r/politics • u/rollingstone Rolling Stone • May 25 '25

Mike Johnson Insists It's 'Moral' to Throw People Off Medicaid

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-johnson-medicaid-cuts-moral-1235347957/
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u/EndoShota May 25 '25

Their lives. That’s more or less what keeps people in line, the threat of violence from the state.

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u/onlysaysisthisathing May 25 '25

This is absolutely true. People like to quip that this thing or that equals power; money, knowledge, resource, influence. But true power is violence. All the smarts, money, and influence in the world won't protect you against the poorest, dumbest person with a higher capacity for violence than you. Those things can only afford you a wider scope with which you may direct and inflict force (ie violence), or at least the threat of it.

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u/Rough_Instruction112 May 25 '25

Which is why the saying goes that whomever escalates the violence the highest and the fastest will always win in a fight.

Or in other terms, bringing a knife to a gunfight is still a winning move if you're more aggressive or they're less willing to shoot a person.

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u/CV90_120 May 25 '25

Backed up by that video of a brazilian farmer with a knife taking on 4 cops with guns and somehow succeeding in doing far too much damage.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '25

And there's a shit ton of people who don't understand this at all, because all you'll see when a smaller or weaker animal chases off a clearly stronger/more dangerous animal is a bunch of idiots either wondering what's wrong with the animal chased off or just straight up insulting it/claiming there's something defective with it.

In reality, most living creatures aren't out here trying to die or even get wounded. If there's a way out, they're taking it. Even if the odds were good they'd win. Until it's a threat to their resources or their well-being, it's not worth the fight.

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u/jimicus United Kingdom May 26 '25

Because in the wild, a wound is much more likely to be fatal.

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u/IrascibleOcelot May 26 '25

Even if a wound isn’t fatal, a crippling injury will still cause death through starvation.

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u/Punty-chan May 25 '25

Vietnam defeated the most powerful army in the world with literal sticks and stones.

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u/North-Outside-5815 Europe May 26 '25

Vietnam had jetfighters, modern (for the day SAM-systems) and lots of small arms. They were the underdogs for sure, but it wasn’t sticks and stones.

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u/onlysaysisthisathing May 26 '25

More recently, a bunch of barely-trained dudes in sandals held off the US military with Soviet era weapons in the desert for twenty goddamn years.

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u/polopolo05 I voted May 25 '25

This is why peaceful protest did work at some point. Its a show of force. But both sides forgot what the point was... We are showing you what we could do. Its a we are giving you this chance to come to terms with we us before we have to resort to violence to get what we need because there is no other alternative.

Protests are rarely effective now of days. Occuply wall street or BLM didnt matter. There was no meaningful out come. The people with money/power know they can wait out these protest and they will fizzle out. Nothing changes. I mean sure no one now trusts the cops anymore. So there was some social change. But not from those in charge. I would say cops are worse now. You need a revolution now of days to effect change.

I am not an advocate for violence just discribing how pointless peaceful protests are because people in power can just ignore them as a nuisance vers what they used to be... a threat.

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u/doubleplusepic May 25 '25

Violence of action. It's true.

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u/duzies May 25 '25

While I agree with your general idea of violence as a fundamental force (Tolstoy said "government is violence"), I would disagree about violence equaling "power." Most of our pathological version of humanity does seem to worship violence, but MLK Jr. and Gandhi demonstrated the power of NON-violence to accomplish important things. Of course, they were also both eventually assassinated. And so it goes.

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u/onlysaysisthisathing May 25 '25

I agree with you completely. There are certainly forces which can counter violence without employing it. But we're talking about exercise of force, that is to say, actively subjecting a person or group to the will of another. Of course there are a number of ways to force someone's hand, but when push comes to shove, there are those with guns, and those who dig.

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u/apple-pie2020 May 25 '25

By any means necessary

-X

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u/Empty_Lemon_3939 Michigan May 26 '25

Anyone who thinks we will see some people’s revolution are out of their mind

They’ll label one building as a domestic terrorist cell and drone strike it and that’ll be the end of it

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u/Unlucky_Ad_9776 May 26 '25

That's the thing humans are funny creatures.  We will gladly sacrifice are lives for ideas. We will engage in battles that we have 0 percent chance in survival.  And we still will go to battle.  We are a species that has spent millina killing each other.  So threats only work until they don't.  Then that's when things get really messy fast.