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As is typically the case after a high-profile murder, people are speculating about suspect Luigi Mangione’s state of mind when he allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan.
We have a likely (political) motive in the form of a handwritten statement Pennsylvania police say they found on Mangione when they arrested him. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” it reads. “A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the (indecipherable) largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No, the reality is, these (indecipherable) have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. … It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
Thompson’s death immediately prompted the widespread assumption that his killer had to have been motivated by something personal. The CEO must have been the victim of a vengeful patient, or someone who loved and lost a person to an insurance denial. There are, after all, numerous Americans whom United Healthcare refuses to cover for medical treatment. Some die. But the man they arrested doesn’t fit the bill. Though Mangione’s social media feeds indicate that he had major back surgery following an injury, the operation appears to have been successful. There is no evidence that an insurance company denied his claim. United Healthcare says Mangione has never been their customer.
This looks like a case of self-radicalization.
Mangione was privileged and high functioning. If he can become a one-man terrorist group, anyone can.
The establishment press can’t wrap its collective head around it.
Writing in The New York Times, David Wallace-Wells is among the many journalists who wondered aloud: “We’ve seen the video of him shouting at the press as he’s pulled into the courthouse, which suggests perhaps some disquiet. But we also haven’t heard from anybody who interacted with him at any point in his life who found him anything but levelheaded, cleareyed, calm and even kind.” Why might someone with Mangione’s background (white, well off, Ivy educated), looks (women have been swooning over him online) and social currency (he was friendly and popular) stalk a business executive he’d never met and gun him down?
Perhaps, some reports suggested, back pain from spondylolisthesis drove him insane. Or that pain made it impossible for him to have sex and that made him nuts. Or his turn to violence was inspired by Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber manifesto. He was 26, the average age when schizophrenia first manifests — maybe a mental time bomb was behind his psychotic break. One of these explanations may prove true. Or none. Mangione may be sane. He may simply be a class traitor.
Wallace-Wells continued: “In many ways, the obvious explanation is that the attack was the result of some kind of breakdown. But aside from the shooting itself, we haven’t seen any real signs of a breakdown.” (Except for shouting at the press. Wallace-Wells thinks that makes you unwell.)
Interesting questions arise from the assumption that mental illness is “the obvious explanation.” We are going to have to radically rethink our society if that’s true.
Are prison employees who administer capital punishment insane? What about combat troops who kill enemy soldiers whom they have nothing against personally, simply because they’re given an order? Are members of the military lunatics? Must one be crazy to serve as president, a job that involves ordering men and women to shoot and bomb other people — sometimes en masse — and signing off on extrajudicial assassinations, as with drones? Harry Truman dropped The Bomb. Was he psycho? What of a police officer who shoots a suspect? If a health insurance company unfairly denies lifesaving medical care to a patient and the patient dies, which one can argue is tantamount to murder, does that make a CEO like Thompson a murderer too — and therefore insane?
If everyone who kills a human being is psychotic, shouldn’t every killer be granted an insanity defense and automatically be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than prison?
What about farmers who kill animals? Vets who euthanize them?
When Marianne Bachmeier entered a West German courtroom in 1981 and shot to death the man who raped and murdered her 7-year-old daughter, there was no confusion. Everyone understood her motivation. It was personal and relatable, and therefore there was no talk that she might be bonkers.
Should it turn out that Mangione’s motive was personal, and that he or someone he cared about suffered pain at the hands of the health insurance industry, the discomfort of the chattering classes would be mitigated. Oh. That makes sense.
It is possible, though — likelier, really — that Mangione engaged with the question of America’s for-profit health care system impersonally and intellectually yet passionately. Like those who marched against the Vietnam and Gaza wars despite having no personal stake in the conflict, it is hard not to feel disgust and outrage when one hears horrific accounts of insurance companies denying and delaying valid claims as they rake in billions. Mangione had to have known, as everyone does, that there is no prospect of health care reform coming out of a Washington in which neither political party wants to fix the system.
People kill other people in service to far more abstract concepts than affordable health care. Political leaders kill over such dubious controversies as arbitrary borders and the domino theory and NATO expansion and the Shia-Sunni schism, yet nobody thinks they’re insane.
Murder, all societies agree, is wrong — unless it’s committed by someone officially authorized to take life. Vigilantism is problematic because, taken to its logical extreme, the rule of law would collapse.
Dismissing a vigilante’s actions as the product of an unsound mind, however, thoughtlessly brushes off the question of why he feels compelled to resort to an act so drastic that it will probably end his own life as well. When one is confronted with massive suffering and heinous injustice, when society doesn’t offer a legal mechanism to stop these horrors, is it inherently insane to say to yourself, “someone should do something”? Or to conclude, “if the answer is yes, why not me?”
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
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Has Ted never heard about Genetic Distance in his life? Or, even, the Uncanny Valley?
This guy is clearly insane. He is the outlier among outliers.
An Anti-Islamic Zionist who acts like Muslim terrorists. What?
He killed someone. Therefore, he should be killed as equal punishment.
I don’t care about his mental state, his upbringing, his politics or anything else.
An eye for an eye…
Luigi apparently suffered great pain from a botched back operation. Killing the insurance CEO then makes no sense to me.
I had a relative once who talked to a doctor in Costa Rica on a bone fracture problem. The doctor plainly stated, “I recommend physical therapy, but when you go back to the US, the doctors will recommend surgery, because that’s what they do, even though its efficacy is hit and miss. You will have surgery multiple times.”
Gee, Ted, I thought ObamaCare was the medical Nirvana it was advertised to be.
Get GovCo out of medicine (I hate the term “healthcare” as it is PR BS) and let people treat and be treated by whom they choose. Get rid of certificate of need laws as a start. Allowing existing doctors and medical bureaucrats to decide who can compete with them has been a disaster.
I’d rather be treated by Granny Clampett than pharmaceutical reps posing as doctors.
Luigi Mangione has been charged with murder and will be tried on that charge, but until he is actually proven guilty in a court of law, he is innocent according to US law. Innocent until proven guilty. At least, that’s the “official” version of jurisprudence in this country. We all know better, don’t we.
Realistically, he is already being seen as guilty. Articles such as this one promote the idea. Even though Ted Rall uses the term, “allegedly”, to describe Mangione’s situation, his script spreads the presumption that Mangione really did the dirty deed, in much the same manner that everyone “knows” that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK in Dallas in 1963. Speculation about his “mental condition” only plays into the bigger picture of the already decided outcome.
Did Mangione gun down Thompson or has he been set up? Unfortunately, the presumption has already been cast in stone. Whether he did or not is irrelevant. He will, in all probability, be found guilty and thrown in prison for the rest of his life, at which the general public will exhale a sigh of relief that “justice” has prevailed once again.
your policy will leave israel blind and toothless, perhaps we should just euthanize all zionists, in the name of public safety and out of compassion for them, as it’s kinder than letting them starve to death.
i knew mossad was behind it.
There are rally two kinds of insanity: folks incapable of day to day functioning, and folks who operate outside of those norms that allow a trust based society to work. In a trust based society I walk down the street unarmed because I expect those I see won’t shoot me. Carried conceal weapons holders lack trust are are really on the margins of sanity. Carry conceal holders will kill anyone who threatens them. Luigi is in a different space. He killed someone who is a threat to good order. The rich today are generally a threat to good order, which ironically means you are most sane if you kill them for being rich. Society building involves purging society of threats. That is why nations kill other nations, that is why we imprison deviants, that is why will kill rabid dogs.
The rich do not like to be killed, hence they must find a way to do away with Luigi and with folks like the Uni Bomber.
As a society, we would be better off doing away with all the gun owners and carry conceal permit people.
You assume there will not be jury nullification.
The focus of this article is on the individualistic explanation, not the institutional. What Mangione is outraged about is institutional murder. As sociologist Peter Berger once wrote: “…society determines how long and in what manner the individual organism shall live”. Moral codes, such as, say, the Ten Commandments, are all written by elites to control their slaves, serfs, or subjects. But, there is no moral code to control elites and institutions, which are both sociopathic. The Magna Carta of 1215 was an appeal to the King of England to confirm the Charter of Liberties for BARONS from imprisonment and payments to the Crown. Put differently, the Magna Carta gave the aristocracy carte blanche control over their serfs without any punishments or fines. The US has the Bill of Rights for individuals, but COVID has eviscerated it. COVID is genocide. The 5th Amendment to the Constitution mandates just compensation for takings of private property. But municipal governments were tacit accomplices in Antifa destroying small businesses so that big corporate retailers could steal their customers and shift them to online purchases and deliveries. Big Box retailers were open during Lockdowns while restaurants mom and pop food stores shut down. Churches were closed but strip clubs, massage parlors and casinos were open. Could Mangione set off a slave revolt? That is all that is in the minds of the elites.
I did not mention jury nullification specifically, but I did say that IN ALL PROBABILITY he would be found guilty. This leaves room for jury nullification, however, I would not expect that to happen. A hung jury, perhaps, but jury nullification? Really?
To find a jury hearing a case on anything which results in nullification is extremely rare and given the high profile nature of this case, already decided in public opinion (see Meamjojo and Harry Huntington, above, for example), the odds of seating a jury which would turn Mangione loose on the grounds that he was justified is quite a stretch.
https://fija.org/library-and-resources/library/jury-nullification-faq/what-is-jury-nullification.html
Your whole reasoning depends on if you see mass murder with poison in the hospitals as “health care”, or not.
Everyone kills, and everyone will eventually be killed. Even if you’re a vegetarian like me, you have to kill to stay alive, even if it’s only plants you kill.
It’s a hostile universe, full of people and things that are trying to kill you, or perhaps just cripple you in the hope that something else will finish you off. Bacteria and viruses attack the body in force each day; animals have sharp teeth and claws with which to rend your flesh; plants produce alkaloids and other poisons to discourage you from eating them; and even the very air we are forced to breathe to stay alive is filled with cosmic rays and other cancer-causing radiation. Further, even if you survive all this, the second law of thermodynamics will eventually kill you anyway. Old age! LOL Disorder in your body will inexorably increase until you can no longer function! As I’ve often said, hate makes the world go ’round.
As recent school shooter Samantha Rupnow wrote in her manifesto, just before killing some people who probably deserved it, and then killing herself: “Death is something most people need to embrace rather than running away from it.” Life is war, and nobody’s getting out of here alive.
An interesting piece.
One thought: the Sackler family, by spreading the lie that oxycodone was not addictive and pushing physicians to overprescribe it, are responsible – with forethought, with malice – for countless deaths and injuries. And yet, while they have had to give back SOME of their profits, they will all retire in luxury.
Meanwhile in China, billionaires responsible for things like selling tainted medicine and food, are publicly executed.
China is far from perfect, and I’m glad I don’t live there (at least, for now). But maybe they’re on to something.
Maybe instead of debating whether or not all murderers are insane, we should treat all murderers as murderers.
Good point. However, I have heard that judges HATE jury nullification, that they will even threaten anyone with contempt for just mentioning it. The voir dire process is also tuned to weed out potential jurors who might do something like this. It is always possible but, the way our courts are run, very unlikely. And of course even if the jury does not convict, they can always go after him for violating the CEO’s civil rights.
In the end, the actual “Rule Of Law”, which, is, as Mao said, “power stemming from the end of a gun barrel” is subjective.
If you, look into the mirror and justify YOUR actions, no matter what they are, THAT is the Rule Of Law.
Of course, there will be consequences, but, Luigi defines THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED with his actions.
John Donne was wrong. Every man IS an island. He may or may not decide to take violent actions in order to prosecute his cause, but if he does, he, like Luigi in a Texas Hold ‘Em all in bet, is free to bet his life on his cause.
Luigi may or may not be a hero in our minds and in his mind, but in the movie playing in his head it doesn’t matter. He just knows, he will get an Academy Award for his actions and go down in history as a hero.
Subjectivity, arrogant self regard and narcissistic personalities in combination with a gun can and will often lead to violent results.
It’s not bad, it’s not good, it just is what it is.
The obvious BIG DEAL here is that a CEO was killed and not a regular mortal.
Look at the optics in the MSM, it shouts don’t mess with our best in class world beating systems.
The US healthcare system is just like every other sector, one big racket.
There is only one game in town folks and if you’re not winning then shut up and get out of the way.
Patsy
Exactly. If it were a working class stiff nobody would take any notice and the moron talking heads on t.v. would not even say one word about it. But because it was some white honkey CEO or even a jew we have to hear about it. I say tune it out. Fuck’em like Carlin would say.
Because he let a spine surgeon talk him into a fusion operation. Fusion’s are incredibly lucrative and not that difficult to do for MD’s. That is why they are always pushing them.
But the truth is that while a fusion my give you some immediate relief form pain, all that hardware they insert and the inflexibility of the metal used will cause adjacent vertebrae to deteriorate and lead to even more pain in the future.
A fusion at 26 years old is almost criminal!
Luigi was much more successful than John Hinckley. John Hinckley’s family was friends with the Bush family. The Mangiones are associated with the D’Allesandros. D’Allessandro= Pelosi. Brian Thompson was allegedly scheduled to talk to DOJ about insider trading. Nancy Pelosi is infamous for her alleged insider trading. There’s smoke. Someone call Jack Cashill. We need to know if there’s fire.
Using that logic any Jewish soldier that killed someone should be killed himself.
Sulu