As we were riding home on my bike, my five year old said, "it's sad whenever people die."

I said, "yes, it's almost always sad when people die. Sometimes it's not sad. Sometimes it's OK."

I talked about my Grandpa dying. He hadn't been himself since his stroke. It was sad but also not. "Sometimes it's time for people to go and it's a good thing."
I also said, "and sometimes it's not sad for other reasons, and that can be sad itself."

She's not old enough for a deeper explanation of that last bit. Maybe none of us really are.

The sad thing is not that Brian Thompson died. As much as some people want to maintain decorum and all that bullshit, it's hilarious and you can't pretend it's not. The world is objectively better in the sense that his death decreased suffering immediately. There's literally proof all over of people who will live, or will live better lives, because Brian Thompson was killed.

I was listening to It Could Happen Here a while ago and they were talking about Pinochet. They went off on a tangent about evil. He was a baby once, and a child, and an adolescent. He was at one point cute and silly. He became one of the most horrifying monsters in history. Hitler is the same, as are all the other horrible people who ever were or ever will be.

My toddler is silly. She was eating little bits of salt a couple of days ago and I asked her if she wanted to try pepper. I put a little on her plate and she ate it and said, "ugh, I *hate* that." It was adorable. There are any number of little cute things that happen in life, little cute things that kids do. Brian Thompson was a toddler too. He probably did some cute shit at some point and said some cute things as a kid.

Then, over time, something turned him into a monster capable of mass murder. Something made him able to kill children, and mothers, and fathers. Something made him able to order unknown number of grandparents to be killed... For what?

The thing that's sad, and honestly frightening, is that there exists a system so horrible that it can turn normal people into these unspeakable monsters.

Imagine, for a second, we were free. Imagine we could achieve a world where everyone could do what they wanted and their needs were taken care of to the greatest degree possible. Who would fit better in that system? Brian Thompson, or the guy who shot him?

Imagine being Brian Thompson, or any "health provider" CEO, or anyone who works in private equity, and imagine having to actually face the what you've done to us all. Imagine real accountability. Imagine individually talking to each parent who lost a child, child who lost a parent or grandparent. Imagine hearing the frustration and comprehending the pettiness of the terror you inflicted on so many people, for so many years, every day, day after day. Brian Thompson was given an easy exit compared to what he should have had to face.

And this is *actually* sad. It's sad that there are people who were once human, who could have made the world better, and, by simply following a system, have committed atrocities from which they can never recover and for which they can never really be held accountable. It is sad that there are people who are, today, understanding what they've done and, instead of quitting and trying to repair the harm, they're just declaring moral bankruptcy, removing themselves from Wikipedia, and hiring more security guards.

The real tragedy is that a system that can turn humans into monsters like Brian Thompson is allowed to continue operating. We should never have let that happen in the first place and we should do everything we can to stop it from continuing to happen.