What a world we live in!
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomson was gunned down, in the early hours of Sept’ 4th, 2024, in New York. A suspect, 26 year old Luigi Mangione, was arrested, on Dec’ 9th, in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
It’s way too early to say very much about all of this, esp’ as someone looking on from afar, with very little info’ at my disposal (and growing increasingly sceptical about truth in a world – and coming from a Society – that allows folk like Trump into high office).
But it obviously touches on all kinds of issues that one can think and talk about.
Personally I feel that if we’re going to have to live in complex modern societies, then basic healthcare, along the lines of how the NHS was supposed to be when it was founded, ought to be part of what ‘The State’ provides.
The American system is clearly terrible on many levels. And it’s surprising this sort of thing – super-rich CEOs being hunted down and assassinated – isn’t happening far more often. Such people are, after all, getting incredibly rich off money people are, or so they are lead to believe, ‘investing’ in their own healthcare.
I’ve read online that Luigi Mangione was ‘fingered’, so to speak, by a McDonalds employee (and poss’ also a friend, or associate?). It’s also been alleged that he had a 3-D printed gun and suppressor, and was using the same fake ID he (or the suspect/killer) had used in NY.*
One of the things that occurs to me, however, is just how murky all this shit can be. A guy was arrested in connection with an attempted shooting of Trump, at one of his golf resorts. I read that someone else, someone merely connected to the alleged shooter, in that incident was subsequently ‘found’ to have loads of kiddie-porn on various devices.
I’m not one who likes or wants to fall prey to conspiracy theories. But one has to wonder whether the powers that be aren’t free to manufacture patsies, as they please.
Whether Mangione is the perpetrator is yet to proven. But it’s long been a known fact that many people die, who might’ve lived, under the current ultra-capitalist model pursued in the US.
Are all those lost and blighted lives worth nothing? Are the many just supposed to suffer in silence, grist to the mill for the pleasures and indulgences of the Fat Cats?
When Society not only fails to curtail blatant profiteering and greed, but rewards and encourages it, is it any surprise that those bearing the most onerous costs might think how they could seek some kind of redress? Somehow call the Pimp/Overseer/Exploiter class to account?
It turns out Mangione is from a very wealthy privileged background. It’s also alleged that he has back pain. If even one of the wealthy is so disgusted at how US ‘healthcare’ is run, as to take to hunting CEOs, imagine how vast are the untapped reservoirs of rage lower down the food chain?
I don’t know if Mangione is the killer. But I have read that he’s alleged to agree with some of what Ted Kaczyinski says, in his so called ‘Unabomber Manifesto’, AKA Industrial Society & It’s Future.
Anyway, it’s an interesting if awful story, about an awful but interesting situation.
*This all seems incredibly dumb! He’s supposedly a wealthy well educated guy. Wouldn’t he have ditched all that incriminating shit!?