In the week since the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was assassinated, there seem to have been three major categories of response.
The first, and most predictable, is the “How horrible! This is a senseless and tragic murder” response, which has been the predominant response of politicians, corporate media outlets, and other people who have similar roles and incomes to those of Brian Thompson. They fear, not entirely without warrant, that they might be next.
The second, and most shocking, response, has been the idolatry of the shooter, due in no small part to his good looks, and buoyed by the idea that, finally, someone who deserved it is being targeted for once.
And the third response, which seems to be the most widespread, condemns vigilantism, while acknowledging that this violent act has really brought to light some very serious evils in our society, and that while we need to bring all killers to justice, nobody is going to shed any tears over the late Mr. Thompson. This attitude seems to be summed up by “I can’t condone murder, but…”
To jump right in, let me clarify: I’m the second category, and almost everyone I love and trust is in the third. So it is to you that I am addressing this. Please, give me an opportunity to persuade you, one objection at a time.
We can’t condone murder!
This seems obviously true. “Murder,” however, is a conclusory term. We can, and often do, condone killing. Given the right context, almost every one of us (except the most extreme pacifist) can condone killing.
We condoned the killing of Osama bin Laden, who killed way fewer Americans than Brian Thompson.
We condone the killing of Russian soldiers inside Ukraine. Most of you have, in fact, actively supported this (That’s what “giving aid to Ukraine” means. They are using that aid to kill people.)
Many of you either condone the killing of Hamas militants or condone the killing of Israeli soldiers in Gaza… at the very least.
Most of us condone the killing undertaken by Syrian Rebels as they took over the country from a brutal regime, in what was far from a bloodless coup. Just to add some perspective here: It’s estimated that somewhere between 470,000 and 610,000 Syrians died in their civil war, depending on your source. Over the same time period (since 2011), it’s estimated that the number of Americans who died due to lack of healthcare is between 340,000 and 580,000. Obviously, the per-capita numbers are much much worse in Syria, but I just want to point out that the numbers are horrifyingly comparable. More on this later.
And then there are the killings that “we” don’t condone, but the American criminal “justice” system has. I’m talking about killers such as George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse, not to mention Daniel Penny, who was acquitted on the same day that Luigi Mangione was arrested. Penny killed a black homeless man, ostensibly to protect others. Mangione killed a CEO whose business decisions have already killed tens of thousands of Americans. The former has already gotten away with it. Why are we so adamant that the latter also can’t?
Violence never solves anything, it only begets more violence.
Many of you, like me, have no room in your hearts for patriotism, but if you do, how can you say something so naive? The United States was founded through war, through violence. We are only a nation because of the shooting-to-death of tens of thousands of British soldiers. We also shot-to-death tens of thousands of Nazis. War is always tragic, but the idea that shooting-people-to-death is Always Wrong … that’s just not an idea that I really think any of you truly believe in.
Yes, we want better solutions than shooting, we don’t want to be shot and we don’t want to have to shoot, but you can’t deny that you and I have all reaped the benefits that were bestowed on us through the shooting of people to death.
And yet in all those cases, the shooting-to-death was primarily aimed at working-class soldiers who did nothing wrong besides being drafted by their country into the armed services. The fact that we are upset by a guilty party being gunned down — how rare! — and not upset by the countless Russian soldiers who have died this month … this seems to me backwards.
And honestly, way too many of us (and I include myself in this accusation) have been way too unmoved by the deaths of 50,000 people (and counting!) in Gaza, most of whom are civilians, to have any reason to be upset over one death of one piece of shit in midtown Manhattan. If you can’t bring yourself to say “Let’s immediately cut all funding to Israel,” you have absolutely no moral ground on which to stand in saying “Let’s make sure that Luigi Mangione is brought to justice.”
Either you’re okay with killing, or you’re not.
But Adam, this is not a war. Your above examples are wars.
Mangione described it as an “act of war.” Maybe you don’t see that we’re at war, and maybe you don’t want to be, but consider the reality of living in America right now.
We are being attacked, and killed, from all sides.
We have a militarized police force that often kills with impunity.
We have a for-profit health”care” system that lets us die at rates that are dwarfed by the rest of the Western world.
We are poisoning the air, the water, the food, the medicine, and the climate. People are dying every day.
Many of us (including me) are in a position of economic and cultural privilege, and we are insulated from this war, just as most Russians are insulated from their war. But it is absolutely a war, waged by oligarchs, against Americans.
It is neither irrational nor evil for us to fight back, using the same methods that any side in any war must use.
But we can’t allow people to just be gunned down on the street; that is not a civil society.
Correct. We are not living in a civil society. We have not been living in one for a long time. The physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual violence directed against us has been so severe for so many decades, it is outrageous to think that we live in a society governed by laws and courts.
The courts do not work for us. We have, as I often point out, the largest per-capita prison population in the world, and yet almost none of our prisoners are the actual evildoers. And you all know this.
No one was ever arrested for stealing our nation’s wealth in 2008 and collapsing the economy.
No one was ever convicted of the planning of the January 6th insurrection; only the foolish footsoldiers were ever put on trial.
Our leaders are never jailed even when they murder people. When Ronald Reagan illegally sold arms to the Iranians in order to fund the Contras, when Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in order to distract us from his affair (remember when that happened?), when George W. Bush lied to the American and international public in order to start a war that took the lives of more Americans than 9/11, when Barack Obama ordered the murder of an American citizen without a trial, when Donald Trump had an Iranian general assassinated while on a diplomatic mission to a country we were allied with… all of these murders went completely unpunished, even before the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t charge a President with anything as long as it’s potentially part of his “official duties.” All of these were murders and ALL of these murderers got away with it.
We literally have a convicted felon about to be sworn in as President, and you want to talk to me about our civilized criminal justice system?
We simply do not live in the system that you want to live in. And I want to live there, in that Civil Society, too! I really do! But it is, today, only a fantasy. I would be happy to talk about putting Mangione in prison only after all of these other criminals are brought to justice. Until then, it is an extremely low priority.
It’s a slippery slope! We can’t have people take the law into their own hands!
First of all, is the slope so slippery? No one is coming after me for my decisions as CEO that cost the lives of tens of thousands of people. No one is coming after me for my hundreds of millions of dollars in personal assets. I am completely unafraid of being targeted as Thompson was targeted.
And this phrase, “Take the law into his own hands”, doesn’t actually apply. Nothing that Brian Thompson did, however evil, was illegal. Mangione did not take “the law” into his own hands, because the law does not work for us anymore, and hasn’t for a long time. He took Justice into his own hands.
Fix society. Make sure that the laws punish the truly evil people. Then we can go after killers like Mangione. But again, until then, it’s an extremely low priority.
What’s next? Do you really want to start Open Season on corporations and billionaires? Won’t that ruin everything good about our world?
Yes.
Look, I have a pretty cushy life. I own my home. I heat it with oil. I can buy avocados year-round. My clothes are affordable because slaves make them in Asia. My milk is affordable because the U.S. government pays farmers to dump millions of gallons of milk each year because somehow that makes sense because Capitalism. My life is pretty good.
If we were to break out into all-out class war, and society as we know it collapses, all of that would get worse. I couldn’t protect my private property, we wouldn’t have the same access to heat and food and medicine.
We might even lose access to Amazon Prime.
Reflect for a minute, as I’m trying to, on just how problematic that attitude is. We are being slowly and systematically beaten down, impoverished, numbed. My generation does not expect to have access to social security or significant retirement funds. The younger generation does not expect to ever be able to afford a home. Almost none of us can afford a college education anymore. Fewer and fewer of us can afford the simple luxuries that were available to most Americans fifty years ago.
You all have read and agreed with this for a long time. I don’t need to show you the charts of wealth inequality, of declining quality of life, of declining life expectancy. You know it’s true, but you don’t want to do what’s necessary to change it. You don’t want to lose your avocados, your Amazon Prime, your heat, your home. I don’t want that either. I really, really hoped that if we just voted hard enough, that would somehow matter.
But the time for that has passed. The window in which we had an opportunity to make peaceful reform through elections has passed, and really, it passed a long time ago. Maybe it passed when Glass-Steagall was repealed by Clinton, maybe it passed when Obama passed a “healthcare reform” law that did nothing to lower costs but transferred billions to for-profit health insurance companies, maybe it passed when Bernie Sanders failed to receive the Democratic nomination. Certainly, we can tell that it passed by the time Trump won re-election. If we’re honest, when was the last time the U.S. government stood up for the working class? When was the last time we saw meaningful action to address climate change, wage inequality, wealth inequality, healthcare costs, childcare costs, education costs, housing costs, or any of the myriad other evils of runaway, unregulated Capitalism?
Many of us who call ourselves “liberals” have written well about these evils, and just as well about potentially effective legislative solutions, but those efforts have failed.
I really don’t want it to be necessary to achieve our ends with drastic actions. In fact, I’m still slightly hopeful that the fear instilled by Mangione, provided we rally around him and don’t take the side of the Establishment yet again, will encourage real change without too much more violence necessary.
But I am open to the idea that violence may be necessary to enact change. Just as it was necessary in Syria, in South Africa, in Eastern Europe, and right here in 1776.
So, spare me your handwringing over the senseless violence of one CEO being deservedly gunned down.
Spare me your concerns over civil society and criminal justice, when these haven’t existed for most of us for a long time.
Spare me your concerns about violence, unless you’re ready to condemn all violence everywhere — in Ukraine and in Gaza, as well.
Spare me your fretting over the great American Experiment and its laws and its Constitution and its ideals and the Western Civilization it represents. If you have ever believed in real change, then let’s do it — let’s take some inspiration, band together, and insist on some real change.
No war but class war.
Demand dignity.
#FreeLuigi
