Yves here. I am particularly fond of posts that look at media coverage of important news stories. The aversion by many outlets to providing important details about the alleged Mangione assassination, such as withholding his short manifesto, demonstrates how their class and economic interests are skewing their coverage.
While on this topic, a wee sidetrack. Per the aversion of many in the power structure to give Mangione any more attention than he is already getting, the last thing they want is a trial. But Mangione has the money to hire good legal representation and seems very unlikely to cut a plea deal. I hope he has a food taster.
But assuming Mangione gets his day in court, and if I have it right that his first shot hit Brian Thompson in the calf, he could try claiming that he did not intend to kill him but to kneecap him, to subject him to the same pain that he and his mother had suffered. If he jury bought that, he’d still be likely to found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. New York sentencing guidelines call for 5 to 25 years in prison.
If he still has regular back pain, those prison beds and chairs will only make it worse.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
CEOs come and go and one just went
The ingredients you got bake the cake you get
—Jesse Welles
From one point of view, media behavior in the Luigi Mangione case is bizarre. According to journalist Ken Klippenstein (video here), New York Times management has said they don’t want to show photos of Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Klippenstein from his Substack:
NY Times Doesn’t Want You to See Shooter’s Face
Internal New York Times messages about its coverage of alleged gunman Luigi Mangione have been leaked to me and the contents are revealing. On Tuesday, management said “the news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing,” instructing staff to “dial back” its use of such photos.
“News value is diminishing” is the opposite of what’s true. As Klippenstein and the Breaking Points hosts point (see video linked above), big print media today is obsessed with traffic. With this order, they’re cutting their throats (metaphorically) to spite his face.
Klippenstein also notes that not just the Times, but all other media outlets who have Mangione’s “manifesto,” have refused to publish most of it. You can read the full document at Klippenstein’s site. It’s in fact little more than a note of explanation. But why is he alone in presenting it?
Three Reasons
There are three layers of reason for this odd behavior, both with respect to his photo and “manifesto,” each more instructive and important than the last.
The So-Called Copy-Cat Problem
The first and uppermost layer of reasoning is a professed fear of inspiring a copy-cat, someone so craven or weak-willed that they’ll copy the act. Call this the fanboy factor.
“I think we will still not pub the whole thing,[”] editor Andrea Kannapell added, “so as not to provide bullhorn.”
This has not stopped media in the past, however. Any number of killer “manifestos” have seen print, including both Dylann Roof’s and Ted Kazinsky’s in the Times. In addition, this document has been circulated widely but privately in both press and non-press circles. Clearly the copy-cat fear isn’t that strongly held.
The Times justification, according to the chat, is that photographs and words might have the effect of “amplifying the crime and inspiring others,” as reporter Andy Newman said. Besides the New York Times’ inflated view of its ability to de-amplify a crime that practically everyone is already talking about, the internal chat sheds light on the other arguably bigger reason the media shies away from disclosure […]
Captured by Sources or Eager Security Partners?
Klippenstein suspects a deeper reason: “its fear of antagonizing the sources it relies upon for scoops.”
News people clearly need sources among the cops and other “security” forces, and those sources are in position to extract concessions. “By donning the ‘public safety’ hat, the major media is in effect deputizing itself as a branch of the national security state,” writes Klippenstein.
He underplays their current delight in this role, but the observation is spot on. Ever since the summer of 2016 and emergent Trump-Russia allegations, big media, rightly or wrongly, has been gladly on board, seeing its duty as aiding the security state at every turn.
Why would it not do so here? After close to a decade of practice, it’s a well-trod path.
The Class War Comes Home
But the deeper reason, which Klippenstein doesn’t address, is in fact the most obvious. It’s so obvious that everyone but media is pointing it out.
The billionaire class, the maybe 1000 people who run the country plus a bunch of their CEOs, has been milking the country of cash since at least Reagan days, and we’ve been allowing it, willing if not eager participants.
Cows being milked (source)
Humans being milked (from The Matrix)
But the constant advantage-taking has taken its toll. Ever since Obama promised us hope-and-change…
…and failed to deliver, the nation has been pre-revolutionary. Certainly both Sanders campaigns showed that the hunger for relief was not just felt on the Right, but in the whole country.
Bernie Sanders rally, Minnesota, 2019
Crowd comparisons from the 2016 Democratic Party primary
For a variety of reasons, this discontent has given us President Trump two times out of three, and while many on the Right are best pleased, those on the Left or the silent uncared-about center (voters and non-voters alike) aren’t feeling well served.
Okay, that’s a euphemism. The nation is pissed. Health care in particular is a death trap for many, who pay and never get back, and then often die. UHC in particular is an industry apex predator:
And Thompson is a perfect example of a CEO class that, let’s be honest, kills for profit by aggressive denial of care. His compensation is estimated at $10 million per year and the company’s “hugely profitable 2025 financial outlook [includes] expected revenues upwards of $450 billion.”
People watch people die and the rich grow fat. How else to explain the massive swell of support for Mangione’s deed? It’s hard to find articles documenting it, but the phenomenon itself is rampant on Twitter and TikTok. And it’s not just the kids. Doctors and patients weigh in.
Check it out for yourself. People sing Mangione’s praise and almost literally dance above Thompson’s grave.
So the final reason for media fear is simple: It’s the class war come home.
People see murderers getting their just deserts — put simply, “Jack Reacher-style” (a widely loved hero-avenger, by the way) — and they’re not troubled at all. The fact is, most Americans will justify retribution. Didn’t most of us cheer while watching both Iraq Wars?
So the fear of a copy-cat wave is both wrong and right. It may not be the few and deranged that are inspired, but the many and done-being-had — not a simple repeat of an awful deed, but a sudden Arab Spring. You never know; there really are moments this fraught with radical paths.
I don’t condone murder, and I don’t want to live in a state filled with killing and war. But I do know people, and sometimes, when in Jefferson’s words “a long train of abuses and usurpations” drives people to act, they act regardless of outcome.
We may be watching that now. I think the rich think we are.
As the kid said to the CEO-
‘If third graders can get used to the constant threat of murder, so can you!’
https://xcancel.com/Pinko69420/status/1867561409363537951#m
Shooting drills for CEOs anybody? Bulletproof briefcases? Lessons in how to barricade a door? During the course of this year the media proved themselves to be not only partisan but also prone to censorship such as when they tried to deep-six reports of the Trump assassination attempt. They were all in on a Harris win. Perhaps they hoped that people would forget now that the elections are over but they are doing it all over again with the assassination of this CEO and how they are treating all news about this. They never learn. They will never change. Best that the main stream media be ignored and forgotten. They are not fit for purpose.
Life in corporate America, at least in recent memory from a time spent in the cubicle farm, finance department category, had included “active shooter / incident drills” and how to best behave in accordance with safety guidelines. I know this gets old to point out but it never fails to highlight as a significant change, that after the entirety of the GFC and the aftermath which followed, where the real and allegedly liable perps never saw justice or even a court of law it just is not that shocking to land here some 15 or so years afterwards.
The CEO suite and accompanying executives, as well as board members, just have not paid attention or heed to the overall angst and legitimate anxiety for many Americans. This is not intended to justify the shooter’s actions and conceivably he will be convicted at trial; but I am viewing this murder as a one off until proven otherwise.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Thanks for this item. When I see the mainstream news about the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I keep comparing with the more subdued coverage for the killing of former “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor in downtown Los Angeles. He was not my hero in any way, just a very mild celebrity. He was killed by gunshot in May 2024 and the suspects were arrested in August 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/johnny-wactor-general-hospital-shooting-death-arrests-ecf5119619a1031ed1e860c371704abd
It is interesting to watch the reaction. The woman in Florida with 100,000 bail for saying a few “D” words (like the students protesting vs genocide last year) seem too have gotten the attention of the billionaires.
The lesson learned from the sixties seems to be squash any alternate opposing narratives asap. Remember laws (and rights) only apply to the “little people”. For example, freedom of speech is only allowed if the speach is acceptable.
Looks the same on voting, votes only count if voters vote correctly (hint to Romania: the way it is done is to make sure that only acceptable candidates have the backing of major parties and the attention of the media).
That’s a misrepresentation of the 60s. In the US, at least, free speech was defended.
Free speech was defended, as long as you are not “colored”, or “commie”, or anyone belonging to some “wrong” group saying “wrong” things. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
That is dead wrong. Not in the 1960s. There were quite a few left-wing attorneys who made a point of defending particularly noxious clients, like neo-Nazis, over free speech issues. The press generally made a point of saying, “We detest this sort of utterance but must permit it because democracy.”
i would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all US citizens for Britain foistering Thompson boss , ‘Sir’ Witty on you. I wonder if he is taking an extended holiday.
Israeli snipers are shooting kids in the head from 500 meters away every day in Gaza and the Minnesota Star Tribune is pretending it’s invisible to us. I cancelled my 50-year subscription three months ago in protest and told them so. No response.
The carnage has extended to Lebanon and Syria; again no notice paid. I can barely process a hundred thousand civilians indiscriminately murdered. One criminal CEO? I welcome the onslaught of memes, the blacker the humor, the better.
Don’t forget the million ukrainians…
The “we don’t approve of killing people”thing is preposterous
I think this is why the thinking CEO’s are worried. The rule of law has been publicly abrogated in the Ukraine, in Gaza, in Romania and now in Syria. The assassination attempt on Trump was belittled, it wasn’t held up as a crime against America.
It is open season on the proles all around the year, all around the world. Well, that appears to have consequences. It is an irony that there are editorials bleating about how the public reaction to this shooting is the thin end of the wedge; they are holding the wrong end of the wedge! They undercut their own power structure when they abandoned the rule of law.
As ever, once more with feeling:
“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
Calf? He aims first shot carefully, and the video shows where the barrel is pointing.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/TegismXArzXT
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g6pDeGG8oc
I was told by someone who has followed the case carefully that the reported shot to the calf was the first shot. I tried confirming but was unable to either verify or disprove after spending 10 minutes on the task.
If you have ever read any accounts of highly trained police using their weapons, only 15-20% of their shots hit the intended target, regularly resulting in injuries and even deaths of bystanders. Unless Mangione was an avid hunter, he would have little experience with live targets. The idea that people get off clean shots when jacked up with adrenaline is a widespread misperception created by action movies and crime shows.
I know that (and have some experience). Here I’m talking about basic ballistics, and a point-blank shot. There is no bullet drop, nor wind, nor any other factor to make bullet not go straight forward. If we were to draw a cone from the gun, in order to account for blurriness and small movements, legs would be out of it. Following shots are completly different, and they could have gone anywhere.
Lordie. You must watch too many action movies. How many times when cops are called to crime scenes are they shooting at a distance?
One not long ago case was at the Empire State building. The distance was from the curb AT MOST to outside the entrance. If you have been there, it’s not far at all. That was one of those 15% to 20% cases. Several people nearby shot.
Now in fairness, after looking, even though that Empire State case was where I saw the 15% to 20% cited, and I believe they were only afraid of return fire, as opposed to encountered return fire, that result is when cops are being shot at. When they aren’t, the rate is 30%. And this is NYC, so none of your distance factors apply. This is all short range shooting:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9655518/
“Lordie” sounds like a lesser form of “you are making shit up”. I don’t watch action movies at all (and have handled guns and explosives under stress, not that it matters). What kind of argument is that anyway? First mild insult, then unrelated stuff. Some NC authors thank for possible corrections, and others are “knives out” types.
My posts are dealing only with the video of the act (that is linked), and basic geometry and ballistics. Nothing more, nothing less. His arms are almost horizontal. No ammount of verbal gymanstics (and statisctics, legal expertise, calls on authority, whatever) would make them look pointing more downwards, unless I stop believing my own lying eyes (which reminds me of an old experiment where people were pressured into not knowing which line is longer/shorter). I thought it is obvious.
See David from Friday Harbor below. You did not analyze the video with the care you claim. He DID aim his first shot, which by virtue of him being best able to aim that first shot (before Thompson stumbled and before he had to deal with his gun jam) and it hit Thompson in the legs, reportedly the calf. You keep trying to talk past your own evidence, hence my verbal snort.
You instead resorted to the extreme comparison of difficulty of shots at distances to try to depict shots at close range against moving targets, by shooters who are almost certainly also experiencing adrenaline surges, as more accurate than they are in real life conditions, even with well-trained shooters who regularly handle guns, as in police.
I provided evidence to the contrary. You did not address it but instead tried to talk past it. You simply mentioned the last bit of evidence regarding inaccurate gun firings in suicide attempts, and even then only resorted to the rhetorically invalid argument-from-authority posture without dealing with the evidence of poor shooting accuracy even at close range.
And yes, readers regularly deride comments where the commenter tries to assert a level of care in their analysis which in fact is not operative. Here the justification is compounded by you use of bad faith argumentation strategies.
Here’s an even better example, the most point-blank shot there is: shooting yourself, as in suicide by gun.
15% survive: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9655518/
For reasons I would rather not disclose here, I have read significant number of scientific articles about suicide related matters. I could write a very long ariticle about gun suicides (and how/when/why do they fail/succeed), but none of it would have to do anything with the point I’m trying to make in this thread.
My eyes see where the gun is pointed, and it is above the waist. Exibit A is the video. I have no problem with admitting being wrong, and that the bullet actually went way below the knees, but I would like to see some concrete evidence before that. I rest my case.
This is lame and some form of gaslighting. The shot was clearly aimed at the center of the body mass, the ceo’s right hand moves to his chest area immediately as if feeling the injury in the center. If he was shot in the calf, he would not be reaching for his chest.
Sorry, you do not appear to have not looked at the video with care. See David from Friday Harbor’s detailed take below.
PS I also pinged a contact who has decades of experience with criminal cases. He agreed that if Mangione’s first shot hit Thompson’s calf, and if Mangione had not said/written close to the time of the shooting that he intended to kill Thompson, it would be a colorable argument.
From the surveillance video on YouTube it definitely looks like the first shot was fired low, at the legs. You can see Thompson limping. Then the gun jams and Mangione has to pull back forcefully, apparently to clear a casing from the breech. He literally rocks backwards which would likely pull his second shot high.
Then Mangione walks right up to Thompson, who is lying on the sidewalk. He’s still holding the gun and has the perfect opportunity to apply a coup de grâce. He does not. Is this the action of a cold-blooded killer acting with express malice aforethought?
Based on the video, there is an argument to made that this was a knee-capping gone bad. It all depends on what Mangione has written in his various manifestos and social media posts — and what he has said under interrogation. I’m not familiar with New York law, and Mangione may still be exposed to second-degree murder under an implied malice theory — but without express malice aforethought a sympathetic jury might find a way to return a verdict of involuntary manslaughter.
Ugh this is all speculative till autopsy. Pistol level does not suggest leg/calf and only made interesting by reloading characteristics, more left shoulder level. Being shot on one side really screws with that side of the body’s nervous system, yeah whole side, so limping means nothing.
People without experience patching up people shot or people like me that shot people with the intent to kill and good at it should give deductive processes a rest.
There may be foreshortening in the video. Thompson reached down and lurched to one side. If you watch at 0.25x, you can see Mangione did move the gun level higher relative to where it was on the first shot after he dealt with the recoil/jamming. So how do you explain the widely-reported shot in the calf as the second shot? It seems more plausible as the first.
I would wait for forensics. Never the less post speculative first shot the deliberation in the other shots is apparent, especially after going down, very chill and calm. I would also suggest this attitude with other aspects of this case at the moment.
Maybe the shooter was trying to shoot him in the ass. And missed. Twice….
Just asking for a friend.
I have gotten two e-mails, US law enforcement adjacent, reluctant to use the comments section.
Mind you, I am not saying the “knee-leg” shot intent is accurate, but that it is plausible.
From #1:
#2:
For those that have problem accessing the video (or could not be bothered with rewatching), here’s a frame before the first shot was taken, with a line added over it for reference.
https://postimg.cc/Ty0yk6rj
https://i.postimg.cc/3R5gxrNq/shot.jpg
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/unitedhealthcare-brian-thompson-death-12-04-24/index.html
It appears as of December 4, 2024 that NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny concurs with what Captain Obvious believes:
“At 6:44 a.m. Thompson walked toward the New York Hilton Hotel after leaving his hotel across the street, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. The gunman came up behind Thompson and shot him in the back. “The shooter then walks toward the victim and continues to shoot. It appears the gun malfunctions as he clears the jam and begins to fire again,” Kenny said.”
As pointed out by others forensics and an autopsy, etc. will be determinant.
I remember maybe twenty years ago there was a movement to reset coverage of violent crimes to spotlight the victims rather than the perpetrator, so this is not entirely new. An exception is presumably being made because young Luigi has the “it” factor in spades: all the women and half the men in the land are mesmerized by his stunning good looks. But possibly rather than being a hero he is just another privileged “white“ guy who is stunningly entitled.
Also, I was struck by the reference in the title of this piece to “the Mangione assassination.” Shouldn’t it be the Thompson assassination, or the United Health assassination, as in the Lennon, MLK, Kennedy, Lincoln, etc. assassination? It remains to be seen whether he will go down as a champion of the people or just a kid in a lot of pain who thought the rules didn’t apply to him.
Rules of the rule-based order.
It’s the drones they need to worry about.
Health (like many other things) is a socially complex distribution system and Brian Thompson is not responsible for what we’ve got. Beneficiaries of a system have not necessarily caused the system. They are just people who have managed to thrive in the system, as opposed to us other schmucks who can barely or not at all navigate the system.
Healthcare is so expensive and there are so many different stakeholders, funding streams, gaps in funding, and advocates. You can’t pin that on one man even if he is a CEO.
I do not find main stream media to be huge culprits. They try. It’s how you consume and respond to them that is more of a factor. What did you expect? Omniscent reporting from the eyes of God?
No, Luigi is no hero. He is an immature consumer of ideology that projects culpability indiscriminantly. Life was privileged for him until his first real-life health challenge. He responded by blaming other people (who had no relation or contract with him). I wish he would grow up, but he probably won’t, and there are likely to be copycats. This is life in America: project responsibility, snark, bully, litigate, shoot.
People are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality. So while we see money as signal to save and store, markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 refers to it as both medium of exchange and store of value. These are not synonymous. Blood is a medium, fat, as well as bone and muscle are store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. If we treated roads like we treat money, everything would be paved over and we would be fighting over lots. So the entire economic paradigm is about making the medium the message.
As a medium, we own money like we own the section of road we are on, or the air and water flowing through our body. It functions as a public utility.
As it is, what we have now amounts to the heart telling the hands and feet to go suck dirt, because it’s keeping all the blood for itself.
So yes, Mangione is a doer not a thinker, but he is indicative of much deeper issues the supposed thinkers are not looking at.
Or like the infrastructure is a form of petrification of money, it slows it down to a crawl, while money as the flow of energy is propagated by yet more money by extraction from nature and a proliferation of derivatives of those “profits.” If the energy extracted from social and natural ecosystems were replenished we could all survive. But it is not, neither is the ancient bedrock of our morality. Who cares if a despised CEO gets shot down in the street?
Baloney, it’s not hapless actors doing their best in a system which fell from the sky.
A corporation can make money without viciously denying care that customers paid for. The ‘leaders’ of almost all of our ‘health’ corporations instead choose to go for the throat in every enterprise.
The media should be holding their feet to the fire right now and talking about reforms. Instead they paint the shooter as evil and deranged, and anyone who agrees with his ideas, well, can’t even read his statement about them, because the media is hiding it, censoring, on behalf of their and our overlords.
Sounds like LAS may agree with Bret Stephan’s NYT 12/10 op ed headline “Brian Thompson, Not Luigi Mangione, Is the Real Working-Class Hero,” referred to in an article by Ken Silverstein in todays links – https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/bret-stephens-a-real-upper-class
Curious, isn’t that a pretty good description of the US foreign policy?
There’s such a thing as “Setting the tone from the top.” Thompson was almost certainly aware of where his company placed in industry KPI’s, and was likely bright enough to grasp what it meant to be the industry leader in claims denial.
The annoying thing about this story is that everyone who might matter is now focused on CEO safety and not so much on running businesses that follow the old Capitalist maxim of free and fair trade with their customers.
Just a reminder, CEO = Chief Executive Officer. FFS, words still have meaning. If the CEO isn’t responsible, then who is? The fact that he is not solely responsible does not absolve him. And just as Mangione could have chosen a less lethal way to express his displeasure, health insurance CEOs can choose ways to administer their businesses so as to cause less stress, suffering, and death.
The present day American oligarchy is a target rich environment. You gotta start somewhere.
[A similar post appears to have vanished into the ether–didn’t see the comment under moderation tag. Apologies if this post ends up duplicating my thoughts.]
I just remembered I’ve heard this kind of rationalization before. Lanny Breuer’s middle name is Arthur. Is that you Lanny and LAS is just a typo?
It’s the janitor, and the lunch lady. They are responsible. Also, Putin and Assad. Now that Assad is gone, things can only get better.
The fact that he IS responsible is the justification for the big bucks and the stock options.
CEOs even hire the consultants who recommend the board nominations, so they control the board’s posture towards them with all of the usual eyewash indirection. Consultants who recommended truly independent directors would soon be out of business.
one could substitute Netanyahu and Gaza for Thompson and health insurance and arrive at the same conclusion, LAS. People have choices. You excuse the Harry Lime approach. Others don’t see people as dots.
Does this, “it’s the system, not the individual,” argument that absolves the Chief Executive Officer of agency and accountability apply to crimes committed by poor people who steal out of desperation?
No, it doesn’t. I see the CEO being not much different than the police sniper in Palestine popping babies or the American police sniper popping eyes out of protestors. He knew what he was doing but was hiding behind the “I’m just a soldier, not a general” BS rap.
The CEO is the general. He’s just not the top guy.
Didn’t Eichmann try to weasel out basically with the excuse that he was not the Fuehrer?
since the shooting there has been general agreement as to the total awfulness/expense of the US healthcare system with the obvious question arising as to why whenever the prospect of public, single payer healthcare arises its always shot down..apparently the reason is propaganda put out by these same horrendously rich corporations convincing almost everyone that it would be a total shambles/the gov. would decide who got care etc etc. ie far worse than the existing private system. So the argument for a public systen never gets very far. Watched David Brooks and a Washington Post person discussing the murder on PBS. While no-one seems to care about the daily murders going on in Gaza/West Bank there was horror expressed at this one particular murder; he was rich, he was American. Brooks especially couldn’t get his head around the fact that Mangione was wealthy while Thompson grew up poor, scavenged for food as a child, had to help his farmer dad ( well not quite that bad but you get the message) Completely obscuring the message that Thompson was part of the Giant Healthcare Scamming Machine regardless of his childhood background. It should maybe even have produced some sympathy for the poorer folks he was helping to scam in his heightened position as CEO? So the wealth/poverty factor is totally irrelevant; its the actions of the health care conglomerate Thompson headed that has a particularly nasty reputation for denying claims in order to please his real clients; Wall Street.
Your assertions ignore the role that lobbyists played in making this system the way it is. Many of which were paid well by Thompson and his peers. Conveniently.
Brian Thompson was being well paid to deny insurance beneficiaries healthcare and make big profits fro UHC. Healthcare is expensive and UHC helps make it so for its’ insurance beneficiaries.
“This is life in America: project responsibility, snark, bully, litigate, shoot”. (This describes the US perspective on much of the globe.)
Good luck with any future health emergency in America.
Luigi is also not responsible for anything. It’s the system.
Oh, the banality of evil…
“For when I speak of the banality of evil, I do so only on the strictly factual level, pointing to a phenomenon which stared one in the face at the trial. Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III ‘to prove a villain.’ Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all… He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is ‘banal’ and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, this is still far from calling it commonplace… That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.”
Our society has internalized social killing that it slips by us that Brian Thompson is a murderer. He is the CEO and the algorithm is designed to deny valid claims. That someone will get hurt or die is predictable. Thompson is guilty of depraved indifference murder. What is the difference between Thompson throwing bricks off of a building, not looking, and not paying attention to where they land by so doing killing someone and his algorithm denying a valid claim and someone losing their life?
There has been a lot of reporting of this kind of crime and a lot of copying of it. Vigilante justice is bad for society but so is social crime. Mangione might do better before a jury with a necessity defense, if he could get it by a judge.
I think others have already pointed this out, but Thompson was just a node in the system while Mangione is an individual deserving your moral opprobrium? Curious.
The executive suite denizens are well paid and well rewarded to operate the company. They ‘deserve’ that pay and those bonuses because they make the hard decisions and choices.
Well that is until there might be fall out from those decisions. Then it is blame the system, blame the stockholders, blame anyone….but DO NOT TAKE MY OVERLY GENEROUS COMPENSATION.
Thompson had to know the data on how many people give up fighting after an insurance company denies their claim, and how long they can stretch it out if the mopes do fight. And he took full advantage of that. In fact his company was even more aggressive in claim denial than his competitors. THAT was his choice. You do not get to a reported 90% claim denial rate by accident or by playing the real rules (which means paying claims that aren’t questionable. And he is just one.
Suffice it to say the day we made the arbitrary kowtowing to the rich and connected choice to make it very difficult if not impossible to hold CEOs responsible for the criminal decisions they make and the outright damage they do by sending them to a not country club prison and stripping them of all compensation they received was the day we guaranteed that people would not always do what is right in those positions. There is too much ROI and not much downside to screwing the customers, the public and the community, the government and yes on occasion even the majority of their stockholders.
Please do not confuse legal with either ethical or right. The policies of United Healthcare are neither and those that impose are not either.
The insurance exec ‘adjuster’ in Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized did spawn a movement of copycats. It seems his somewhat prophetic short story is currently missing its 15 minutes for some reason.
I’m in the camp of those who aren’t sure why it has taken so long for the consumer backlash to become physical.
Considering all the threating letters all people who owe some company some money, and how the arrogance of the corporate masters drips from the legalistic bombast directed at anyone some company wants something from. Whereas, when people want something from these faceless corporate screws, they get nothing.
I have long thought that it is a shame for all the senseless violence we see on a daily basis in this world, when if people want to go out an hurt someone… there are so many “guilty” people. And these corporate stooges… are REALLY guilty. Throw in congress,judges, and all other enablers of the class war.
Too bad , this would also be a bad tactic. the police state is just cringing for an excuse to further degrade the bill of rights, and impose martial law . It would spiral downward. To bad these days, when we see the inevitable spiral; we just see the need to not wait. it really is too bad for everyone.
re: tactics.
Given that the people who ultimately enforce the degradation of rights have the same crap health insurance as the population at large, and may have loved ones who have suffered under the current health care system, how enthusiastic will the enforcement be? We’ll know the oligarchy is really serious if the pay and benefits of the enforcement cohort increase signifinly.
The feedback loops need circuit breakers.
Debt jubilees were a circuit breaker to the feedback loop of compound interest and yet here we are, stuck in basically the same doom loop, 3000 years later. Sometimes history repeats itself, because we didn’t learn the lesson the first time.
Still occasionally trying to sort the rarity of people looking it in health care setting versus the frequent threats, including waving guns around, to utility workers and FEMA and others on the ground following storms in the south the last few years. Which we sometime group effort.
“both Dylann Roof’s and Ted Kazinsky’s”
But the victims of those two weren’t allies of the shareholder class who regularly walk the streets of NYC.
Unlike, oh say, NY Times editors.
One may analogize the situation to the Oklahoma City bombing versus 9/11. The former 1990s terror attack also took down an entire building with many victims. But they were “somewhere out there in flyover” victims and so the story faded quickly in comparison to the Trade Center/DC destruction whose aftermath we are still enduring. As with the current situation in Israel, some victims are a lot more important to the media than others. They really do think it’s all about them which is what makes the MSM different from several decades ago when the networks and big city papers were more important to the public but also a bit less self important since they catered to a much wider audience.
You got this right on target. We have to deal with 9-11 every year, year after year. Tolling bells, an entire days worth of programming on all 3major networks. Replays of the smoke plume, on and on. Yet, the Oklahoma City bombing was just regular joes, they shopped at Walmart, made barely above minimum wage. In short, a bunch of nobodies. Oh, there’s also the monument. We can never ever forget 9-11!
Oklahoma has a moment and it’s a nice piece in person. Photography doesn’t capture it in context.
But to your point, nobody knows.
I have been advocating for years that the memorial ceremony should be private for the families only. I don’t get much pushback if I say that, although my firemen friends aren’t so sure.
And despite the obligatory appearance of national and NY politicos, I finally decided that the real value to those that just won’t let it fade is that the ‘war on terror’ still has numerous benefits for people who don’t really give a fig about the events of that day or the victims. Or the country at all in truth. Back when it happened most of our elected may have just wanted to invade Iraq (for revenge and oil), but anymore it is all in service to America in a state of perpetual war and the machine that enriches. And we must be the victim of a foreign instigated attack for any portion of the public to support it.
Until there is some other big event, we will probably never be free.
ive seen a lot of interesting takes regarding mangione’s profile. ‘ah, he’s rich, hot, smart, from a well off family.’ and it’s like yeah. yeah he is. it’s because he’s privileged and intelligent that he managed to pull this off.
i do think the classic ‘white man entitlement’ played into this somehow. dude had crippling back pain, felt he deserved a normal life, needed something to get angry at. and mangione was smart enough to realize the healthcare system was the guy to get angry at. but it’s also the classic ‘lone white guy with a gun’ narrative that you see in a lot of movies. guy who externalizes his own internal struggles. both ideas can coexist, that he was right about the healthcare system being parasites, and that he was taking out his anger at being deprived of what he felt he deserved.
of course, how do you go about fixing the healthcare system? there are no clear answers. logically, things like this take time, but also it would be nice if people stopped dying now. thanks. i commend people who take action purely because it takes guts to take action. but what action is the right action? no idea! life is terrible like that.
No clear answers? Medicare for All was a pretty clear answer.
Granted, it didn’t go far enough towards removing the profit incentives and bringing big Pharma to heel, but it was a good first step.
Other privileged persons have led popular protest as well; for example, San Ernesto.
You don’t have to look far. Just look at how other countries like France or Japan organize their healthcare and insurance system. Things can be bad there, but they are no where near as terrible like America. American capitalists have become too far used to sucking the last drop of blood from their hosts and then leave them to die.
And it’s rich for you to connect someone acting out of the feeling that a healthy life had been denied to him by parasites with the “white man’s privilege.” It tells me you absolutely had no idea what that word means and just tried to be sophisticated.
No one have to read political theory to understand what is behind this murder. You deliberately played the fool only to muddle the conversation.
This calls to mind K S Robinson’s book Ministry for the Future where climate activists shoot down corporate jets to address climate grievances. Pair that with advances in drone tech from Ukr and Zionist wars, we can be assured the war will come home more.
And, he’s correct. It is a class war.
And one of the protagonists clubbed to death an elite, and snarky, proponent of maintaining the status quo.
Yes, I too thought of Robinson’s Ministry for the Future right away.
Given his resources, I am surprised how fast he was caught without any obvious effort to change his appearance (for example hair dye). Perhaps he believed (once caught) the media would cover his point of view?
Is Luigi Mangione the actual shooter, or some patsy AI found and puzzle parts were manufactured? So far the story is worse than bad paperback fiction.
I think- purely speculating – that he planned whatever he planned, and did whatever he did, and then he was in shock and without a follow-up plan.
UHC stands to have $450 billion in profit this year? Perhaps if the amount was “only” $300 billion … seems an adequate amount to me … the CEO would still be alive. Why so? Perhaps the company would not be the leader in denied claims. But the shareholders! the executive bonuses! Are the shareholders on the bread line? Can the executives not meet their mortgage payments? UHC recently denied me coverage for routine blood tests for which they paid in the past. Not a great amount. I got the run around and finally paid the bill. Multiply this by millions of claims and pretty soon you have profits of $450 billion. I have no illusions about insurance companies. when young I worked for one. Their business is investing. Actually fulfilling the contract with the insured is an annoying feature dealt with as summarily as is possible. When one company acquires a dominant market share and has political protection, “summarily” takes on added dimensions. The bogus definition of “free market” that I attribute to Milton Friedman, the Chicago School, led us back to the 1920s and from there to the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age melded into an age of bombings and labor wars. The 1920s to the Crash, Great Depression, and War. Lest I forget, to labor wars in the 1930s. Since history does not repeat but rhymes, I suppose we shall have our own version of the reaction to untrammeled greed in the near or medium term. This incident may be the harbinger of things to come.
The federal debt traces back to the New Deal. So not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital as well. Then WW2 came along, the largest public works project in history and the military became the golden child, or at least the trophy wife of the oligarchy.
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
Not a single Iraqi or retired U.S. veteran tried to assassinate Dick Cheney, and CEOs should learn from him how to make money off the deaths of others without incurring resentment.
Didn’t someone throw a shoe at GW Bush? I know it wasn’t a gun, it was more of a, “You bastard, you ruined our country,” kind of moment. Vigilante justice Iraqi style.
There is something fundamentally wrong, if not immoral, with a system that extracts $122,970,614 per year from ordinary people (or the companies they work for) who are paying up front so that their families will be able to get care in times of sickness (or pregnancy,) and awards it to the six CEO’s of the top US ‘health care’ corporation. And the main function of these entities is to act as a choke point in the system. They are not skilled surgeons or sympathetic nurses, but paper-pushers. And, as many have pointed out, it’s not ‘insurance’ because almost everyone will need health care at some point in their lives.
Administrative costs of the single payer Medicare system for the over-65’s (who are heavy users of health care) are around 2% of expenditures. Compare this with the 12% to 18% administrative costs of private companies. And, they would be higher if the ACA had not capped them.
Gee, ya think that the main reason Medicare for All cannot even get a hearing in this country is because the fat cat CEO’s don’t want to give up their $20 million annual pay packets? Ya think they are a bunch of modern-day Marie Antoinettes, or clueless Tsar Nicolas’s, clinging on to pay packets and private jets and country club memberships and vacation homes in Aspen? While around the walls of their gated communities, the unemployed, the sick, the despairing, the addicted, the maimed, clamor for just a morsel of bread.
Amen! Eclair well said.
“…sing Mangione’s praise…”
It’s a Tik-Tok video– let that sink-in for a moment.
As our leaders have warned for years, this video is clear evidence that Tik-Tok is controlled by the CCP of China with the intent of subverting Our Democracy– obviously it is working.
Thankfully, Our Media is dilligently working with Our Authorities to counter this foriegn threat by helping to ensure that the American public is correctly informed and protected from controversial “facts” and other disinformation. But to this end, we must redouble our support for the “border guards” who patrol the edges of the internet in the ongoing effort to protect the public from malign actors, wierd conspiracy theories, and extremist thought in general.
We must protect our children, teenagers, and shared American values from this Tik-Tok. No one in their right mind would ever watch the video or knowingly allow others to do so as it obviously sends a dangerous and subversive message, one that should never be heard.
I will certainly do my part and will send a link to the video to friends and family in an effort to warn them of the dangers of Tik-Tok and to help steer them back to the safety of Fakebook.
I note that the NYT foore some years now no longer evokes “the public’s right to know” as the supposed acid test of its decisions. (Not that that was ever a terribly accurate description of what they actually did.)
At the very least since 2016 they’re quite open about passing judgement about the expected effect on the public’s perceptions if “problematic” information is released into the wild.
You’d almost think that they were all about sticking the thumb on the scale.
Andreas Cervenka in Sweden is an unusually splendid media employee (on the border of being a real journalist actually) at Aftonbladet. He writes about VC/PEs raping Swedish pensioners (Northvolt), reminding us that none of the Swedish banks has returned one krona from the bail-out billions, even a great book about the privatization and neoliberalization of Sweden etcetc.
In spite of all this, as it seems only theoretical understanding of the economy, he wrote with huge amounts of bafflement and bewilderment about the awfulness of the hoy-polloy that find no pity for the AI-enabled mass murderer. He doesn’t understand the practicalities of the economy.
This is what high salaries do to you: class affilitation. That is also what is wrong with the Swedish members of the parliament. They earn about 3-4 times the media salary in Sweden + compensation for travel, housing etc. Do they care about food inflation (greedflation)? No they can still afford their nice wines and meat.
https://www-aftonbladet-se.translate.goog/nyheter/kolumnister/a/dRj9j1/mordet-pa-brian-thompson-oppnade-helvetets-portar?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
It’s time to dust off this link again, Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will never ever happen. ~ CBS News.
Thanks for this article. It makes the connections which are never to be examined by the MSM – how the American public has been asking for, no, begging for real change. I, like many others here, are actually surprised it’s taken this long for something like this to happen.
I see again in this the logical results of, as Warren Buffet said, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” He said this in 2006, and since then, the class warfare has only gotten worse, much worse. The rich class has resoundingly won, and in so doing is completely out of touch. You can see it in the reactions in the MSM to this shooting.
That smile looks familiar. Especially the one he flashed at the receptionist. Could it be that the media is not showing his face because they’re scared people are going to start getting out their Guy Fawkes masks!
I’m not a fan of vigilante justice, but still, we have been letting the super rich get away with literal murder for far too long.
The Sackler family, which pushed the big lie that Oxcontin was not addictive, are responsible for at least tens of thousands of deaths and who knows how much suffering in general. Yet the Sacklers will retire in comfort.
In China Zheng Xiaoyu was convicted of taking bribes to let questionable medicines be sold. He was executed.
The Intermediate People’s Court in Shijiazhuang sentenced Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping to death, and Tian Wenhua to life in prison, on 22 January 2009. Zhang was convicted for producing 800 tons of the contaminated powder, Geng for producing and selling toxic food (from wikipedia).
China is far from perfect, but – perhaps we could learn a few things from them?
I agree with the premise that what we have here is an example of class interest. Only confounded by the incongruous fact that the primary alleged assassin happens to be born a member of the oligarchy. Deep rabbit hole takes Luigi and Nancy into the same orbit. She of the broken hip. Say what you will about James Comey, he put a phrase to the class affinity shown by the PMC and their betters, the Chickenshit Club, that will likely outlive him.
The craven paper of record’s chickenshit club membership shall not yet be revoked. They are no different than the doctor colleague of the oncologist criminal in Montana that I also read about today, who didn’t want to lock horns because his children go to school there.
We really do inhabit a fascinating moment in history, and recent incidents quite clearly reveal the USA to be both simultaneously a nation of rats (as Bill Burroughs aptly called us) and a nation of chickenshits. This experiment doesn’t end well, I’m afraid.
Having just read an exculpatory missive from a consulting firm that facilitated Sacklers‘ drug-pushing business by way of a „settlement“ with Biden‘s DoJ I am surprised the chaos at 3,World Trade Center have not given every Director a bodyguard or two
There was a time when ethics were embedded Inna society and shame had a role
Liberated from such bourgeois and Calvinistic values the full-flowering of human venality tramples everything underfoot even to the point of genocide and provoking world war
So I suppose direct action is necessary. It is a reality that must be recognised. There are no constraints on those inflicting human suffering and diverting attention with fake issues and scandals no longer hides the blatant evidence that people are regarded as livestock to be farmed and discarded
A Hobbesian World is a Hobbesian World from both ends of the telescope