What a weird time to be alive.
It’s Friday, the 13th of December. Forget about how many days ’till Christmas—we’re counting down to TrumpMania 2025. Just 38 days to go under the old regime, and after that? Nobody knows, apparently anything goes.
Despite our editorial policy on superstitions—i.e., just ignore them—it seems a little extra caution might be prudent. So, we’re not going to re-hash European history from ninety years ago. Neither will we try to predict what this incoming administration might get up to. Trying to make sense of a single event from this fortnight will be challenge enough.
When a person is shot dead in New York City, it is tragic and traumatic for everyone involved. Generally speaking, though, it’s not newsworthy. It happens to three people every day of the year. On December 4th, though, it happened to Brian Thompson, and all hell broke loose.
A white man making ten million a year? Now that’s news. He’s the CEO of United Healthcare? Stop the presses! The head honcho of the biggest corporation in the most-reviled industry in the country has just been assassinated, and we have it on videotape? We’re gonna need a bigger broadcast studio.
At this point in the news cycle, the late Brian Thompson was discreetly wheeled out of the picture. His active role in the drama was over. Now his industry—the purpose of which is to make a profit by denying people access to diagnosis and treatment—was run through the world’s biggest X-ray machine, and its victims got to make the diagnosis: “This system is sick. It’s sickening. And it’s making me sick.”
Despite the worst efforts of billionaire owner Elon Musk, Twitter, aka X, rose to the occasion. Random users responded with that platform’s traditional lack of tact.
Among the more popular comments were, “Prior authorization is needed before thoughts and prayers,” “The UnitedHealth guy could have been saved but every doctor in the area was out of network,” and “Police say it could take several years to comb through the potential suspect list.”
Some comments focused strictly on the health aspect: “Remember when there used to be all of these articles about people in Europe living longer than Americans because they drink red wine and eat olive oil?” tweeted @BlisterPearl. “Turns out it was universal healthcare all along.”
Others looked at possible political ramifications of the Twitter pile-on itself: “[T]he left needs to stop making fun of the united health CEOs assassination,” wrote @CantEverDie. “[Y]ou might alienate the crucial health insurance billionaire voting demographic.”
Economic consequences came up, too. @UncleEarl65 noted, “Sadly, healthcare costs just went up as all insurance executives will now have a fleet of security to go along with their fleet of lawyers.” Within days, Uncle Earl’s joke had become reality; news reports were talking about health care corporations beefing up security measures for their execs.
A surprising number of people have come down on the side of the perp. On Wednesday, CNN reported that people are reaching out to the attorney for suspect Luigi Mangione, and offering to help pay his legal bills. The attorney said he would decline the offer, but then added, “The Supreme Court says all these rich billionaires can give all kind of money to candidates and that’s free speech. So maybe these people were exercising their right to free speech… .”
This sympathy for the devil rose spontaneously, even without general public knowledge of a Hollywood Firefighters’ Pension Fund lawsuit. Journalist Ken Klippenstein, formerly of The Intercept, now on Substack, reported on the day of Thompson’s murder that the decedent was being sued for selling $15 million in UnitedHealth stock, without disclosing to investors or the public that the company was being investigated by the Justice Department. When the news did come out, nearly $25 billion in shareholder value evaporated.
As the nation’s animal spirits cavorted around Elon Musk’s campfire in the wake of this cold-blooded murder, NPR did what it does best: wring its hands whilst clutching its pearls. Odette Yousef, speaking to Michel Martin on Morning Edition on Wednesday, said, “there is another part of this that’s troubling—and that part is the valorization that we’re seeing of the suspect within some of the mainstream public.” Although she is accustomed, she said, to seeing “people who commit mass violence or political violence praised, even venerated as martyrs in really kind of dark corners of the extremist world,” it was “troubling” to see “how Americans have, over time, become more open minded toward political violence.”
She’s right. Movies like Civil War, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, The Hunt, and the Purge oeuvre show violent images of class war right there on the big screen. All fiction, of course. The real class war happens on a smaller screen: murder by spreadsheet.
Brian Thompson’s death could be seen as a side-effect of his own system. He is beyond remedy. If his death were to spark a re-evaluation of the system he served, and if that led to a cure of our sick health care system—we’re talking miracles, here, we know—his death might serve a worthy purpose.