On Luigi Mangione, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Class Consciousness
Recent events in the United Healthcare CEO shooting in New York and massive protests in South Korea for president Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment have gotten me thinking about class consciousness and the different ways it manifests. Both are essentially acts of dissatisfaction and protest against the status quo, only expressed in very different ways. Why is it one is celebrated and covered in the media as an indication of a thriving democracy and the other as cold-blooded murder? What expressions of protest and violence does society deem legitimate?
Tangentially, this also brings to mind the vastly different coverages of conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. You’ll find many of the same images of both in the news: the remnants of war, rubble, bombed-out buildings. Death. Corpses, Parentless children. Why is one invasion a blatant attack against democracy and the other, simply retaliation for a terrorist attack in the name of justice?
What does justice even mean when the world is built inherently unequal? The West (America especially) like to tout liberal democracy as the great answer, the only way to live. But the flaw of liberal democracy is it seeks to provide equality without upsetting the free market —it is the inherent flaw in the system. As 99% of the global population knows in its very bones, the free market capitalist system is inherently violent and oppressive, just not outwardly so. You won’t find the smoke or the bloody limbs, but it is the same weary, mangled bodies.
But the question has always been: what violence is deemed legitimate? What makes capital punishment in the form of the death penalty more legitimate than the common street murder? If you execute a murderer, the number of murderers in the world remains the same. But history has made it clear time and again: a wounded populace eventually grows impatient. The axe forgets, but the tree will always remember.
Dare we, in our broken, weary bodies, dream of a better world?
