TRUE CRIME: Boeing and the Whistleblower

Did the poor guy get Epsteined?

TRUE CRIME  

Hopefully you have heard this story already – it seems to be on the periphery of the broader public’s consciousness . . .  where maybe they heard about a headline but didn’t take the time to deep dive.

Boeing 737 Max planes have had multiple incidences of falling apart mid-air, the most famous case being a door that popped off a plane mid-flight in January. On a recent flight in Australia a Max nosedived, slamming passengers onto the ceiling of the plane. This is following two major crashes that occurred in 2019, one in Indonesia that killed 189 people and another in Ethiopia that killed 157. China and other countries grounded the Max after these crashes, but Boeing, who are also a major defense contractor, have influence over the FAA and their planes were never grounded in the US. This is big example of unelected corporations dictating public policy.

Enter John Barnett, who had been a quality manager for 30 years, who was fired from the company in 2017 after documenting too many incidences of their prioritizing speedy production over safety. He said Boeing had a culture of concealment that led to them harassing him out of the company. Over six years later, with multiple public incidents and investigations to back up his story, Barnett was finely making a deposition in a civil trial against the company. After hours of contentious questioning by Boeing lawyers he was tired and wanted to wanted to wait until the next day to finish his deposition. He planned to make a long drive home after finishing his testimony.

Instead, he was found dead in his truck by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in a hotel parking lot. Information on where the gun came from, and security camera footage of the parking lot, have not been released by police. Mainstream media have been silent on his death ever since.

WHAT DOES THIS KIND OF STORY MEAN TO PEOPLE?

This is the kind of story that has bipartisan appeal. For a long time in our culture, we have seen movies and TV shows where the villain was an evil out of control corporation. Even though movies are made by corporations, they are comfortable portraying themselves this way because it’s an inescapable truth, a foundational belief people have that they are being controlled by something sinister -- and movies are a safe outlet for venting that don’t hurt the status quo.

The story of a lone person who stands up to the big bad corporation has its roots in leftist culture. People like Erin Brockovich or Ralph Nader are consumer advocates and of the left. But average people on both sides of the aisle have contempt for billionaires and corporations, and it doesn’t take much for them to want to tear down the goliaths. The wrinkle in this story however, is that we have a suicide that looks like it could really be a murder . . . we have a conspiracy theory. And this is shit the right loves. In fact conspiracy theories these days often have the conjunction, right wing. It’s a right wing conspiracy theory, folks, and that means it must be false. The left have their conspiracies too but we can get into that another time.

My first idea was make a Political Compass Meme about it, because even though that subreddit is supposed to be about the political spectrum it has become a refuge for conservatives. I didn’t post there for a long time after I heard of it because I never had any ideas for memes in that format. But after I was banned from several left-wing subreddits for having contrarian views I decided I better master the format of having wojacks from four quadrants of the political spectrum weigh in on the news story of the day.

My first draft was made using wojacks but I was reminded of a video clip meme that was titled “what CIA agents says when journalists expose them,” and it was a video of Neel Breen, a B-movie actor/director saying, “how could you have done this, how could you have committed suicide?” in his hammy bad acting style, so after I put that in one quadrant I decided to make all quadrants movie themed. This resulted in really make four memes in one, the strongest panel is LibRight with the Robocop reference.

This meme did pretty well with 731 likes and 77 comments. One person commented: “fuller quote, more true to the film: I had a guaranteed airline sale with 737 MAX. Renovation program. Spare parts for 25 years. Who cares if it worked or not? You just fucked with the wrong corp!"

Some people seemed skeptical of the idea that the guy was Epsteined, “If I ever decide to do the final deed, I'll tell people beforehand that it wasn't actually suicide just to screw with the world one last time.” I’m guessing the guy who wrote that had very little information on the story. But some seemed open to the idea, one guy wrote: “All we know is what the news give us, it's totally plausible that they killed him to save tons of millions on safety measures that his lawsuits were kinda forcing on them.”

 Another commentator pointed out that the change in Boeing culture is likely connected to their merger with military aircraft company McDonell Douglas: a company that favors speedy production and doesn’t mind having blood on its hands.

I also posted this on Twitter where it got no reach whatsoever. The hashtag #boeingwhistleblower has been totally suppressed. Thanks for the free speech, Elon!

VARIATIONS ON A MEME

The Robocop meme was a strong image, so I broke that off on its own. I thought it might have a left-wing appeal, so I posted it in /alltheleft where it got 407 likes. You could use this meme for any story about a corporation taking vengeful action.

There’s a hilarious YouTube channel called Space Ice where he takes the piss out of action movies. I checked out his video, “Neil Breen Movie Fateful Findings Destroyed The Fabric Of Society,” where I could see the full context of the scene — which is the most obvious “kill someone and make it look like a suicide scene” in any movie ever. I expanded this into a three-panel meme. It’s hilarious but a bit weird so I wasn’t sure where I could get an audience for it. It got 61 likes on the oddball sub /19684 and 29 likes on /conspiracymemes (which is a small sub).

‘Nuff said.