5
#000000
#FFFFFF
inequality
This Political Killing—And All the Others Too
Perhaps we can use this tragedy to broaden our understanding of political violence and pledge to end it in all its forms.
Sep 12, 2025
This country has a long history of honoring its martyrs, from those who died in our wars (including my uncle) to people killed on the front line of political change. Assassination holds a special place in our culture. It’s an American apotheosis, the closest thing to sainthood in our secular society. The left has no shortage of martyrs, and the right gained one this week.
The bullet has a special and venerated place in this tradition. I felt it was my duty to watch Charlie Kirk’s shooting before writing about it. My strong recommendation: unless you have a reason to see it, don’t. I’ve seen more than a few videos of gunfire deaths in my life, and I’m always struck by their banality and tawdriness. There’s nothing romantic about a bullet striking human flesh. It’s vile.
We now know that law enforcement have identified Charlie Kirk's assassin as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. There's so much we don't know, but there are at least two things about Kirk's violent killing that we do know—one moral, and one societal. Jewish and Islamic scriptures both say that whoever commits murder has destroyed an entire universe. Secular law and ethics are equally firm in rating murder as the worst crime an individual can commit.
Kirk's family must now live with their loss. His audience—which, like most audiences, felt it knew him personally—is also in pain. Perhaps we can agree on this: let’s set aside the cult of the gun. Politically-motivated murder is still just murder. It’s cheap, brutal, and stupid, like all murders.
And who does it help? Killing someone for their speech, however heinous you think it is, corrodes the fabric of civil society by shutting down open debate. A lot of people have already said that about Kirk, of course, but they’ve left out an important addendum: this will shut down open debate even more than it already was. Many voices are already marginalized and silenced. This killing is likely to make that even worse.
The tragic dimensions of Charlie Kirk’s death are with us now. They were with us in June, when two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses were shot (one couple died). They were with us when a gunman killed an abortion doctor and when another shot up a Unitarian church. They were with us when three Muslim students were murdered in Chapel Hill and a six-year-old Muslim boy was stabbed to death by his landlord. They were with us at the mass murders in a Charleston church and a Pittsburgh synagogue.
They are always with us.
That’s why I’m critical of headlines like this one: “Charlie Kirk’s death shows political violence is now a feature of US life.” It’s been a feature of US life for a long time—from the Civil War and the long decades of lynching and anti-Black violence to the murders of JFK, Malcolm X, Dr. King, the Black Panthers, to the vigilante killings of Black Lives Matter protesters by Kyle Rittenhouse. (Kirk hosted Rittenhouse at two events.)
In the immediate wake of the killing, we heard a familiar refrain: “Don’t politicize this tragedy.” The right says it whenever a mass shooting is committed by someone who arguably shouldn’t have a gun. The left says it when, as now, they know they will be blamed for the actions of a lone individual.
But every death is political. Sure, some are more openly political than others. But an estimated 68,000 people die each year from inadequate medical care in this country. These deaths are political, too, the result of deliberate policy choices. More than one million Americans died of Covid-19, a disease whose spread and fatality rate were determined by political decisions.
Smoking deaths and environmentally-caused cancers are political, as our government confronts (or doesn’t) the health effects of corporate activity. A study in the Journal of American Medical Association found that nearly 200,000 Americans died from poverty-related causes in 2019—and what is poverty if not political? The burden of loss for these deaths is felt in Red states and Blue states, by left and right, among young and old alike.
The people who died on 9/11 were the victims of political choices, too. They were murdered because Al Qaeda made the brutal, tactical, political decision to provoke the US into widespread war—a decision prompted by earlier choices by the US. Bin Laden cloaked his choices in religious terms, but he was perverting faith in pursuit of political power. (That’s a familiar pattern here, too, isn’t it?) We played into his hands, and the resulting wave of deaths in the Middle East was political, too.
And what are the horrifying deaths in Gaza, if not political? I don’t which is worse: the Republicans who pander to religious extremists and big donors on this issue, the Republicans who are religious extremists—or the Democrats who are just following the money.
Even the “good” deaths are political. We read about world leaders dying at advanced ages. (Queen Elizabeth, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter come to mind.) My own parents lived into their mid-nineties. These deaths all occurred as the average American lifespan was falling, not rising. Why? Because all these long-lived individuals had excellent health care. (My mother’s first-rate coverage came via her teacher’s union.)
None of this is meant to diminish the loss of any single life. It is an entire universe. Perhaps we can use this tragedy to broaden our understanding of political violence and pledge to end it in all its forms. The president has ordered that flags be flown at half-mast for Charlie Kirk. I don’t object; in fact, I think every needless death should be commemorated.
Every political death is the result of choices we make. Every one of them is needless
Keep Reading
Show Less
Hundreds Arrested in France at Anti-Austerity 'Block Everything' Protests
"We're fed up with paying, we're working hard, we're barely managing to keep our heads above water and to think that the hole in the deficit would be our fault is unbearable to hear," said one labor representative.
Sep 10, 2025
On his first full day in office Wednesday, newly appointed French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu was greeted with nationwide protests, organized online by the decentralized "Block Everything" movement, with demonstrators condemning the government's austerity measures that they said would likely be continued by the new leader.
Lecornu, the former defense minister and a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, was hand-picked by the president to succeed outgoing Prime Minister François Bayrou two days after Bayrou lost a confidence vote in the National Assembly over the government's plan to cut the federal budget by over $50 billion.
Bayrou had proposed eliminating two national holidays, freezing pensions for 2026, and cutting billions in health investments to reduce the deficit.
The proposals have intensified anger that's already been brewing over inequality and poverty in France, both of which are on the rise according to the country's statistics bureau.
Research by the EU Tax Observatory has shown that ultrawealthy individuals in France pay an effective income tax rate of about 0.1%; the National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, earlier this year, but the measure was rejected by the Senate.
Eric Challal, a representative of SUD Rail-Paris, one of two unions that joined the protests on Wednesday, told Euronews that the anger "being expressed today is what we've been feeling all summer, fed up and angry since the Bayrou budget plan was announced, asking us to work more."
"We're fed up with paying, we're working hard, we're barely managing to keep our heads above water and to think that the hole in the deficit would be our fault is unbearable to hear," added Challal.
A university student named Thomas told the outlet that "it's time for Macron and politicians to understand we are serious."
"We're angry with the political system and the fact that the ultrarich and corporations are not paying enough taxes," he said.
The protests included demonstrations at train stations such as Gare du Nord in Paris, one of Europe's busiest travel hubs, where several hundred people gathered Wednesday morning and chants of "Step down, Macron" rang out. Police officers, 6,000 of whom have been deployed in Paris alone to quell the unrest, fired tear gas at the protesters, with some travelers caught in the chaotic scene.
Demonstrators set garbage cans on fire and attempted to block highway traffic in eastern Paris, while police clashed with dozens of students who had blocked the entry of a high school in the area.
The decentralized "Block Everything" movement was organized largely on social media and was originally embraced by far-right activists before garnering the support of progressive France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and left-wing groups including labor unions, which are also planning broader workers' strikes for September 18.
Demands listed in one document that's circulated online include strengthening public services, fighting media consolidation, and taxing the richest corporations, and a survey by the left-wing Jean-Jaurès Foundation found that a majority of people involved with the movement were "educated, highly politicized and angry far-left sympathizers," according to The New York Times.
A recent poll by Ipsos showed that 46% of French people support Block Everything, with strong backing from left-wing voters as well as more than half of far-right National Rally supporters.
Outgoing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Wednesday morning that "law enforcement has the order to not tolerate any violence, any vandalism, any blockage, any occupation of our nation's essential infrastructure." A total of about 80,000 officers were deployed across the country to respond to the demonstrations, and more than 200 people were arrested.
Though Bayrou is no longer in power, Marine Tondelier, the leader of the French Green Party, told the BFMTV news channel on Tuesday that Macron's choice of Lecornu to serve as the new prime minister was a "provocation" that showed a "total lack of respect" for French voters who remain distrustful of Macron's government.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Steve Ballmer, Monopoly, Greenwashing, and the Media’s Favorite Fairy Tale
The former Microsoft CEO and Clippers owner’s scandal shows how media culture hails billionaires as visionaries while their fortunes rest on monopoly, exploitation, and illusion.
Sep 10, 2025
Los Angeles Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is at the center of an NBA investigation into whether a bankrupt “green finance” startup secretly funneled tens of millions of dollars to Kawhi Leonard in a scheme to dodge the salary cap. Ballmer insists he was duped, not complicit. But even if he escapes punishment, this scandal is less about basketball than about a larger truth: Ballmer’s rise, like that of so many billionaires, rests not on genius but on monopoly, exploitation, and a media culture eager to turn raw power into the illusion of “superhuman brilliance.”
Steve Ballmer’s story is not just about one executive’s choices. It is about the deeper rot in a system that rewards monopoly, celebrates exploitation, and dresses up greed as genius. If we want to build a just and sustainable world, the first step is to stop believing the fairy tale.
How Ballmer Perfected the Monopoly Playbook
Ballmer’s career at Microsoft is often painted as the story of a bold leader guiding a tech giant through the new millennium. In reality, it was a case study in how to crush rivals and protect a monopoly. Under his watch, Microsoft racked up record fines from regulators; perfected its notorious strategy of “embrace, extend, extinguish;” and enforced a cutthroat internal culture that stifled collaboration. This wasn’t innovation. It was domination dressed up as genius.
When Ballmer became Microsoft’s CEO in 2000, the company was already facing a bruising US antitrust case over its efforts to crush competitors like Netscape and RealNetworks. European regulators soon followed, hitting Microsoft with record fines for abusing its monopoly. The Commission found that Microsoft had deliberately abused its dominant position by tying Windows Media Player to its operating system and undermining competition in server software.
At the center of these cases was a clear pattern: Microsoft used its dominance not to compete fairly but to block competitors, extend its monopoly, and extract rents from consumers and developers.
If journalism is to serve the public, it must puncture the myths of genius and demand accountability from those who profit most from monopoly and exploitation.
Ballmer did not invent these practices, but he perfected and defended them. The company’s infamous “embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy thrived during his reign: Adopt an open standard, add proprietary extensions, then use those extensions to break competitors’ products or force users into Microsoft’s ecosystem. A series of leaked internal memos known as the “Halloween Documents” revealed how Microsoft viewed open source software as a threat and laid out strategies to undermine it. Far from being a story of daring innovation, Microsoft under Ballmer became a story of protecting monopoly turf at any cost.
Internally, Ballmer presided over the now-notorious “stack ranking” system, in which managers were forced to rank employees against each other, ensuring that some were always labeled failures regardless of performance. Vanity Fair reported that this system was described by employees as “the most destructive process inside of Microsoft.” It encouraged backstabbing, punished collaboration, and destroyed morale.
Yet Ballmer’s reputation in the business press was rarely tarnished. Microsoft’s aggressive tactics and toxic culture were downplayed as part of the “rough and tumble” of the tech industry. Instead of being recognized as symptoms of a deeply flawed corporate ethos, they were cast as evidence of toughness, discipline, or even strategic brilliance.
Genius by Headline, Not by Record
This discrepancy points to a larger cultural problem: the way American media routinely turns billionaires into celebrities and treats monopolists as “innovators.” Stories often described Ballmer as a “visionary,” even while acknowledging that he missed entire waves of innovation—from mobile phones and search engines to social media. For example, he later admitted that Microsoft “missed mobile by clinging to Windows.” In interviews, he reflected that the early 2000s were defined by “missed opportunities,” and critics pointed out that he “missed every major trend in technology”
But this is not just about Ballmer. Consider how the press has lionized figures like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and the Silicon Valley founders of Google, Facebook, and Uber. Musk is often portrayed as a world-changing genius, yet his real talent lies in projecting an aura of promise rather than delivering consistent transformation. Bezos is hailed as the visionary who built Amazon into a global empire, but the company’s rise is grounded in widespread worker exploitation, aggressive union busting, and what Jacobin bluntly calls a legacy of exploitation. These examples show how easily media culture crowns billionaires as “visionaries” while overlooking the systemic harms that make their fortunes possible.
The mythology of the “genius CEO” is not harmless flattery. It is an ideological weapon. It convinces us that billionaires deserve their fortunes because they are smarter, bolder, and more visionary than everyone else. It hides the truth that their wealth comes from structural advantages, monopolies, and an economy rigged to socialize risk while privatizing reward.
Ballmer’s career is a perfect case in point. Few in the press asked whether Microsoft’s dominance strangled innovation or whether his leadership undermined workers and consumers. Instead, the coverage painted him as a colorful eccentric, a lovable billionaire, and above all a success story—as if his rise were earned brilliance rather than brute monopoly power.
Pablo Torre’s remarkable reporting on the Aspiration scandal is a reminder of what real journalism can do when it asks hard questions instead of recycling corporate talking points. His work not only exposes the hidden machinery of sports business but also shows why we need the same relentless scrutiny of CEOs and executives across industries. If journalism is to serve the public, it must puncture the myths of genius and demand accountability from those who profit most from monopoly and exploitation.
The Aspiration Illusion
The irony of Ballmer’s current predicament is almost too sharp. The company at the center of the scandal, Aspiration, branded itself as an “ethical financial” startup, promising consumers the ability to save the planet while banking. Its pitch was slick and appealing: Open an account, round up your debit-card purchases, and the company would plant trees or invest in clean energy The company even raised $135 million to expand its “conscious consumerism” model, promoting debit cards that supposedly planted a tree with every swipe. But investigations later showed that the green promises were exaggerated, with ProPublica revealing that the company counted trees not yet planted and diverted some consumer funds toward administrative costs rather than reforestation.
Indeed, Despite the glossy promises, testimony from former employees and bankruptcy filings exposed a starkly different reality. It was less an environmental company than a marketing engine, spending lavishly on celebrity endorsements such as the $28 million Kawhi Leonard deal now under scrutiny, while delivering little measurable benefit to the climate. The startup positioned itself as a sustainable alternative to traditional banks, promoting tree-planting debit cards. Behind the branding, however, its financial practices were shaky. Aspiration relied on questionable deals to inflate its revenue and set up a high-profile IPO, even as its business model was already beginning to unravel.
Why do we continue to celebrate executives who built their fortunes on monopolistic practices, even as those practices hollow out innovation and concentrate wealth?
If Ballmer was indeed duped by Aspiration, as he claims, it only highlights how easily billionaires buy into glossy branding that flatters their image as progressive leaders. After the scandal broke, Ballmer admitted he felt “embarrassed and kind of silly” for not seeing through the company’s flaws. Yet Aspiration’s collapse alongside a multimillion-dollar “no-show” endorsement deal is not an outlier. It is a symptom of how much of today’s tech and finance sector manufactures a fraudulent sense of progress and value, dressing up speculation and extraction as innovation. In this world of legalized scams and corporate greenwashing, Ballmer’s embarrassment is less an excuse than a reminder of how disconnected billionaire investors are from the human and ecological costs of their money.
Aspiration’s story also echoes a broader pattern. Theranos promised a revolution in blood testing, WeWork styled itself as the future of work, and FTX declared it would reinvent finance. Each was celebrated as visionary until the façade collapsed, leaving behind fraud, debt, and disillusionment. These high-profile failures reveal how the mythology of innovation is repeatedly weaponized to disguise little more than hype, speculation, and exploitation. The media and investors continue to fall for it, again and again.
A Deeper Reckoning
The NBA investigation may or may not conclude that Ballmer violated the rules. But the larger scandal here is not limited to basketball. It is about how our culture treats men like Ballmer as role models—how we conflate wealth with competence, market share with innovation, and ruthless opportunism with genius.
It is also about how the very firms that claim to be solving our most urgent crises, from the climate emergency to economic inequality, are often vehicles for speculation and greenwashing, not solutions. They promise progress but deliver only shareholder returns and a deeper entrenchment of the same unequal and unsustainable order.
The Ballmer story forces us to ask harder questions. Why do we accept that billionaires should own sports teams at all, turning civic institutions into vanity projects for the ultra rich? Why do we continue to celebrate executives who built their fortunes on monopolistic practices, even as those practices hollow out innovation and concentrate wealth? Why do we allow financial startups to market themselves as saviors of the planet while continuing to accelerate ecological collapse?
Breaking the Billionaire Spell
The real lesson of this scandal is that we must break the spell of billionaire mythology. Ballmer is not a singular villain; he is an emblem of an age in which billionaires are lauded as saviors while their empires rest on monopoly, exploitation, and illusion. The media has played a crucial role in maintaining this façade, selling the public a narrative of “genius” to justify inequality.
A more honest narrative would recognize that the wealth of men like Ballmer was built on systems of exclusion, not innovation. It would expose the ways that corporate culture, whether in Big Tech or in the world of “ethical finance,” uses the language of progress to mask exploitation. And it would challenge the very legitimacy of an economy in which billionaires can fail upward, celebrated as geniuses even as their companies and investments leave wreckage behind.
What we need are not more billionaire idols but real accountability. It is long past time to stop confusing power with brilliance and to recognize that genuine progress will never come from self-styled saviors at the top. It will come from democratic action, collective struggle, and the hard work of reshaping our economy around justice rather than monopoly and the myth of capitalist progress.
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular