“Violence is never the answer. This guy gets a trial who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth. But you can only push people so far. And then they start to take matters into their own hands.”
—Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) rationalizing the actions of a cowardly assassin who who shot an innocent man in the back.
One minor benefit of the vicious, calculated and certifiably insane execution-style murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is that it proved a catalyst for self-unmasking by so many unethical socialists and crypto-communists on the Left. Many of these same people were wishing death on Donald Trump earlier this year, or describing him in ways calculated to motivate slightly more deranged people to kill him…and several tried.
Warren represents a very sick strain running through Woke World: people who wanted to see hero Daniel Penny convicted of murder for stopping a dangerous madman whom their policies had loosed on the public have been cheering for Luigi Mangione. This is how much they want a socialized healthcare system so we have to wait months to have a needed operation: they are willing to see insurance executives murdered to make their point.
At the same time, the murder also outed the anti-Americans in our midst, explaining the act of a single privileged, narcissistic (but hot!) cold-blooded killer by impugning the United States of America. That was the reaction of the silly ladies of “The View,” though even they had the sense not to make excuses for the killer. My erstwhile freind and role model, lawyer-pundit Ken White, exploited the murder to expound on how repugnant his nation is:
America remains the country that proclaimed that all men are equal while enshrining slavery, that enacted the First Amendment and the Alien and Sedition Acts in the same decade…America is a country where lynching was a family pastime…America is a country where we’re not squeamish about killing people. Americans have always made killers into folk heroes, from the outlaws of the American West to the bank robbers of the Great Depression. Sometimes it’s about recognizing them as icons of independence and self-determination. But just as often it’s about killing who needs to be killed — killing people we don’t recognize as human. The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley sold a million records celebrating the murderousness of a war criminal; only 11% of Americans approved of holding him accountable for his crimes. Half a century later more than 40% approved of pardoning more modern war criminals. Our heroes have included Jesse James and John Dillinger, but also Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. Americans don’t only celebrate killers; they hate and revile anyone who objects..
…and more in that vein. Ken gave up on the USA when it elected Trump the first time.
Over on Facebook, you would think that Mangione shot a serial killer. Let’s see what’s new today [Jack goes to scroll through his Facebook feed]…hmmmm, nothing new except a link to a TMZ story about how Kim Kardashian’s fans want her to try to get Mangione released (she’s aspiring to be a lawyer, supposedly).
As for Warren, Ethics Alarms gave her a Julie Principle pass after her obnoxious performances in the Democratic Presidential candidates debates in 2020; I haven’t wasted blog space or thought on her for four years. Remember, she was more appealing then, and more moderate, than Kamala Harris.
I don’t know how the Democratic Party returns to sanity and stops being a mass ethics corrupter as long as it has prominent members like Warren. And my home state of Massachusetts…here I was, feeling good about the Bay State after the Red Sox pulled off a huge trade today to pick up one of the best young starting pitchers in captivity from the poor White Sox, and my joy turned to dust after hearing Warren.
Ethics Alarms 
Wait! Maybe Liz was talking about Daniel Penny!
Wasn’t there a Babylon Bee headline along the lines of “Biden Pardons 2024 White Sox?” I wonder whether he’s going to preemptively pardon the 2025 White Sox?
America has always been a nation where there has been tension between the Puritan, seeking to impose a particular morality, and the cowboy, who is all about rugged individualism, self-help, and doing it your way. America has also always been a nation where when the ballot box, the jury box, and the soapbox have failed, we don’t hesitate to turn to the cartridge box. It’s all well and good to talk about the ideals we stand for or write about them, but sometimes, as in 1776, there’s no choice but to pick up a gun and make them happen.
Luigi Mangione was not looking to make freedom happen. He wasn’t even striking back at a healthcare system that had denied a loved one needed treatment and that person had died. He was a rich kid from a rich family who got a severe back injury playing an extreme sport which was advertised as extreme, and medicine could not fix it for him. For whatever reason, he blamed the health insurance system, and targeted one of its leaders. This wasn’t about any kind of lofty ideal, this was a pure and simple revenge killing.
The fact of the matter is that there was really nothing here other than that. There are those in this country who glorify revenge and getting even, and it has become a part of our culture. If you go to the movies, you’re going to see a huge number of pictures that are all about someone being wronged and taking revenge personally on whoever did the wrong. There’s also the whole gangster culture of movies where they glorify organized crime figures who never forgive and never forget, but sometimes wait until the time is right. A big chunk of The godfather series is about Don Vito Corleone seeking revenge against the man who killed his father and forced his family to immigrate. It takes decades, and the building of a business empire, but it is all leading up to that moment when he faces Don Ciccio, who is receiving him as a guest, reveals who he really is, and carves him open like a roast. 🗡️
We all admit to revenge ourselves, sometimes for stupid and petty things. It’s not for nothing that we say that what goes around comes around and that payback is frequently a bitch. We also all tell ourselves that we are not vengeful people or petty people and that if we do something to someone in retaliation that’s different because that person deserved it. 🗡️
That brings me to the second part of this, whether or not we are okay with revenge frequently depends on whether or not we are okay with the person taking the revenge or the person who is the victim of the revenge. It starts as early as grade school, where you will cover for your friend but happily rat out somebody you don’t like. 😠Then it starts to depend on your political bent. The same people who are justifiably horrified at violence against anyone who’s black are frequently the ones who are perfectly okay with riots where white people are targeted for beating and killing. The same people who were horrified at the Holocaust, your frequently okay with whatever the Soviets did. Someone like the now dead lawyer to terrorists 👳🏾♀️Lynn Stewart would be an example. She said it was perfectly okay for Mao Zedong or Castro or the leaders of North Vietnam to jail and kill those who opposed them because those people sought to undo a people’s revolution. She falls in the same category as also now dead polemicist Howard Zinn, who frequently tried to smear traditional heroes like the founding fathers, saying they were all about keeping their place in the food chain, and sanctifying murderers like Nat Turner, who may have been fighting slavery, but was doing it by killing innocent people at random. I could also reference a lot of Irish Americans who were perfectly okay with all kinds of terror tactics as long as they were directed against the British and would punch your lights out if you attempted to say otherwise. One such person insulted me, and I told him that if I ever see him again I will put him in the fucking ground.💢 You would probably tell me that’s being ridiculous, and objectively you’d be right, but I hate the guy enough and feel strongly enough that my objectivity is lost. 🤬
The problem here is too many Americans have moral blind spots 🦯 and are willing to look the other way when they agree and be a hanging judge when they don’t agree. Too many other Americans are willing to cover for those they agree with who take extreme action. Too often those they don’t agree with end up paying the price. This is just one of those situations. Of course a few idiots who has their own gripes with health insurance or who saw the pictures of this guy and decided he was hot are now siding with him and justifying his criminal act. The real downside here is it because this happened in New York, which is not a death penalty jurisdiction, the citizens of that state are going to have to pay for this guy’s three hots and cot for the rest of his life. A planned murder like this should result in the electric chair. ⚡
This is a great comment, Steve. It reflects much of what I’ve been mulling over in my mind ever since this happened. The culture of violence rears its ugly head every time someone disses another in an urban neighborhood. Shots are fired, the news arrives and everyone just shrugs because it’s just another day in the ‘hood.
This idea that we have the right to harm someone who has offended us in some way is a sad extreme of America’s unique individualism. Far too many people rationalize this behavior.
I don’t know much about Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania, but I applaud his words on Monday, “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy difference or express a viewpoint. I understand people have real frustration with our health care system, and I have worked to address that throughout my career. But I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most. In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”
Second: A Comment of the Day. I’m a bit put out because I had already started drafting a similar post, but Steve-O was overdue for another COTD anyway…
Thanks. Sorry to put you out though.🚒
Could have done without the self-praise (although it may be objectively true) and it shouldn’t matter if it’s an illegal ghost gun or some other form of violence, but otherwise bullseye. Josh Shapiro is one of the few remaining sane Democrats.
I noticed the self-praise, too, but, since tooting one’s own horn is part and parcel of being a politician, I left it alone. It’s a relatively benign comment anyway.
What is an illegal ghost gun? For me, the pious anti-gun hysteria invalidates anything he said. I especially find it funny for a governor of the state when Trump was shot, partially thought the extreme incompetence (or intentional neglect) of his state officials.
Does that mean a government officials with a government issued machine guns can kill you in cold blood if they disagree with you as in Arkansas?
I used to think better of Ken Pope. However, his lumping of criminals like Jesse James as equal to people who defended their lives from criminals trying to take it, like Kyle Rittenhouse or people putting their own safety at risk to protect others, like Daniel Penny is just disgusting. It is people like Ken that protest against ‘gun violence’, but the only ‘gun violence’ they actually fight against is self-defense. Ken Pope doesn’t appear to think that your life matters, only obedience to the state.
I read Ken White’s blog, and I think you got it exactly right. Also, I take some offense at the “America this” and “America that” both in White’s blog and in some of the comments here. I live in a relatively small, conservative town, and none of this response (glorifying Mangione or the like) is reflective at all of my greater circle. Their response has been uniformly, “That kid didn’t have his head screwed on right.” It makes me wonder if White and others who see the glorifying response as “America” at large need to find a different group of Americans to be around.
(I usually don’t do substantive edits on comments, but Ken’s last name is White, not Pope, though the blog he co-wrote with several others for years was called “Popehat” and now uses that handle in various ways. So I fixed that.)
The “ghost gun” thing is, like “assault weapon”, just another attempt by the anti-Second crowd to demonize and push for more useless control of objects rather than accept responsibility for the results of their degradation of society.
It’s also increasingly pointless, as 3D printing becomes more sophisticated. Already, you don’t even need to buy an 80% receiver as a starting point for bolting on hardware and building a firearm. You can now, as Mangione supposedly did, print an entire Glock 19 and stick in a few metal bits. As ever, with this sort of ineffective restriction focusing on something other than the real problem, they can’t really make any convincing arguments outlining how their proposals will actually deter criminals.
Oh, meant to include THIS
Outstanding. The COTD is well-given.
Nicely done, Steve. Nicely done, indeed.
jvb
I left this comment about this on a LInkedIn post.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7270644941985300480?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7270644941985300480%2C7271423595682189312%29&replyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7270644941985300480%2C7271552322038575104%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287271423595682189312%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7270644941985300480%29&dashReplyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287271552322038575104%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7270644941985300480%29
As William Levinson pointed out, there is no logical stopping point.
What about drunk drivers who cause fatal car crashes? Is it okay for their victims’ families to kill THEM?
Do we really want to go there?
Or the CEOs of oil companies or businesses that make cars that contribute to murderous climate change, as well as air quality issues that affect people’s health, to say nothing of accidents that end lives? I wonder what they would want done to the CEO of a company that produced a defective vehicle that cost lives? Would the guy who oversaw the exploding Pintos being drawn and quartered?
Or the CEOs of fast-food restaurants that produce artery-clogging meals, creating obesity and other health problems that contribute to many American deaths each year?
Or the CEOs of the tobacco industry which is still producing harmful products despite everyone knowing that smoking can cause terminal illness in the smoker and those around him?
The CEOs of liquor companies?
The CEO of Planned Parenthood?
If the Left can kill to forward its own ideological aspirations, why can’t the Right?
What a slippery slope we navigate when we rationalize cold-blooded murder. The consequences for accepting this behavior is anarchy.
Or the drivers of those cars.
I wonder how Sen. Warren would have responded had someone gunned down the head of Black Lives Matter. After all, you can only push people so far. And then they start to take matters into their own hands.
This one is very surprising to me. I am really amazed at how willing people are to rationalize, condone, and even celebrate this murder. I went and read Ken’s blog post in its entirety as well as the comments. Although the feeling of his post isn’t nearly as vitriolic as many others are, I believe you’re correct in your diagnosis that Ken has given up on America. He claims that America has always been a violent, horrible place, so the celebratory response to this murder is by definition “American.” We could argue the merits of that claim, but arguments aside, I don’t see what value that observation adds to anything, except to provide rationalization to those who are giving into their baser instincts.
The US is unique in that it led the way in establishing a government where we strove to put aside our tribalism and biases and treat everyone equally. That we fall short often feels like simply a rationalization for many to stop having those aspirations. It doesn’t diminish our objectives or even our attempts, but celebrating a cold-blooded murder because you don’t like the fact that medical care is, and always will be (outside of star date 41153.7) scarce does diminish our objectives. I know the real reason people are responding the way they are–it’s because they see it not as a human interaction but an opportunity to gain political power. A way to push for socialized medicine. They give up a piece of their humanity for power, which is a universal human trait. So I guess by Ken’s definition, they are actually embracing their humanity by giving it up.