Progressive Politics

But let me ask you this - based on the history of society and the typical results of assassinations, violence, and instability, what do you predict will actually change from this?

Columbine spawned numerous copy cats, and I think there is a large potential for a similar thing to happen in this case. In terms of the vague revolution you are implicitly asking about, no that's not going to happen as a result of this. If this is a one off event it will not be enough for large scale change. We'd have to see numerous biz execs and billionaires shot to see real change.

When I look at this, I see parallels to past emotional leftist movements like Occupy Wall Street and BLM, that did garner a lot of attention and lead to a lot of discussion, but in terms of policy change were only followed by political defeats for those movements.

Occupy wall street failed because it was entirely peaceful outside of the trespassing and dealing with cops. The George Floyd/BLM protests weren't dissimilar.

Ultimately what made those fail is that neither had distinct and separate factions fighting for the same thing through violence or the threat of violence. MLK had the Black Panthers & Malcom X, Ghandi had freedom fighters in the background.

Peaceful social movements are far more successful with violent factions in the background. And the data supports that:

https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/3/pgac110/6633666?login=false

So now in the present we may potentially have a violent "faction" starting to form. The peaceful protests of the healthcare system are far easier to form.