Luigi, the Death Note, and Why You're Missing the Point
To make a point, I'll ask you to engage in a fanciful thought experiment with me.
Do you know what a "Shinigami" is? If so, you've probably experienced the manga "Death Note." The premise is that a notebook, owned by a demon falls into a mortal's hands. Anyone whose name that mortal writes into the book dies not long after, by whatever cause the holder of the book decrees.
The manga is a bit predictable - what good could possibly come of doing this? But it's an interesting premise.
What if we tried to reverse America's headlong fall into fascism with the Death Note?
Well, most of us would put Donald Trump on the top line. Fine. He dies of a prolapsed everything during a press conference. Now you have J.D. Vance. Arguably worse. Into the book he goes, choking on his own tongue. Now you have Speaker Mike Johnson. Oh boy, not better. Chuck Grassley? The man whose major accomplishment is feuding with the History Channel over whether their history is patriotic enough? No, no. Marco Rubio? Oh HELL no...
I hope you're beginning to see the point. The problem is not an individual, or even a set of individuals. It's systemic. It's that we have a system that allows people like this to rise to power, and the electorate stands for it. The rot is in the foundation. Burning down the steeple accomplishes nothing.
Kill a Vampire Healthscam CEO, sure, it's worth a wry smile. But he'll be replaced before he's cold. As long as there's that much money to be made, there'll always be another. If you want to solve this you have to see to it that everyone has health care. The failure isn't the wretched morals of the insurance industry, it's the fact that we as a society haven't solved the problem that has allowed them to thrive.
Every social dysfunction we suffer from is traceable to a social moral failing - a lack of duty and discipline that we've allowed to fester. Before any of this will be solved, we will have to accept the fact that these problems aren't individual, they're systemic.