Thank you letters to unpopular people

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So uhm this is an attempt at like a reverse-ragebait-sort-of-thing, where I want to write something nice about somebody difficult and say thank you.

To Friedrich Merz, for trying

Like yeah, there is nothing that people will like, ever. You will never make them happy now and 10 years from now.

No opinion on him or German politics in general but Merz at least is not a total suckup to the population and seems to take more of a long view. Assuming people are dumb, an admittedly legendary low approval rate of around 10% is a good thing, in a way.

So thank you.

To people who deny health care insurance payments

Like, what can you do? Americans were asked if they wanted universal health insurance multiple times and when they saw what it would cost them as a share of income, they said no. Like, you can’t believe in democracy and in universal health insurance in the US at the same time.

Insurers like UnitedHealth, which deny a lot of claims, are unpopular in the US. In 2024, their executive was shot in the back first thing in the morning (nobody likes to be shot in the back first thing in the morning). The suspected shooter seems to be weirdly popular and, while it’shard to say from articles or comments which are probably not whart most people think, it seems a lot of people indeed kind of side with him in some mild sense of “well, UnitedHealth had it coming / they were evil”.

Naively, without actually looking, I guess that UnitedHealth was offering lower premiums than other firms. If not offering their service, they would be uninsured. This sounds mean, and, I think universal insurance schemes are good but again, the people said no.

There is nothing their executive could have done. If he would have reduced the deny rate, they would have to raise premiums and at that point their insurees could just have picked another provider. He can not reduce returns or the board will just replace him (subscribe for more extremely interesting and novel thoughts). In a way, Mangione should maybe have thrown an egg an egg at him or something like that? Like, something to get arrested, get a bit of press attention but not actually do something that can not be reversed. All that he achieved was probably add fees to premiums. If working for a company is not seen as prestigious, they will have to pay higher wages to employees to compensate; if executives feel unsafe, they will want armed security and so on etc etc, and the costs will be put on the insured.

What is the point of blaming a public company that just tries to serve a market need and has no freedom to purpose another goal except profit?

It’s maybe too easy for me to say, I do have health insurance. It’s probably much harder to actually say that to someone in person whose claims were rejected and again, I like universal insurance schemes. However, Americans in Germany are also unimpressed with our health system which has long waiting times, less time per patient, less economic incentive for doctors to invest in equipment as there is enough demand and little competition for patients etc etc. Like, they don’t like that system either, apart from not being willing to pay the costs (about 1.200 EUR per month for most).

At the end, the American population just lives relatively unhealthy lives and that drags their health system down. And the people who have to decide who does not get treatment approved, combining medicine with a resource-based-view, probably aren’t exactly working their dream job from kindergarden. It’s an ethical and political question, not an economic one and there is nothing their executive could have done. It’s better that people have UnitedHealth insurance than none at all.

So thank you, I guess.

To Donald Trump, for election obstruction

I mean, wasn’t what he was doing in 2020 just standard crowd control? Like, trying to avoid spread-out civil unrest or a small civil war in the aftermath of the election by creating a distraction?

To me, it looked like somebody is pretending they are doing an insurrection in order to get others to focus on him and not do anything themselves. That he did not actually know how the system works or that Pence could not overturn the results? That he worked with Pence for years but they did not make a plan if-this-happens-then-that beforehand? That everything gets to the press in real time including private phone calls? It just doesn’t make sense.

While I am not saying that insurrection is impossible per se, spontaneous insurrection (why does this sound like a medical code), with seemingly no planning beforehand, like in 2020, probably is. Like, what he did doesn’t make any sense from an assumed insurrectionist perspective who would come prepared, have talks with the relevant people beforehand, establish secure communication channels etc.

Maybe I’m the dumbest person alive and if this is some existing disproven conspiracy then sorry :D

Also sorry if it’s something that everyone knows and thus does not even mention, it’s hard for me to tell the difference. But at least some people seem to think that Trump was indeed delusional and attempted to overturn the result (which actually be the case, again, I don’t know).

But the super-simple explanation, I think, is that they had some Post-Election-Violence-Avoidance Signal group with the press in it, and that group had a plan in place to avoid a large violent unrest, by making a smaller but more spectacular one, so people would sit at home and watch the show instead of doing something themselves, potentially saving a lot of lives.

Uhm, so I don’t know but if that was indeed the plan, maybe it was not and in that case forget it but if it was, then thank you.

To Angela Merkel, for everything

16 years is a long time. Other people finish their bachelor degree in that. I don’t have any opinion about any policy of hers but she always struck me as sort of a reliable, hard-working person with a big brain and a good heart. For me, and I think many others, her balance between not being naive and trying to be kind felt right.

Unpopular at that time was mostly her 2015 decision to help people who needed help and even then, most Germans were happy with her work. Blaming Merkel for literally everything was a meme in Germany at the time - as pupils we liked to say “Danke Merkel” (thanks Merkel) whenever something happened that was so clearly not her fault as to still somehow manage to blame her in an ironic kind of way, like “My shoelaces untied themselves again. Well, thanks Merkel!” or “I washed my clothes too hot and now they are too small for me. Thanks Merkel!”.

People still sometimes blame her for this and that and of course they could all have done it better at that time and totally not just with the benefit of hindsight.

Like her or not, personally I did, you can’t say she didn’t gave it all. She did not do many of the things that other people do in their life, instead she always worked for Germany.

Maybe you thought, at the end of the 16 years, people would maybe huddle together in the bars and drink to her for one evening (I feel like “the merkel” is totally a useable name for a drink that is waiting to be invented) but not really and everything moved on fast. It’s so weird how time flies (duh!).

Back to her, what a life, really, for an obviously very honorable woman. I hope she enjoys her retirement, has a lot of time around fluffy dogs, nice food, barrels of wine, nice beaches and mountains and no people shouting in her ear.

And thank you.

To catholic priests

If the services provided by the church would be provided by non-church entities, there would have been more incidents not less.

But of course, it was a vivid and wrong image, it was so easy to always write just one more article for it, so little work to just replace the words a little and you were all but guaranteed to get attention and clicks. People didn’t like the church anyway unless of course they want something from it. Equally convenient, priests are a target that is unlikely to hit you back and you can just bash them forever for the sins of their group, regardless how small the actual percentage was. This whole thing was blown out of proportion (with “thing” I mean the media scandal, not someones buttocks).

So thank you.

To people who oppose animal testing

I mean, it does not really make sense to be against and there just is no alternative. You can’t test new drugs without animal testing. Tell it to somebody with MS or cancer etc how you are animal testing. Or to the people actually doing the testing who usually also like to pet animals more than killing them (“you had to get the eggs out [of the mouse] while they were still warm”).

But maybe it is still good that some people are against it, if only because it makes maybe makes other people think about other animal-related things like meat production.

So thank you.

To the unemployed

Bashing the unemployed is popular wherever you look. More or less everyone want to cut back most forms of support.

It’s rough to be the one that currently just seems to be there to boost other people’s ego (story of my life) and be some sort of scapegoat.

If you look at their forums or on Reddit, their issue is often with the types of jobs offered. It’s of course easy to say an unemployed person should simply take any job offered and if it is cold calling (nothing wrong with cold calling) or cleaning (nothing wrong with cleaning obvsly, so sorry for using these as examples) then so be it.

I think that’s wrong, these jobs require plenty of strength - to be insensitive about opinions, stand back up quickly and try again, maintain your self esteem when people mostly just don’t want to talk with you, be quick-witted with words and have courage. While it sounds a bit like an excuse, I think many people actually just couldn’t do it for a longer period of time. I’m not sure I could, if I get unemployed tomorrow.

It would be good to not make the connection between people’s self-worth and their economic productivity even stronger. People underestimate their risk of being unemployed themselves at some point in their life, it is quite common really. It can happen to everybody and I think it’s bad to put a stigma on it. For some people, there are health issues involved.

Also, if you are someone that looks at the world and come to an conclusion like “I will do as little as possible, not sure what would make things better and what worse” then I think you’re also valid.

So thank you.

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