake-up call after President Shinra’s death, it hit me:
“[We will] continue to make sure that we put patients, consumers, and members first, as we always have done. There is nobody who did more to try and advance that mission than Brian Thompson. And there are very few people in the history of the U.S. health care industry who had a bigger positive effect on American health care than Brian. We are going to make sure that we not only acknowledge and honor that legacy of Brian, but we'll continue it.” —New UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty#4
Like Rufus replacing his father, Andrew Witty immediately replaced Brian Thompson, and he (Witty) is now hardcore motivated to carry on his predecessor’s bloodstained legacy, partially due to the violent nature of his predecessor’s death.
Which means it looks like we have some more killing to do, Chief. Hopefully, the next CEO will be more sympathetic to Marxist causes, but if not, we can just kill that one too. I guess.
V.II: The Hierarchy of Blame
What we’ve covered thus far is just scratching the surface. The business world is even more complicated still. There are hierarchies at play here that, once analyzed, become very tricky indeed.
In the example of UnitedHealthcare, the whole CEO-is-responsible-for-the-deaths-of-everyone-that-their-company-denied-insurance-to-therefore-the-CEO-deserves-to-die argument that we so often hear in defense of Brian Thompson’s slaying is itself an incredibly naive and simplistic take on the whole situation, revealing a fundamental misunderstanding of how businesses work (at least in the United States).
CEOs do not function autonomously, making decisions on a whim; instead, they are beholden to a board of directors, who are beholden to the shareholders, and these shareholders want to cut costs to increase the company’s profitability because other companies (competitors) have already adopted abysmal price-cutting models themselves (as the law allows them to do). In short, the competitive capitalism at play here drives businesses to cut costs, as lower costs attract more customers, because customers want to save money and will therefore opt for the lowest prices (and, in the case of medical insurance, “customers” here are typically other businesses, which are also subject to the same hierarchical business structure that prioritizes profits over people [so, what I’m saying is, there are hierarchies within hierarchies within hierarchies here]), and, of course, more customers means increased profitability. (Note: I am not blaming customers here, just pointing out the obvious fact that customers are indeed part of the hierarchy on some level.)
Once the shareholders have made their cost-cutting demands, they pass these demands along to the board of directors, who pass them along to the c-suite (e.g., chief executive officer, chief financial officer, &c. &c.), who pass them along to the vice presidents, who pass them along to the directors, who pass them along to the senior managers, who pass them along to the managers, who pass them along to the team leads, who pass them along to the agents, until, finally, the frontline agents (and/or AI algorithms) are automatically denying insurance claims in an effort to cut costs. And thus, the blame is spread all the way down the corporate ladder in what amounts to the ultimate Kafkaesque diffusion of responsibility.
So, as you can tell, the hierarchy of blame here is very complicated. You could say the shareholders are to blame for wanting to cut costs, but then you would also have to blame competitors for driving those cost-cutting measures to begin with, and then you would have to blame customers on some level for prioritizing low costs over quality. You could also say that the CEO is to blame, as they could have pushed back on the board of directors, but it’s also true that the board of directors can and will simply fire the CEO and get a new one who will comply with their cost-cutting demands. You could then run the blame all the way down the corporate ladder, saying that, at each step of the ladder, someone could have taken a heroic stand, but we also have to acknowledge that, as a result of that heroic stand, someone would lose their job (thus losing their livelihood), only to be replaced by someone who would comply with whatever the shareholders want.
It seems intuitively true that the higher up one is on the decision-making chain, the more accountability one should bear, but assigning sole blame to one person is unrealistic, as it fails to address the broader systems at play. CEOs—while undeniably overcompensated in all cases—are merely cogs in a mephistophelean capitalist machine that turns everyone into a component of the system by diffusing blame across all parties involved. Therefore, if we’re playing the blame game, punishment would need to be apportioned to everyone based on their level of culpability, and that seems like it could get very messy very quickly, especially when some people (not to name names here, Chief) believe that the punishment should be death. And this death penalty, coupled with the fact that a CEO (or any employee, really) is replaceable, creates a cycle of death that only ends when all of humanity is extinct.
Don’t get me wrong, if a CEO with full control over their company turned to the camera and monologued their evil plan directly at me, then I would feel a little differently about the whole “killing them” thing. If only every CEO were like President Shinra. But it’s not that simple; life is not Final Fantasy VII. The villains on Earth are not as clear-cut as people like to make them out to be. We often strive for simple answers to complicated problems—it gives us comfort to believe that we have the solution all figured out, as if, in our minds, we are exerting some form of control over the chaotic world we did not choose to be born into. But there are deep hierarchies and systems at play here that diffuse responsibility; and one could argue that perhaps the system is like this by design, but no one alive today actually designed the system—the system has simply been perpetuating itself since its slow buildup starting with the first time humans traded seashells for sheep or whatever. And, besides, even in the case of President Shinra, would it not have been more impactful to arrest him, put him on trial, and make him answer for his crimes? Why should President Shinra get such an easy escape from responsibility? We often assume that death is the worst thing that can happen to a person, but that is just not true; there’s deep humiliation, languishing in a prison cell, forever feeling like a failure, and, of course, torture (which I’m not advocating for, but it’s worth calling out as it can be worse than death, obviously).
What I’m trying to say is that simply killing the bad guys is not going to solve all of our problems, Chief.
V.III: You Are Making Us Look Bad
Login to any online forum right now and you’ll find that the majority of users are praising Brian Thompson’s killer. They are treating the killer like a hero. And this is no surprise, as it’s consistent with online culture’s shift to pro-violent rhetoric. Even before this event, online sentiment had shifted away from “eat the rich” (which is more about wealth redistribution) to “kill the rich,” and I get where it’s coming from: It comes from a place of outrage, of powerlessness, of hopelessness—and we all feel it. “Kill the rich” is also a powerful piece of propaganda. A short, shocking slogan. And, in theory, it makes the rich people scared. But it's also incredibly easy to call for someone’s death from behind a computer monitor, to the point where most of us are so desensitized to online threats of violence that we hardly ever take them seriously. So, in reality, instead of making rich people scared, it makes them laugh at us while slinging harmful labels like “psychopath” and “unhinged,” which only helps them (the rich people) politically in the long run. It becomes a game of rhetoric, and, unfortunately, rhetoric is very important.
So, Chief, I asked you before, “If you truly believe killing rich people will produce good outcomes, why aren’t you killing them yourself?” to which you responded, “Hypocrisy and/or inaction doesn’t invalidate the argument that rich people should be killed,” and, while I agree with your response from a perspective of coherent argumentation and logic, I think that we both can agree that your response is also a sorry cop-out for your own personal shortcomings, those shortcomings being cowardice or—what I truly suspect to be the case—a parroting of political propaganda without critical analysis, or both; and both of these things are embarrassing, so I totally understand the urge to make excuses and double down when pressed, because, well, why would anyone want to admit to being a coward manipulated by political propaganda?
I sure wouldn’t, Chief.
But the thing you fail to realize is that, at this point, it’s way beyond practicing what you preach or living according to one’s values or even being a hypocrite—it’s about rhetoric and optics. It’s about millions of people saying they want to kill the rich while never actually doing it and thus making us (people who want real systemic change) look unhinged and psychopathic as a result, when really the majority of the people saying “kill the rich” don’t actually believe what they’re saying to begin with, as evidenced by the simple fact that barely any of them are practicing what they preach (after all, if you had the magic sword to kill the monster, why wouldn’t you do it? [maybe there’s some doubt that the sword is magical?]), instead these wannabe Chief Executive Slaughterers are just watching YouTube and playing World of Warcraft and vegging out, thinking that if they parrot the current far-left talking points from their basement safe space, they are somehow facilitating meaningful change in the world and not just making us all look stupid and crazy.
And sometimes, Chief, your parroting of propaganda works; sometimes it inspires people to go out and kill—like in the case of Brian Thompson. In these cases, I wonder: how do you feel about that? Do you feel good that your propaganda inspired someone to kill on your behalf? Do you feel responsible at all? Do you feel like a fraud? Or like some sort of genius mastermind, manipulating others into assassinating for the greater good? Or do you feel like your level-76 warlock in World of Warcraft, commanding little demons to do your dirty work while you hide in the background siphoning mana or whatever? How does it feel knowing someone did what you couldn’t muster the courage to do yourself? Do you feel embarrassed? Or do you feel nothing at all? I’m truly asking.
AVALANCHE may have failed to produce meaningful change with their bombing of mako reactors, but at least they had the balls to fucking do it.
Not only that, but when some truly unhinged person (i.e., not a fraud or a LARPer [Live Action Roleplayer], like you, Chief) kills a rich person, everyone can now point at the progressive movement and say, “Look, they are praising extrajudicial killings; they’re all unhinged and dangerous.” And that hurts our ability to enact meaningful change in democratic society, where votes matter and political violence is usually frowned upon except in very extreme cases. And, to top it all off, you’re inspiring one-off slayings, which only fills prison cells and creates parentless children while producing exactly zero meaningful systemic change.
You could argue that the slaying of rich people is some sort of symbolic gesture, a necessary evil to galvanize the progressive movement into pushing for systemic change, but you’re taking a huge risk and putting all of your eggs in the media basket wherein profits are all-important and the moment the populace stops caring is the moment they (the media) stop reporting on the issue. Thus, you’ll need to kill another rich person to kick-start the profit-driven media machine again, which itself seems pretty never-ending and scummy, Chief, not to mention the precedent being set, that being the normalization of extrajudicial killings which can get very problematic indeed.
Basically, Chief, you can be a coward all you want—but you’re making us look bad and you’re ruining people’s lives and you’re helping scummy journalists profit and you’re normalizing street murders all from the comfort of your sick gaming rig. So, if you’re not going to actually practice what you preach, why don’t you just shut up?
Go back to leveling your warlock or whatever.
V.IV: How Do We Enact Meaningful Change, Then?
That’s a great question, Chief.
But if you’re looking for a definitive answer, you’re not going to find it in this essay because 1) I’m not that smart, and 2) whatever answer I give is only going to apply to my corner of the world, i.e., America (and maybe other parts of the first world). I do realize the Earth is filled with all sorts of other societies, many of which are quite violent and fucked up. I recognize that there are situations in which violence is necessary for survival—and that sucks, but that’s just how it goes; this is the animal kingdom, after all, and we are part of it, which is something many of us forget (including myself). But here in the first world, we have created so many safeguards and checks and balances that simply killing people is not going to make a meaningful difference in the long run.
Brian Thompson’s death may have sparked a wave of healthcare-critical headlines calling out some of the industry’s most dreadful practices—all of which everyone has known about (and experienced firsthand) for decades—but this is only the news media taking advantage of a very polarized situation and turning it into tragic theater for profit (as is their modus operandi). And it’s not tragic because of the death of Brian Thompson (because who actually cares), but for the whole sordid affair in which the entire system we’ve been talking about here has compelled someone to kill someone else while the system itself remains unharmed, and media moguls, pundits, and talking heads profit every which way. And this system continues unimpeded while we revel in faux-political outrage and partisan punditry, which effectively stalemates the issue publicly and politically. And if time shows me to be wrong about that, and Brian Thompson’s death really does lead to some sort of total upheaval of the American healthcare system, I will admit that I was wrong. But I will also throw in that the precedent being set will eventually destroy us as a society—the precedent being that we should just kill people without trial because it might maybe lead to some positive change. At that point, why have laws? What is the point of putting someone on trial and making them answer for their crimes? Let’s just kill them and make a big deal about it on TV instead, give murderers and media full control over our lives. And who can we do this to? CEOs? What about CFOs? CTOs? What about the shareholders? Maybe we should kill the middle managers too. But let’s not stop there. How about all employees? Everyone is complicit! Should we bomb the boardroom? How do we decide the next target? Should we form some sort of execution committee? Make CEOs draw straws in front of the guillotine?
Anyway.
I can’t definitively answer the question—“How do we enact meaningful change?”—but I do have some thoughts (from a first-world, American perspective).
First step: stop saying you’re going to kill everyone you don’t like. This just makes people that supports our cause look insane by proxy and thus hurts our chances of being taken seriously politically. Drop the bloodthirsty-drooling-from-the-mouth-primeval-Oog shit for a moment and act like a civilized person.
Second step: vote. Voting exists as a way to change the system. We (Americans) live in a representative democracy; we vote for candidates who align with our values. We ought to continue voting for candidates who align with pro-worker, Marxist-leaning values—and by doing so, eventually, we will build a better society. This is a slow process, and sometimes it feels hopeless, but it has been proven to work. We are the shining city on the hill because of our democratic system; we still have problems, of course, and we do not live in a utopia (and maybe never will), but our democratic system has brought about meaningful change in the past, and it continues to deliver meaningful change, even if, sometimes, it feels kinda hopeless in the moment. Consider: the New Deal (Social Security, labor protection), the Americans with Disabilities Act (protection from discrimination due to disabilities), same-sex marriage equality, the Affordable Care Act, &c., &c. And don’t only vote in the presidential election; vote in local elections too, because, in America, state and local government have far more impact on your immediate life than who the next president of the United States is going to be, even if the latter seems like a far bigger spectacle.
“But voting doesn’t always work.”
Welcome to democracy. Yes, voting doesn’t always work. If voting always worked, we would be living in a dictatorship or a fascist regime or whatever, and we’ve seen, historically, what happens with those systems (hint: very not good). The process to enact meaningful change in a bureaucratic system (which is all governments) is slow and grueling and can sometimes feel impossible. But keep voting for who and what you believe in. The moment you start to think “voting doesn't work,” you have ceded your autonomy to those who don’t care about you.
You might be reading this, Chief, thinking that I am incredibly naive. And that’s fine, you’re entitled to your opinion, as I am mine (after all, this whole long-winded essay is, in fact, my opinion). But if I’m naive, at least my values are consistent with my actions—I’m not calling for public executions from behind a computer monitor, for example. And I do recognize that sometimes voting isn’t enough and that violence can be necessary. I’m not ignorant of history. I know that the Civil Rights Movement required both violent and non-violent protest to achieve some semblance of equal rights for African Americans. I also know that the same was true with women’s suffrage. And I know the Civil War, which was quite bloody indeed, led to the abolition of slavery via the 13th Amendment. I also know that the Republican Party is in the pocket of big pharma and healthcare lobbies and that one of the Democrats’ top donors in the 2024 election was Blue Cross/Blue Shield (all this is a matter of public record); and, as such, it is in the best interest of all these groups to keep the United States Healthcare and Insurance system exactly the way it is (i.e., profits before people [i.e., totally fucked up]). But killing a few CEOs is not going to change any of this, and blowing up the Blue Cross/Blue Shield headquarters in Chicago won’t do anything either; we would only be labeled enemies of the people—as AVALANCHE was by Shinra, Inc.—thus galvanizing nonviolent people against our cause. Instead, in situations in which systems are unfairly harming people, we ought to be taking up picket signs and protesting the broken system—recognizing that we are all, from top to bottom, forced to participate in these systems on some level—while continuing to vote for candidates who call out these broken systems (for example, Bernie Sanders called out that GRAT loophole we went over earlier; he also called out big pharma and insurance groups that were [are] influencing elections and thus helping to perpetuate the vile healthcare system that they profit from). And we ought to vote for whoever aligns with our values regardless of which party flag they happen to be waving; this means we must do real research on each and every person we are casting our vote for, rather than wildly assuming that, because they happen to be red or blue or whatever, they must also align with our core values, which means we must exercise some critical thinking. We must become well-informed; otherwise, democracy is liable to crumble under the weight of our collective ignorance. And all the while, we must continue to protest; and if and when the government starts killing us for these peaceful protests, we must then strike back with our full might, but not a moment before then; otherwise, SOLDIER will descend upon us, and we will become like sustenance for the Sahagin in the Midgar sewers. The hard truth is that we will never be able to violently stand up to a government that has tanks and helicopters and lasers and sonic weaponry and orbital missiles and SOLDIER and high-capacity automatic rifles and little drones that can blow up your head and so on, but thanks to the U.S. Constitution (American perspective), we can protest and we can vote and we can retaliate and we can make them (the government) look stupid and cruel, and somewhere in there are the tools we need to enact meaningful change. It has been done before, it can be done again. Violence ought to be the final escalation. Celebrating murder with memes on Reddit will do nothing but hurt our cause.
And, worst-case scenario, we summon meteor. But know that meteor can only be summoned from the depths of great evil.
VI, Perhaps
So, yeah, that’s my rambling answer for you, Chief—an answer that has probably sparked a thousand more questions in your mind, none of which I will be answering, because you’re probably not even reading this. Perhaps you’re not even real. So, my assumption that you have questions to begin with is simply hypothetical. Perhaps they’re my own questions. In fact, Chief, perhaps you’re a strawman of the original forum poster’s argument on some level anyway, which means this whole essay is really just me wrestling with my own conflicting thoughts on the whole kill-all-the-rich-people thing. Perhaps I’m trying to resolve my own cognitive dissonance. Perhaps the forum poster doesn’t even exist. Perhaps I’ve been laying out all of my own pro-kill-the-rich arguments so as to debunk them in some hyper-detached manner to make myself feel better about wanting to kill all the rich people and CEOs and presidents. Perhaps I’ve been lying this whole time. Perhaps you’re me, Chief. Perhaps I’m you. Perhaps I'm the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Perhaps I’m just talking to myself. So, while I may have been pretty harsh in my criticism of you (and sometimes just downright attacking you while making some pretty big assumptions about your character and personal situation—which, in my defense, was mostly done to entertain readers), perhaps I was just attacking myself and didn’t even realize it until typing up this paragraph. Perhaps you’re right, Chief: perhaps I am a bootlicker. Perhaps if you can see me, I can see you. Perhaps I think there should be a class war. Perhaps I’m just too lazy to do anything about anything. Perhaps I think the rich should both live and die simultaneously. Perhaps my whole non-violent worldview is crafted in such a way as to avoid owning up to the fact that I am, in fact, a coward. Perhaps I want to stab the President with the Masamune and then cast Life2 on him afterward, just so he knows how pissed off I am. Perhaps life is, in fact, a video game. Perhaps I am the Chief Executive Slaughterer; but, on the other hand, it feels so so wrong, so perhaps I’m Aerith. Perhaps I’m Sephiroth forever falling toward Aerith, intent on killing her but never making it to her. Perhaps I’m all talk. Perhaps I hate myself. Perhaps people’s views can’t be so neatly organized and coherent. Perhaps people can hold multiple conflicting beliefs at the same time. Perhaps this is why I often feel so ambivalent about most things. Perhaps we contain multitudes, and perhaps these multitudes fuck us up. Perhaps believing that your specific worldview is the correct one is just narcissism masquerading as righteousness. Perhaps narcissism and righteousness are the same thing. Perhaps the very idea that I could convince anyone, including myself, of anything at all is simply arrogance and egotism. Perhaps the mere suggestion that certain beliefs can be right or wrong at all is foolish. Perhaps my taking almost three weeks to write this essay was pointless. Perhaps this is all a bullshit cop-out so that I don’t have to take a hardline stance and thus avoid all the criticism that comes along with taking such a stance. Perhaps it’s time for reflection. Perhaps CEOs should take a long look at themselves in the figurative mirror, as surely they must be doing something wrong, considering that so many people want to kill them. Perhaps a truly equitable society is a pipe dream. Perhaps humanity is stuck on disc 1. Perhaps killing rich people will spark some sort of meaningful class war. Perhaps not. Perhaps by demanding things for oneself, you are, by the very laws of nature, depriving another of those same things. Perhaps there aren’t enough resources on the planet to make everyone’s dreams come true. Perhaps we should insert disc 2. Perhaps we are doomed to endless class struggle. Perhaps we are the ouroboros. Perhaps I don’t know what to believe anymore. Perhaps cognitive dissonance is the default state of people, and this working-out-of-the-dissonance brings us closer to a quote-unquote truth that is actually an always fluctuating gray space. Perhaps endless violence is the fate of all living things. Perhaps killing others can facilitate change, but perhaps by killing others, we kill a bit of ourselves, too. Perhaps the meteor is necessary, not just for CEOs but for us all. But perhaps not, because I’ve seen true kindness: a man feeding a stray cat, a boy helping an elderly woman across the road, food drives, homeless shelters, charity of all sorts. But perhaps all that charity is merely a way to make ourselves feel better. Perhaps we’re only kind when it’s easy. Perhaps kindness is selfishness. Perhaps none of this matters. Perhaps we all deserve to die. Perhaps we all deserve to live. Perhaps we deserve nothing at all.
Perhaps nothing is quite so simple.
Thanks for reading,
Chief
Citations:
#1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson
#3. https://www.fox5ny.com/news/unitedhealthcare-ai-algorithms-deny-claims
#ComputerGames #Ethics #Essay #FinalFantasy7
Yes, this is a thing, Cannabis addicts found aplenty in our government hospitals and rehabilitation centers, have started to prefer these. The poor fellows having only just left Cannabis, get hooked on these instead. The economics of this business are quite sound, Lizards being easy and free to source in numerous quantities, but I digress.
Chinatown. One of the more eye-pleasing locations in the game, there is a decent number. There are also some fun drum'n'bass, techno and such tracks in the game, but also some very odd choices.
Not bad visuals for a PS1 game, Blade has some nice looking environments, sadly the models are not as flattering.
I found a new version of the clown and circus meme. Perhaps it is a meta commentary, on me, the player. I hope not.
When the game nails atmosphere, it absolutely nails it. Especially in the Pallatine Building, and particularly in the ritual area. This Faustina Priestess is the real secret behind Pakistan's undead economy, though buried long ago, it continues to stick around somehow.
The Museum isn't bad either, there is something about baked lighting that feels really pleasing to the eye. Simple. Comfortable.
Even at the zenith of the final level, Blade will take his time to enjoy a view, and so should you.
Watching Wesley Snipes in Deadpool and Wolverine brought back many nostalgic memories of better times for me (Blade 2 was quite popular in my school), I hope at least some part of this review was enjoyable.