Unfortunately, being a wealthy ex-CEO and ex-pat living in another country, away from his former social circles, has likely removed all social support and peer group balance against his decline. When you're that wealthy, you can afford to surround yourself with people who won't challenge your ideas or suggest that maybe you're not well. The yes-men don't want to risk being ostracized by saying the wrong thing, so they go along with it.
I hope someone can talk him into getting the help he needs. That doesn't excuse what he said, obviously, but I doubt this issue will resolve on its own.
Hopefully this case will turn out better than Tony's tragedy, but it is also important to remember, just because Bateman is mentally ill doesn't mean he should get a pass for spreading hateful and harmful ideas. You can be mentally ill (paranoid even) without developing a hatred for a particular marginalized group.
Puerto Rico is another country?
It's 2022 - Qanon-level nonsense is very much "normal politics" at present, however much we wish it weren't.
Last time I met this person was 2 years ago. He was obsessed with Trump. Back then I thought in 10-15 years he is gonna be into many conspiracy theories but this time i met him he sounded completely insane.
And I hate that for this guy everyone is saying its because he is rich. There is plenty of dumb conspiracies that people in the US are believing en masse across all classes and ages. Its sad that we can just sit around and do nothing.
A woman who believes Jewish space lasers create widlfires was elected to the House of Representatives on behalf of a movement that believes the Democratic Party is a secret cult of Satanic pedophiles. A movement following a President who, among other things[0], believed Barack Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim Marxist extremist who founded Al Qaeda.
This is what normal is now. This is the Overton Window starting to move right from talk radio scale crazy after 9/11 and not stopping even when it hit the batshit insanity of QAnon. Mere anti-semitism is quaint in comparison to what the mainstream believes nowadays, and so common as to be banal. This guy was just stupid enough to say the quiet part out loud.
Oh, and of course it's tied in to vaccinations because... of course it is.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conspiracy_theories_pr...
With Jeffery Epsteins deep connections, I wouldn't think it strange if both parties are full of pedophiles.
He appears to be pretty young, see the photo at the top: https://forward.com/fast-forward/480359/david-bateman-entrat...
So, perhaps some other kind of mental illness. It was telling that he basically doubled down with a sort of "sorry, sorry, but it's still a Jewish plot" in his apology.
Edit: He's likely 42 or 43, based on some old (2002/2003) stories about founding the company after dropping out of BYU.
This guy needs help. I'm kind of surprised nobody in the article suggested it.
I'm guessing that the email is indeed anti-semitic, and I'm guessing that the media doesn't want to legitimize anything he's saying by publishing the entire email.
...but I'm not going to throw stones without seeing the evidence myself. This is the trade-off. Unfortunately, the media knows full well that accusations alone are all it takes these days - evidence is optional.
That same portion is copied verbatim into the article.
And if that's not enough, someone copied his recent Instagram activity to Twitter: https://twitter.com/elisenicscott/status/1478470250307981324 I'm no doctor, but those are not the ramblings of a mentally sound individual.
Interestingly enough, without casting any judgment on the claim. Canada put a doctor that claimed a rise in vaccine related still births in the mental hospital recently, and treated him with psychotic medication.
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/12/scicheck-doctor-makes-fals...
https://jessicar.substack.com/p/dr-mel-bruchet-did-you-know-...
I worry that people are running to mock this guy because they want to portray these views as the kind of things their opponents actually think, while in reality there is clearly something wrong with him and he may need some compassion. This is not a fringe opinion, there is some problem that's causing him to behave like this.
What is most fascinating and frightening is that there are many who, rather than understand that the world has serious random phenomena, or at least phenomena that are not yet fully explained (or the explanation is beyond their understanding), would choose to instead of believing scientists who spend their entire lives trying to sort it out, instead believe that there is some evil cabal of people responsible for the misery in their lives.
There are cabals among scientists that need to be questioned. On fossil fuel, tobacco, medical topics and a lot of other issues. Germany had a lot of science on why Jews are inferior. Even scientists have an agency that does not have to align with public interest. Your comment suggests blind faith which is certainly not a good idea.
> cabal of people responsible for the misery in their lives
conservatives, liberals, rock musicians, the church, homosexuals...
We can say "what person is saying is very wrong" simultaneous with tryign to point that person towards medical care.
Mocking someone for bad behavior could have some upside (e.g., maybe it discourages them and others from doing the same). But if we imagine mocking someone with a debilitating illness, that image of ourselves should make us reconsider.
Though, it's not a bad idea considering the food shortages, water shortages, supply chain issues, etc...we're nearing max capacity...
It's a fairytale, how this guy got to be a CEO when I'm struggling as a burned out developer w/ way more common sense I'll never know.
A Modest Proposal: Mr. Bateman needs a 72-hour involuntary admission to a good psychiatric hospital. His recent behavior might be caused by a fast-growing brain tumor, or congenital malformation of the cerebrum, or abuse of high-risk recreational drugs, or be the first clear symptom of a late-manifesting major psychiatric disorder. It's for his own good, really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...
(Though such bizarre and self-destructive behavior is a red flag, and medical testing & psychiatric evaluation are quite reasonable. PragmaticPulp's comment kinda covers that.)
Yes, I know the USSR's history. In current-day America...the guy's chances of being forced into a psych. hospital by the government for this seem about as high as his chances of being tried for publicly insulting George III's honor.
I thought of Mel Gibson when I read the story, who had some similar over-the-top crazy Jewish conspiracy tirades. But has done quite well, particularly as a movie director. And seems witty under the right circumstances, to me.
> Mr. Bateman needs a 72-hour involuntary admission to a good psychiatric hospital
I think he got a sentence to remember already. Don't think many Jews would think too favorably about this idea.
Satire has nothing on this article
I've read an article, linked here during the Trump administration, about people of Mexican origin being deported from American towns. The townsfolk were upset that their friend or neighbour was being deported, but they still believed in Trump's promises. They didn't want this to happen, they only wanted "the bad ones" to get out, whatever abstract concept of "the bad ones" meant to them. The people they knew were always "one of the good ones".
Obviously, no group of people is uniform, but the human brain loves to think in groups. The groups can overlap and they don't need to make sense; they exist purely to attach some kind of judgement or prejudice onto. Probably a great feature of the human brain if you're a primate trying to make it to adulthood, but, in modern times, humanity's worst flaw.
One can only imagine that many people in, say, 19th-c. and early 20th-c. Germany held similar notions and views. This if anything makes such conspiracy nuttery even more dangerous.
Imagine if you were forced to follow the advice of you Doctor, Lawyer, and your Teacher every hour of the day. They all might mean well for you. But its turning out that its gets pretty bureaucratic and despotic very fast.
But on the other hand, if a super villain wanted to rid the world of people, an anti vaccine might be one way to do it.
1. Wait for a pandemic, simultaneously develop multiple bogus vaccines at competing pharmaceutical companies, fake clinical trials at multiple in multiple countries, pass fake data through multiple regulatory agencies, and keep all of it secret.
2. Run some Facebook ads telling people not to protect themselves during a deadly pandemic?
On the conspiracy side, you can't really rule out a coordinated effort at this point. This video goes into how spreading confusion and fear, to create a state of public mass psychosis is a tactic employed by authoritarians in the past.
The better logic is this invisible hand would not want to wipe out the vaccine takers as they are the 'sheeple' who are controlled. These powers would want to remove the trouble makers, the people that dont do what they are told. So a more likely conspiracy is the secret plan would be to release a second virus to kill the non-vaxed once the sheeple are vaxed.
Obviously this is a joke but it's a good spin to present to people that believe in the conspiracy of vaccination.
That is indeed a good argument.
I do not believe covid vaccines are intentionally killing people. The chance of that being the case is maybe 1 in a (m/b)illion who knows. (is it too much or not much risk to mandate it on everyone given the alternative(everyone gets infected etc)?)
There exist groups however who would decrease population no matter what, because they think that is the only way to "save the planet", right?
There are other possibilities where the vaccines are preferred by evil conspirators, but I won't go into it because figuring out how evil people would think is not making me happy at all.
The only reason no one is standing up and giving a full-throated defense of this man's right to speak his mind without consequence is that they're only willing to defend heinous speech in the abstract. Give them a concrete example and suddenly they discover the existence of nuance and sit in the corner whistling Dixie.
Nope. So much worse. And he doubled down too.
Definitely read the article to the end.
Anyone ever work with or meet this fellow? As he has fallen for such a large pile of nonsense that I wonder how he operates day to day?
To be honest, "God" has been saying all sorts of anti-semitic things for almost two thousand years. It's funny how the standards of sanity shift and sway over time. And we're talking Utah here.
Logically it doesn't make much sense, since Israel is one of the most vaxxed places. You'd think God had better control over scope, if the vaccine is the conspiracy by the Jews. You wouldn't see God turn the vaccine on them.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/aer...
I think we could better face things if we loved ourselves more as when we do that our desire to attack others goes down and our desire to make things goes up. Just something that I picked up in getting my ADHD under control.
