On December 4th, 2024, hump day, a masked man brought a gun to the streets of New York. His target? CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson. Thompson was headed to a UHC conference being held inside the New York Hilton. It was outside that very hotel he was shot. Normally hotel back shots on a chilly hump day morning are a fun time for all involved. Unfortunately for Thompson, these weren’t the types of backshots you write home about, because you can’t write anymore when you’re dead.
The bullet casings at the scene were found to have the words Deny, Defend, and Depose. These are quite similar to what are known as the Three Ds in health insurance: deny, defend, and delay. So in other words, the shooter added a fourth D to a three D party. Gays everywhere celebrated this Tesseract creation. Why switch out delay with depose? Well, there was no attempt at delaying Thompson from recieving care. After shooting him, the assassin fled. He metaphorically denied Thompson care via murdering him. We haven’t really come up with a cure for that yet, but RFK and that millionaire obsessed with de-aging himself are on it, I’m surred. Under a certain twisting of logic, you could claim that adventurist violence is a form of self-defense. That’s the argument the film How to Blow Up a Pipeline makes for attacking infrastructure like pipelines, though the film also seems to maybe argue that hurting people is fine, too. Decent film, incredibly frustrating messaging. To depose someone, like a king perhaps, is to forcefully remove them from power. In an act of cruel bigotry, the UHC board got together that morning and voted that Thomspon could no longer be CEO on account of being a corpse.
The internet has gone wild over this case. It’s this year’s imploding Titanic submersible. People enthralled with this murder are convinced that people offline are as obsessed with it as they are. So we need to answer some questions: Who was Brian Thompson? Why are so many Americans angry at the health industry in America? Who might have killed him and why? And, most importantly, how are people responding? Is this finally going to lead to the populist revolution? Is it a good thing? Spoiler alert for those last two: no, it’s not.
One: Brian Thompson & UHC
One very popular narrative structure is the parallel ending. The closer mirrors the opener.
1993 was an interesting year that I wasn’t alive for. I know, I’m so young. I’m like so youthful and cutesy. If you bathed in my blood, you’d like gain a couple of days on your lifespan. It saw the inauguration of President Bill Clinton and the introduction of what was called Hillarycare at the time, an attempt to bring universal healthcare to the United States that ultimately would not go on to pass Congress. Based on my understanding of the bill’s overview, it would have gone further than the Affordable Care Act. That wasn’t the only foreshadowing for future administrations. 1993 would find parallels in the Bush Presidency in that, like 2001, it was the first year of an administration that saw a terrorist attack attempt to hit the Twin Towers. Like how Hilarycare failed and Obamacare succeeded, the World Trade Center bombing of ‘93 did not bring down the towers like the attacks of September 11, 2001. In his 2006 book The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright wrote, “Yousef intended to topple one tower onto the other, bringing the entire complex down and killing what he hoped would be 250,000 people–a toll he thought equaled the pain the Palestinians experienced because of America’s support of Israel.”
In the midst of such a year, Brian Thomspon graduated high school in Jewell, Iowa. He was the valedictorian. There’s a sort of cosmic irony, poetic narrative parallels. In a year dominated by arguments over universal healthcare, Thompson would be the star of a small, midwestern town graduation. In 2024, he would serve as a fallen star of the healthcare industry, gunned down in one of the biggest cities in the world. People would again be talking about him. We still do not have universal healthcare. When Donald Trump was asked about his plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, he only claimed to have concepts of a plan to replace it. Abortion, a medical procedure, was one of the major campaign issues. While there were no massive terror attacks in the US over Palestine, our government’s support of Israel has led to massive political demonstrations and outcries. The year was defined, in part, by healthcare and Palestine. 31 years separated Brian Thompson’s high school graduation and his murder on the streets of Manhatten, and yet, in a way, 2024 and 1993 are stitched together in parallel through this one man.
After high school, Brian would use his brian – sorry, brain – at the University of Iowa where he focused on business. One can’t help but wonder if the national spotlight on Hilarycare in ‘93 sent him on that path. That path happens to be where he met his future wife, Paulette, who aimed her sights at healthcare, coincidentally. So, you know, they were in two of the college focuses with some of the most famously well-adjusted types.
Thompson’s life really does seem to have been written by someone. Beyond the parallel narratives a biopic could take between his graduation and death, he made a bit of an on the nose choice after college: he went to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers, better known as PWC. Phrasing it that way is a bit of an exaggeration on my part. I don’t think everyone who works at a large international conglomerate is making an evil decision or is responsible for the company’s actions. PWC is old as shit and that’s practically as old as life itself. When you’ve been around for so long, you’re bound to have a long list of controversies to fill up your Wikipedia page. They’re not the subject of this essay, so I’m not digging deep into them, but apparently, amongst all the actual messed up stuff, PWC is behind one of the funniest pop culture moments of the past few years: the Best Picture announcement where they had to be like “Oops, no, sorry, it was the other guys.”
From one three letter group to another, Brian Thompson migrated from PWC to UHC in 2004. That year, we re-elected everyone’s favorite intellectual punching bag George W. Bush to the presidency. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban sunsets and is not renewed. Pixar’s best movie The Incredibles comes out, as does the Nintendo DS. That’s the world in which Brian Thompson started his career at United Healthcare. 20 years later, his career ended on account of people being bigoted against corpses. In 2024, we re-elected another intellectual punching bag in Donald Trump. There is no ban on 3D printing firearms like the one police claim killed Thompson. A new “gaming” system emerges in that generative AI Minecraft slop that quickly becomes a jumbled mess of bland nonsense. A vigilante murders Brian Thompson outside a hotel. Another year of connections.
The election of Joe Biden wasn’t just good news for the country; it ushered in a good year for Brian Thompson as he was promoted to the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. So I suppose there’s something to it that the election of Donald Trump ushered in a new, arguably worse career move for Thompson as he was promoted from CEO to a dead body.
Sometime over these last 31 years, Brian and his wife Paulette, a practicing physician, found time to have two kids. Based on reporting about the family, their sons seem to be young, likely still minors. If you’re to believe the New York Post, while they remained married and in close proximity, it seemed the couple was separated at the time of Brian’s death. On that same day, Paulette’s home recieved a bomb threat. Tabloid speculation about people thrust into media spotlight is an unfortunate time-honored tradition, but I’m actually going to urge you not to read any non-substantive reporting about the Thompson family. Regardless of your views on Brian, the shooting, or anything else, his sons, these children, are innocent and don’t need the press or anyone else bothering them and prying into their lives whilst they grieve the death of their father. That shit isn’t cool. I only find the New York Post’s reporting on it somewhat acceptable due to the alleged separation being a key fact for the bomb threats they discussed.
Before his death, Brian Thompson was subject to every American’s favorite thing: a lawsuit. According to CNN, the Hollywood Firefighter’s Pension Fund sued Thompson along with other officials at UHC for alleged insider trading. The suit claims that Thompson knew the DOJ had reopened an anti-trust investigation into UHC’s aquisition of Change Healthcare months before the Wall Street Journal reported on said investigation on my 26th birthday this past February. A little before WSJ published its article, supposedly Thompson dumped some of his stock, grabbing 15 million smackaroonies before the stock price took a bit of a nosedive. A nosedive, of course, being what a bunch of my fellow unhinged gays said they wanted Luigi Mangione to do to them. We’ll get to it, I promise. Now, if this class action from the HFPF led to criminal charges, Thompson apparently faced up to 10 years in prison. In 2024, Donald Trump appears to be avoiding prison by becoming the President, and Thompson avoided it by getting shot a few times, you know, in case you wanted two ideas on how to avoid doing time.
Speaking of time, if there’s one thing none of us have enough of, it’s time. So when you’re the CEO of a massive company and time is money and money is everything, you want to cut down on the time it takes to do a singular task. Like maybe you want to decide whether to approve or deny a procedure in less time. What might you use do that? As is often the culprit for depressing outcomes these days, it’s AI.
I’ll save my spiel about generative AI for a later video, especially for those “OMG who cares about art and artists? Copyright is bad anyway and you shouldn’t be paid for your work” anti-labor takes from people who claim to be on the left…
UHC was allegedly using an algorithm with a 90% error rate to determine whether to accept or deny care, specifically for elderly patients. At least, that’s what the people suing them claim. That lawsuit is still ongoing. According to Newsweeks’ summary of the lawsuit, plaintiffs say that UHC knows about the error rate and continues to use it because “only about 0.2 percent of policyholders will appeal their denied claims.” According to their calculation, for every 1000 denied claims, 900 would falsely denied, but only 2 people would appeal the denial. It’s definitely one way to keep shares high, but it’s not great for people’s health, and it sure doesn’t seem likely to win you many friends.
So you might be thinking, Oh, that’s what everyone’s talking about with the AI Brian Thompson stuff. Well, that hasn’t been proven in court so while believable, I should remain healthily skeptical. Well, luckily for you, UHC used a few more AI programs to help deny care. There’s something called Machine Assisted Prior Authorization whose usage likely led to a massive increase in the amount of claims getting denied. MAP allowed the reviewers to spend less time on each case because it helped point them to the right things, supposedly. Now, if you’ve ever used AI, even AI specifically crafter for summarization like Google’s Notebook LM, you’d know it has a tendency to hallucinate. AI makes stuff up all the time. What AI companies will say is that you should always check and review what it tells you. It’s their way of giving themselves plausible deniability and coverage for making stuff up. In UHC’s case, it’s their own AI. They say the reviewers are responsible for checking, but… You’re the company. You are ultimately responsible for the actions of your employees especially when their actions are in part due to a software you encourage them to use so that they can work faster and cost you less money.
Supposedly in 2021, Brian’s first year as CEO if you’ll recall, UHC tested and approved an AI called “HCE Auto Authorization Model” that decreased the amount of time spent per case while increasing the amount of denials. A year later, they were apparently testing AI to see which denials were likely to be appealed. If you can guess who’s going to simply roll over and take it, if that’s your thing, well then, it becomes easier to find people to fuck.
This increasing reliance on AI to deny care is a large part of Brian Thompson’s legacy. It’s what he oversaw happen as CEO. I suppose it makes sense. Business majors are almost universally evil.
Isn’t that a fun joke? It’s a simple little way of dehumanizing someone. That makes it easier to accept the cruelty done onto them. An article for the San Diego Metro that went in on the AI claims, medical debt in this country, and the rage people feel, they make sure to say that Brian was “a mild-mannered individual, approachable, likeable and a solid colleague, too.” His widow spoke positively of him. It seems many of the people who knew him liked him.
That’s sort of an issue, isn’t it? Depending on how you tell the story, Brian Thompson is an American success. He went from a small town in Iowa to a millionaire executive leading an enourmously large company. He was a husband and a father. Working in healthcare at any level, you’re going to be bombarded with stories of great suffering and loss. Yet he seemed to be a decent person to the people in his life. He didn’t take that darkness out on them. He was a human brutally murdered on the streets of what is supposed to be the greatest city in the world. And the internet cheered. He likely died afraid, cold, in pain, and alone. If you tell the story another way, it was in those final moments that he shared an experience with Americans denied care in this country. He was a blight. A disease. And this… this was the cure.
I think that second story is incapable of holding the complexity of any human person, because any story that relies on dehumanization is fundamentally immature and incapable of dealing with reality. Populism is a disease. We’ll get to it.
The real story of Brian Thompson is complicated. He helped cause an immense amount of pain and suffering in this world. The company’s push for AI under his tenure reads as evil and cruel. But it saved him and his shareholders a few bucks. He was loved and he loved. He harmed and he was harmed. He may have been facing a jail sentence he will never have to serve. And of course, there’s more to it than this. There’s a reason you can write multiple biographies about the same person and not get monotonous or run out of things to say. But this was a brief overview of the man who was shot.
So now, let’s talk about what he represented.
Two: The American Health Care System
One thing you may have noticed in the aftermath of the Brian Thompson’s death is an outpouring of rage and dissastification towards healthcare and insurance in the United States. As we noted earlier, the US does not have universal healthcare. While the Affordable Care Act did fundamentally improve the apparatus, it is not universal. My understanding is that it doesn’t go as far as Hillarycare would have in 1993.
Why might people be angry? It’s easy to intuit potential reasons: costs, wait times, misdiagnoses, insurance denials, and the inability to get care wherever because your insurance might not apply to that specific doctor.
According to KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation, the costs of medical care have led to about one in four American adults postponing or avoiding care altogether. This makes sense with other data in their reporting, including that just under half of all insured adults have report difficulty paying for healthcare. When people report on frustrations with the healthcare industry, they’ll point out the oddity that a majority of Americans seem to approve of the health insurance. You might think this is a bit of a contradiction. Maybe they’re specifically blaming providers rather than insurers. According to KFF’s estimations, though, that “majority” makes sense. It’s just over 50 percent that are satisfied with insurance premiums and the costs to get medical help. This mostly goes up when insurance is dealing with prescription prices.
It’s important to note here that the care most often put off is dental care. Dental work is expensive and often painful. Dental insurance here is also separate from general health insurance. There’s a chance that some anti-insurance sentiment could be siphoned off by that separation. There’s also a chance that some of the ire toward health insurance is rather for dental insurance. Statistics are always annoying and come with caveats.
Let’s put some numbers to it. In advising their international students about healthcare in the US, MIT estimates that a 3-day hospital stay likely costs around 30,000 dollars. According to the Social Security Administration, in 2023 about one-third of workers made under 30,000 a year. So that 3-day stay without insurance or if insurance denies a claim after the fact, could eat an entire year’s worth of salary or more. 3 days for 365, or 260 if you want to be a nerd about it and assume a 5-day work week.
Conservatives across the globe have made a show of concern about birthrates, so let’s talk about something maybe affecting those: the cost of giving birth. According to Shefali Luthra, with insurance, on average, you’re looking at paying just under 3,000 dollars. Before insurance kicks in, the cost is just under $19,000. Compare that to the UK where those covered by their National Health Services pay… nothing. Are we at least getting more bang for our buck? Well, no. As Forbes reports, “(T)he U.S. is one of the most dangerous developed nations on the planet for childbirth.”
To quote Dr. Joseph Betancourt, “The US spends more on health care than any other country, and Americans are sicker, die younger and struggle to afford essential health care. We spend the most and get the least for our investment.”
While a majority of insured Americans are satisfied with how insurance covers prescription drug prices, that doesn’t mean prescriptions always run cheap. According to GoodRX, prescription drug prices have outpaced inflation over the past decade while, at the same time, the amount of prescriptions covered by insurance have gone down. So prescriptions are getting more expensive and less likely to be covered.
One thing keeping prescription prices so high is the gaming of the US patent system. A report from NBC News details how drug manufacturers file additional patents and settle with generic manufacturers in order to increase the length of exclusivity. This drives down competition and allows them to keep prices high. “Revlimid … generated $8.7 billion in annual sales in 2021…. The original patent on the drug expired in 2019, but the drugmaker won't face competition until 2026.” There’s a clear incentive here for shareholders to maximize profits by putting the health of the American people behind their desire for money. That seven-year gap should not exist. You made your profits during the original patent period. Though I disagree with the length of that period, I understand those immense profits serve as an incentive for companies to continue inventing and innovating. But when they allegedly abuse the patent system to prevent competition beyond the standard period, that is absolutely unacceptable.
Yet it’s not as bad as it could be. What does Project 2025 say about healthcare? Well, I do a deepdive into the entire Mandate for Leadership in a much longer video, but here’s a brief section: They suggest adding “lifetime caps on benefits” for Medicaid on page 501. So hey, if you’re on Medicaid and happen to be a sickly person, Project 2025 wants to eventually kick you in the ass. Based on our talks about prescription drugs here, if you have a mental health issue, it probably won’t take long for these people to make sure you have no insurance. One of the sponsors of Project 2025, the Independent Women’s Forum, is against requiring coverage for those with prior conditions. So. Have a history? Sucks to suck.
It isn’t difficult to figure some of the resentment towards our healthcare comes from a sort of envy for the healthcare of other nations. This isn’t to say that our doctors, our nurses, or our research are bad. We give great care. But… we give expensive care. Anecdotally, where I live, primary care physicians aren’t really taking new patients within about a 30-mile drive. If you combine that with reports, like the ones about UHC’s AI use, claiming insurance companies are knowingly rejecting claims for those they don’t think will challenge them… People are bound to be angry.
I have a difficult time with anger. People get quite annoyed with me when I say that, but I don’t mean it as a brag. I was an incredibly angry child. I was told to reel it in, and I over-corrected. I have a hard time accepting my own moments of anger and it’s hard for me to truly empathize with rage, especially long-lasting rage and hatred. I sometimes perform a bit of anger in these videos for effect. I am passionate, but I’m rarely angry. So it’s probably no surprise that I, uh, don’t support murdering people, and unlike Twitter user YC, I don’t think murder is an act of empathy and solidarity. But if I just jump to my critiques of the action and the response, people will just get mad at me, like they did when I said, Hey, if you’re a leftist, you probably shouldn’t be using slurs and overall just being an asshole. I didn’t understand, they said, why it was good and healthy and actually proper leftism to be angry little edgy boys.
So. We talked about Brian. We talked about the healthcare industry and how it can be incredibly frustrating. Now, it’s time to look at the gunman. Allegedly.
Three: The Suspect: Luigi Mangione
Authorities suspect the person behind Brian Thompson’s murder is internet heartthrob extraordinaire, Luigi Mangione. Luigi has not been found guilty in a court of law, so I want to stress at the start of this section that, as of time of writing, he is accused of murder and other crimes. He is the alleged assassin. I will pepper “ifs,” “allegedlys,” and “supposeds” throughout, but I wanted to get make that clear here. In America, you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Let’s start the story of Luigi where all good Italian stories start: On the island of Sicily amongst the mob. No, I’m kidding. Apparently my great-grandparents are from Sicily. That’s not the only slight thing I share in common with Luigi. We’re the same age, meaning we both graduated high school in 2016. We were both, like Brian Thompson, valedictorian of our class. So we’ll begin where we did with Brian.
Speaking of their time together in high school, one of Luigi’s former classmates told CNN, “He was humble. He was unassuming and easy to approach.” Luigi went to a private all-boys school in Baltimore, the Gilman School, practically the opposite of Brian Thompson’s small-town upbringing. His senior year, it cost just under 30,000 dollars in tuition alone for Luigi to attend. Now personally, I can’t imagine that. I mean, I can, I’m very smart, but that’s so much money. I graduated from a public high school in Kentucky with about 100 other people. It wasn’t that big of a deal for the Mangione family, though. That’s because his grandparents Nicholas and Mary owned a Baltimore real estate empire. Empire is the word people keep using for it. When Mary died in 2023, she left at least 30 million dollars for her kids and grandkids, Luigi included. He comes from a well-off family that could afford to send him to an esteemed, pricy private school. They likely spent about 100,000 on his high school education alone. You could take many conclusions from that, but a clear one is that his family cared about his future.
I don’t think there’s enough information to speculate about how much of his family’s fortune he had access to following his high school graduation. Did his family continue contributing to his education by helping pay for college? Did he have to pay for college? What scholarships? I don’t know, nor do I think it particularly matters.
After graduating from Gilman, Luigi packed his bags and left his family’s empire in Baltimore for the always-sunny hills of Philadelphia. At the Ivy League UPenn, he received a dual bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science. That makes sense for Luigi. While there, he started a club for those interested in making video games. As CNN reports he told a university blog, “In high school, I started playing a lot of independent games and stuff like that, but I wanted to make my own game, and so I learned how to code. I just really wanted to make games.” If you want to make games and you’re into coding, going into computer science seems like a bit of a no-brainer. Luigi, though, had plenty of brains.
However, it seems like even for the comparatively rich, like the son of a real estate empire, dreams don’t always come true. Before graduating high school, he helped found AppRoar Studios, a mobile game developer who, as far as I can tell, only released one game: Pivot Plane, which was apparently similar to Flappy Bird according to reviewer Kevin Steinike. I haven’t been able to find any indication they released further games. As far as I can tell, Luigi himself never released another game. After college, Luigi did not go on to become a video game developer, coder, or creator in any way. He did not pour his focus into AppRoar. Rather, he became a data engineer, whatever that is, for TrueCar, a car sales site. That’s an interesting trend I’ve noticed in creative guys around my age: if they don’t go into their dream fields, they wind up somehow involved in or pursuing the automobile industry. Maybe it’s a dudes being dudes thing? I have no idea.
TrueCar was based in San Francisco. So Mangione was off to California. Apparently he worked at the company for approximately 4 years, likely since his graduation from UPenn. However, it seems he spent a while working from a distance. For the first half of 2022, he lived in Hawai’i at something Surfbreak in Honolulu. Classic case of the Sicilian mob spreading its imperialistic ideas. After Luigi moved out, he sent photos of a back surgery to the founder of Surfbreak. That sort of makes it seem like he left to get his surgery. TrueCar says he did not cease working for them until 2023. In November, a mere few weeks before he allegedly murdered Brian Thompson, his mother filed a missing person’s report for him in San Francisco, so it’s likely he stayed there at least throughout 2023 and part of ‘24.
His time in Hawai’i is pretty interesting. When a supposed Goodreads account of his surfaced, people were quick to point to his review of the Unabomber’s manifesto. The book landed on his reading list as a joke for a book club he founded for the members of Surfbreak. Apparently the manifesto was so annoying it dissolved their club. Luigi’s review, though, doesn’t seem to agree that it was the annoying screed his club members called it. It seems he might have been influenced by it. The review read, “They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive? 'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.” Now, when I saw that reported, I thought those were his words. No. Sorry. He said he saw someone say that about the book and found the take interesting. He left it without comment but a pretty clear implicit endorsement. Those words actually come from a Reddit User called BossPotatoness.
Now when I read that, my brain automatically went to How to Blow Up a Pipeline. In fact, that’s pretty much the exact argument the film puts forward to defend environmental terrorism. Again, I think it’s a decent movie with a terrible and confused message. Let’s put a pin in this just for a bit.
Speaking of pins being put places, let’s talk about Luigi’s back.
It seems Luigi has suffered from chronic back pain for at least a few years. Reporting indicates he suffered from spondylolisthesis, a condition where one of the little bones in your spine spots a banana peel and slips forward. According to the NHS, this can result in pain worsened by walking or standing, ass and thigh pain, and sciatica. Supposedly, his Reddit account alluded to this pain and symptoms of sciatica. Apparently Luigi suggested to others to strengthen their core muscles because it helped relieve some of the back pain. If you’ve seen pics of the guy, you know Luigi works out. Half the reason some gay twitter users went insane over him isn’t because they’re pro-murder but because the dude is fit. Luigi’s suggestion is in line with what the NHS says, strengthening muscles in the lower back area.
Many of the things gay twitter would like to do to Luigi are probably off-limits for talking about on YouTube. But, um. You know. Unfortunately, one of Luigi’s Hawai’i friends had this to say about him, “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible. I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”
The stories of Luigi in Hawai’i talk about his love for walking. Dude likes to hike and be outdoors. He would go for long strolls with his friends in the area. Did he like to walk so much because there were days he couldn’t? Or was it maybe a rebellion against his own pain?
This is a smart, passionate man who started life with a silver spoon. Last year, he likely inherited at least a hundred thousand dollars. But he gave up on his passion for games. His love for walking and exercise would in turns relieve and aggravate his debilitating back pain. That very pain held him back from love and intimacy. Wall, after wall, after wall. What do you do when you hit a wall? Well, you go to the hospital, and you might get cut open.
One of the potential treatments for spondylolisthesis is back surgery. What do you imagine when you hear “spinal fusion?” It makes me think of a body horror love story where two people slowly start fusing together. I know that’s not what it is, but doesn’t that sound intriguing? Rather, metal rods are used to hold the slipped vertebrae to the one beneath it. Luigi had back surgery not long after leaving Surfbreak. The x-ray in his twitter header looks like a spinal fusion. If that was of him, then this is likely what happened to him.
Interestingly, a CBS report says, “The NYPD said it appears Mangione suffered a debilitating back injury on July 4, 2023, that required a visit to an emergency room and subsequently screws on his spine, according to images posted on social media.” I do wonder if the NYPD was theorizing off partial information before we learned of Luigi’s condition or if there was an accident on that date that led to Luigi finally getting surgery. Regardless, the Reddit account speculated to belong to the guy claims the surgery did help. There’s no telling if that was short-term or long-term relief.
According to the same account, starting in college, Luigi started to suffer from brain fog. He found it frustrating how few people seemed to understand or empathize with him over this. If brain fog seems like a vague term to you, the Cleveland Clinic is here to help. It’s a symptom that can develop from various mental illnesses, diseases, stress, and a lack of sleep which seems to be where the Reddit User speculated to be Luigi seems to think his originated. Brain fog lays down a hazy layer over the field of cognition. You can get lost and confused. You might forget what you were doing or what you were thinking. You find it difficult to concentrate or pay attention to things. You’re confused, and you’re tired. You’re so very tired.
If Luigi developed brain fog during college and was unable to clear it up in the years following, it makes sense that he didn’t pursue his passions. It sounds reasonable that he’d put his energy into exercise and reading and trying to relieve his back pain. The spine is where nerves are, after all. If you can fix your back, maybe that’ll fix your mind. You’ll get back to feeling like you again not just physically but mentally.
What would happen… if the surgery only fixed the physical? At some point this year, Luigi’s family and friends lost contact with him. His mother started reaching out to old classmates to see if they knew anything. His friends hounded him on social media. He wouldn’t answer. This is what led to his mother filing a missing person’s report with the San Fran PD. SFPD saw the images of the alleged shooter of Brian Thompson and thought they might resemble the man recently reported missing.
On December 9th, Luigi was arrested at a McDonald’s which is, yes, the most American place for that to happen. A person with health issues allegedly 3D prints a gun, allegedly shoots a CEO in New York, allegedly leaves Monopoly money, gets cheered on by the internet, and winds up arrested at McDonalds of all places. The only way to make it more American was for everyone to immediately sexualize him and be loudly horny online. So it went.
Luigi has not admitted guilt to any crimes. Based on the statements on one of his attorneys, as of time of writing, he’s expected to plead not guilty. Is he the assassin or is he innocent? That’s for a jury to determine because we do live in a nation of laws where justice is not carried out by vigilantes on the street who believe that random acts of violence will fix the world.
“But it isn’t random,” you might say. “There’s the manifesto.” Manifesto sounds like a magic spell to summon a boyfriend, but alas, it won’t do that. So let’s sate Ken Klippenstein’s thirst and talk about Luigi’s supposed manifesto.
Four: The Manifesto
Independent journalist and “OMG why are people anti-Luigi and anti-murder” person Ken Klippenstein decided to publish Luigi’s supposed manifesto after other members of the media refused to, only quoting it in part. On social media, he pretends to not know that “in the public interest” and “the public is interested” are two different things. For instance, the public may have been interested in videos of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation, but it is not in the public interest to publish videos of someone committing suicide. While I’m against censoring art that contains scenes of such things, mental health professionals have been clear for years that publishing the details of someone’s self-harm inspires others with suicidal ideation to hurt themselves. Publishing that video would be irresponsible, no matter how interested the public was. The twitter users who spammed it were not acting in the interest of the movement. They were engaging in a form of self-harm and in a form of sadism. They got off on making people watch a “snuff” film.
I’m going to direct people who want to get a full dose of the short manifesto to go to Ken’s website and read it there. I’m not about to read it out in whole in part because I think that would be boring and in part because I think that would annoy the “murder is good” people.
I will talk about it, though, share some quotes, and engage in some fun time analysis.
Normally when you’re about to dunk on something, the easiest and most fun thing to do is to be a bit pedantic. It also tends to be the least interesting thing you can do. I find that combination of relatively boring but fun fascinating so let’s start there. The manifesto seems to claim that United is the fourth largest company in the US by market cap. Nope. It’s 17th. The three he claims to be above it are above it, but not in the 1, 2, and 3 spots. It’s 17th by earnings and 5th by revenue. It is the largest health insurance company on market cap, but not the highest in the health industry. That would be Eli Lilly, the drug manufacturer behind Prozac and other medications.
Luigi, or whoever wrote this, is correct that the US does spend the most on healthcare and yet we are not anywhere near first position when it comes to health outcomes for developed nations. We dove into what amounts to a brief overview of a few of the serious problems in American healthcare in part two.
Here’s a brief quote: “Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.” People online clowned on this part. A manifesto that mostly throws up its hands and goes, “Yeah, this is complicated but I can’t be bothered” for someone who could be bothered to plot out a murder is interesting. It’s especially quite strange when you contrast it to Luigi’s past. He went to an elite high school and an Ive League university. He has a master’s degree. His Hawaiian book club friends described him as intelligent and quite capable of incisive analysis and summary. Could it be… the brain fog? If that Reddit account really was Luigi’s and he was the person who wrote this, that could make sense. He could have that analysis locked into his brain, but the fog could make it hard for him to put it into words for others. He might not have the space to express it. “I do not have space.” That sort of lends credence to the idea that this is a frustrated, mentally ill person.
People on twitter, and probably elsewhere, get angry whenever you suggest someone who has committed an asocial act of extremism is not well. On one hand, it feels like demonization of mental illness. I struggle with a few things, and I have no urges or desires to harm anyone. That’s the majority of us. The kneejerk reaction to claim mental illness feels like demonization. But. The act of murder is not the act of a sane person. It’s spurred by anger, hatred, and bloodlust so all consuming they must be acted upon. Those are not the traits of a healthy individual. A healthy individual who struggles with anger, hatred, and bloodlust does not act on those struggles, certainly not to the point of shooting someone.
The manifesto frames this as an act of defense for the American public against a dangerous, criminal elite that cannot be faced in any other way. This isn’t murder. It’s self-defense. That, my dear friends, is pure cope. It harkens back to his review of the Unabomber’s book. “These people do harm, so obviously, we gotta kill ‘em.” Wrong. Good job, Luigi. You did something stupid. This “it’s self-defense so my flagrant disregard for human life is fine” argument is the one put forward by the main character in the film How to Blow Up a Pipeline. I have a video going over that film. My understanding is the film, confused as it is, goes further than Dr. Malm’s book that it’s loosely adapting. The main character… is pretty explicitly in favor of hurting people. She’s nearly a nihilist who doesn’t care about anyone else. She frames this all as an act of self-defense but her clear lack of empathy and manipulative tendencies make it pretty clear this is all about satisfying her personal anger and ego. The film criticizes non-violence as self-serving and pointless, but… The entire plot of the film is self-serving. Just like Luigi’s actions. You paint it as self-defense not because it qualifies but because it makes it easier for you to morally accept doing what you wanted to do anyway: cause harm.
If you want to cause harm, there’s probably another thing you have to do. You have to dehumanize the people you are willing to hurt. Human beings are empathetic creatures who have adverse reactions to seeing and/or causing suffering in their fellow humans. There’s a reason we use the word “monster” to describe people who do heinous acts: it allows for us to wish for harsh justice. Populists regularly have to engage in dehumanizing language because populism is anger, hatred, and bloodlust disguised as actual politics. The goal of the populist isn’t achieving “wins” for the people; it’s causing harm to the “elites” or whatever “other” they’ve decided to hate. Given that online sadistic populist blowhards have made Luigi into their hero, of course he engaged in some casual dehumanization. He said, “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” If you call Brian Thompson a parasite, then killing him becomes metaphorically justified. You no longer have to deal with the icky feelings of killing a fellow human being. You don’t have to think about the pain he went through. About the coldness of death. About the boys who lost their father or the woman you just made a widow.
When you see someone engaging in dehumanizing language, it’s a pretty clear indication that they wish harm on whoever it is, but they recognize that wish of harm is shameful. Because they can’t handle that shame, they have to declare that it doesn’t count. That it’s self-defense against some inhuman creature. But no. If you want to harm your fellow humans, say that shit with your full chest and deal with the shame and hurt.
Luigi’s manifesto is quite short. It doesn’t really say much. It doesn’t provide much of a justification or even a critique of the healthcare system. I’ve provided a more substantial one in this video and that is nowhere near detailed enough to lay the basis for a manifesto justifying murder. If you can’t tell by now, I don’t think this killing was good or effective. I think bloodthirsty online morons are, well, morons. I don’t think they care about healthcare or policy or politics. They care about catharsis. So now that we have the current story, let’s talk about the audience.
Five: The Reaction
As Nicholas Florko put it in The Atlantic, “Two very ugly, uniquely American things happened yesterday: A health-care executive was shot dead, and because he was a health-care executive, people cheered.”
All over the internet, people burst out into gallows humor and edgy jokes. It reminded me instantly of the Titanic submarine that killed its passengers. It reminded me of when Trump got COVID. ContraPoints talks about that moment and the sadistic revelry in her video Envy where she points out that, even when you join in the fun, people don’t like having their cruelty pointed out. It’s a good video.
The jokes, glee, and rage weren’t restricted to online revolutionaries addicted to Disco Elysium. Ben Shapiro made a video about the jokes and cut a bunch of comments from his audience of conservatives celebrating or defending the violence. This might be because the central defining political trait of our moment, as Peter Rothpletz points out in the Atlantic, isn’t conservative versus liberal. It’s angry populist moron versus people who don’t think unceasing anger and conspiracy theories count as poltics. I know that’s uncharitable but I’ve yet to come across populist analysis that doesn’t boil down to, “I am angry! Pander to my anger! No, I don’t want solutions if the solutions don’t also fan the flames of my anger! No, I don’t want wins if I can’t use them to stab my enemies.”
Populism is a toxic poison. I have a video about leftist populists where I argue that “I am on the left” is not an excuse to be an absolute asshole who engages in bigotry and cruelty. The framing was based around “leftists” who insist on using the r-word. Some of the reactions I got were based on the slightly clickbaity thumbnail, but there also “leftists” sincerely angry at the idea that their desire to be cruel is not a holy desire that the rest need to be pretend is healthy or helpful. It apparently pissed off the Breadtube subreddit. I guess I’m a liberal bootlicker for the hot take that “using slurs is not leftism. Maybe don’t base your politics off being a dick.” Whatever. Maladapted asocial morons aren’t serious about politics or anything else. They simply want to be encouraged and called good boys for their unceasing hatred.
The reason populism unites the left and the right is because it isn’t politics. It’s rhetoric. It’s anger. Of course populism doesn’t lead you to predictable policy beliefs. It isn’t a set of policy beliefs. It’s a permission for cruelty. As I said in that video, it often leads you to some pretty harsh contradictions that actual thought wouldn’t be able to handle, but irrational hatred sure can. For instance, you could be a leftist who accurately views the death penalty as an abhorrent practice that must be abolished in an civil society… who then turns around and cheers on vigilante murder. “Murder is bad when the state does it, but it’s fine when angry people on the street do it,” is not coherent. If the death penalty is bad, then it is bad against anyone. Vigilante murders are just the death penalty without any of the checks and balances of a justice system.
This isn’t politics. It’s bloodlust.
As Jia Tolentino puts it, “Thompson’s murder is one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another. … I was at a show in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, and when the comedians onstage cracked a joke about the shooter the entire place erupted in cheers.”
When it was reported that a McDonalds employee might have sent in the tip that led to Luigi’s arrest, there were memes contrasting the two, both portrayed as class traitors, one the Chad Luigi, allegedly going around doing murders of fellow rich people, and the other the soyjack McDonalds worker… being all cucked and anti… murdering people.
Obviously, politicians by and large did not come out with statements of support for the assassination because being pro-murder is not a winning position in any country. Despite what online populists want to believe, people by and large continue to be against violence. Polls show that while a bunch of people make their edgy jokes, the vast majority of people think the action itself, the killing, was unacceptable. Responses to that poll from the pro-murder side have included, “But it didn’t ask if people thought it was understandable and that’s important!” But not really. “I get why someone would, but it’s bad to it regardless” is still disapproving. It’s not pro-murder. Explanations of why oppressed people might commit heinous acts is not a defense of those acts no matter the amount of Fanon quotes you want to pull out of your ass.
As of time of writing, Luigi is facing a terrorism charge. This makes sense given that he allegedly kill Brian Thompson in order to drive fear into the leadership of the healthcare industry and enact political change. Acts of violence intended on sending political messages or causing fear are terrorism. That’s simply what they are. Now you can do the nonsense “no it was self-defense” thing How to Blow Up a Pipeline does because that word makes feel insecure about defending cold-blooded murder, but that doesn’t change the definition. It’s just cope.
If you’re an edgy person who needs political violence to be supported and propped up because it’s the core of your populism grift, you can’t accept that, though. For instance, you could be Kyle “misgendering trans people I don’t like is fine actually” Kulinski who spun a conspiracy theory that charging Luigi with terrorism isn’t because he allegedly committed an act of domestic terrorism but because the government wants to go after the people who made jokes and weren’t sympathetic and are organizing. Well. Are you organizing plans to commit political violence? Then, uh-oh, you’re a terrorist organization. If you’re not, then, no. This is a baseless conspiracy theory, the type we on the left like to believe is relegated to the right. But it isn’t. It’s relegated to people who don’t care about facts. They care about being angry. Conspiracy is more likely to fester in populist spaces because conspiracy as a concept is flattering toward a system built on anger. The “Starbucks supports Israel” lie that led to insane vitriol over the past year was a conspiracy theory. Some people responded to the presentation of facts over it with, “Who cares if it leads people to be angry at a company I think they should be angry at anyway? It’s good anger guys.” Again, populism is aimless and stupid. It’s goal is catharsis for anger, hatred, and bloodlust. Nothing else really matters. It’s the stan wars of “politics.”
I go over catharsis as politics in far more depth in my video talking about leftists who use the r-word, but a quick run down: catharsis is a piss poor excuse for sadism. Sorry. Your desire for cruelty is not special. It’s not holy. It’s not good.
There is a chance it might also be a little bit inevitable.
Populism is bread from a low-trust society. An article in the New Republic reads, “Reversing the nation’s democratic decline will be even harder if enough Americans come to believe that violence is a more effective means to solving the nation’s problems than participating in democratic institutions.” In order to start to mend the cultural sickness that is populism, we do actually have to start fixing things.
Six: What Can We Actually Do?
Infrastructure, increase the amount of doctors, increase medical research, lower the costs of med school, go after/restructure medical patents, increased consumer protection and enforcement against hospitals and insurance companies, Medicare for All Who Want It as a transitionary step toward universal healthcare, and more
So going around shooting is probably not a great way of affecting change while keeping a society. Why? Well, populism isn’t restricted to the left or right. You will be getting people killing each other for things such as providing abortions, union busting, providing gender neutral bathrooms, deplatforming Nazi, and so on and so forth because populism is not a consistent set of policy beliefs, it is thinly disguised anger, hatred, and bloodlust. If you want to burn it all down, you’ll have to watch innocent people burn alive. We have to build a high trust society or else you get idiots like Robert Kennedy attempting to take away the polio vaccine due to “anti-elite” skepticism and hatred for autistic people. The anti-vaccine movement is an admittedly very dumb populist movement.
What can we do then about healthcare since the country is mostly populated with anti-murder killjoys like me? Especially since, you know, murder isn’t going to write laws specifically restructuring Medicare. It’s almost like terrorism isn’t sophisticated enough to do actual politics. Hm. Well, there’s a lot we can do, actually. Here’s a potential, non-exhaustive list:
One: Enforce drug patent time limits. There are no extensions. There is no settling to delay generics from getting on the market. Attempts to outmaneuver this should be considered anti-competitive action and DOJ should go after companies who do. I personally believe the drug patent window should also be shortened, but we can most definitely fix the first part without worrying about the second.
Two: Increase the amount of doctors. This can be accomplished through a pressure campaign on politicians. There are a limited amount of residency spots in this country in part because Congress in the 90s placed a limit on the amount of positions that can be funded through Medicare. While certain hospitals pay themselves for additional spots… Do you remember when I said there are areas where the wait to get a primary care doctor within a reasonable distance is about a year? Increasing the amount of medical professionals will help with that. That improves national health. Improving national health reduces insurance rates and general rates of illness. To fix this, we do have increase government spending, which some people have an allergy to. However, it seems the alternative is a drought we are unprepared to face in the coming decade. Ask your congresspeople about this, conservative or liberal. Increasing the workforce here will also likely lead to lower costs in general. It will increase availability of care around the clock. It will decrease stress and overworking of our medical professionals. It’ll also ensure we have medical doctors who can invest their time in research and in insurance reviews.
Three: We have to build. I like to make fun of degrowth people because I think their ascetic fantasies are dumb and unrealistic, but also I don’t think they believe in them. Saying you have to build has a chance of pissing off the populists. A lot of “NIMBY” types turn out to consider themselves populists. They’re against a lot of development because developers are the elite and so therefore the bad guys. Sigh. This is partially why you can’t chase after the populists. It’ll lead you to stagnation and bad policy. In order to alleviate the steep costs of healthcare, we have to build. We need more hospitals, doctor’s offices, and, yes, housing. For doctors to want to live some place, there has to be housing for them. Which means, yes, building apartments that aren’t only government sponsored affordable housing. If you want to attract great talent in the medical field, you’ll also want great housing, great entertainment, great energy, great utilities, great roads, and on and on. Infrastructure is key. We need to deliver on it.
Increasing the housing supply will also improve the nation’s health. More houses means more ability to house homeless people, and shelter leads to a healthier life. More houses leads to lower rents. Lower rents and the ability to move becausing the housing is there will lower stress. Lowering stress correlates directly with better health outcomes. Better health outcomes will lower costs. Of course, to deal with rising populations in certain areas, they’ll need to invest in public transportation. You’ll need stores and restaurants. You’ll need entertainment and theatres. You’ll need offices and energy plants. We need to invest in green infrastructure and in nuclear, even if we want to continue using fossil fuels.
Building and zoning will require talking to local politicians. These are city and country representatives. Local politics matter and have an insanely important role to play in improving the health of our nation.
Four: Make and consume cathartic art and experiences. I mentioned this in my video that went “hey don’t use the r-word and other slurs” and certain leftists went “how dare you suggest I stop being an asshole.” I’ll insert a sped up clip here.
Art is a better outlet for catharsis than cruelty is. As such, we have to be willing to make, promote, and consume the sorts of art that directly target specific emotions. If you want to let out rage and aggression, then we need rageful and aggressive piece of art. You need Call of Duty. You need John Wick. You need violent, almost evil theatre. We need tragedy and we need sappy stupid romance. I’m not saying that art is the only solution. But it will and can help. And also, if we’re telling you, “Hey, go take out your anger on a video game or one of those “break stuff” rooms instead of other people,” we can’t be accused of not being fun. We’re telling you to go have fun instead of labelling performative anger as fun when it isn’t, not really.
What’ll happen, of course, is people will make the Brechtian argument: If we release our wrath, then the rapture won’t come. Things won’t change. But here’s the thing, loves, the rapture isn’t coming anyway. More importantly, your movements will be better off when you are happier and healthier and not running off anger and anger alone. Wrath is a fuel that burns quick and deep. It will leave you scarred and tired. The movement will have to replace you. And you’ll feel discarded and despair. When you are happier, kinder, healthier, you can survive longer. You become more convincing. People will want to spend more time with you. The movement will be healthier for having a healthier you operating inside of it.
There is certain asocial behavior, a cruelty that has risen with this rise in populism. That is not a fluke. It is, indeed, the very mechanism of populism. We cannot survive by trying to one-up each other’s cruelty. For the left to move forward, we have to clean house. And then I guess we have to stock it up with books, movies, films, and video games that violent, filthy, sappy, sweet, angry, beautiful, and fun.
So we need a lot of art. Because this bubbling populism is bad for society and mental health. We have to confront this mass of anger and make it clear that it is not healthy or normal or acceptable to move through life primarily dreaming about hurting your enemies. Your cruelty is not holy. Neither is mine or anyone else’s.
Five: the circumcision thing. This is more symbolic than the other suggestions, but bear with me here. If you’re too into politics or too online, both of which I am, shame, you’ve probably seen some really cringy men’s rights activists going on about circumcision. These types are easy to make fun of. You know, is this really a pressing issue? But, take a step back. This is a matter of bodily autonomy. From an ethical standpoint… they’re right. And these men who are very vocal and angry about circumcision feel betrayed and harmed not just by their guardians but by the healthcare industry. You can kind of regrow that skin, but you can’t snap your fingers and undo that surgery. The only real way to alleviate this anger and pain is through changing policy, making it different for the future. It will let them know that they are heard. People care. Part of building a post-populist society is rebuilding trust. So… Ban cosmetic genital surgery on children. This is a pretty simple win. To be honest, I think this is more likely to be embraced and pushed by liberals than conservatives. I’ve mentioned it on my channel a few times by now, but the “no trans surgeries on kids” bill they passed here in Georgia carves out exemptions for cosmetic surgeries on intersex kids. The Republicans made sure to allow for cosmetic genital surgery on children. So I think this is a pretty open space for Democrats to swoop in, win some points with young men, and alleviate some of this unending, unhealthy anger while also protecting intersex kids. Not to mention, it’s also just the morally correct position.
Six: Universal healthcare. When people talk about universal healthcare, we hit time and time again on costs. We point to statistics about us paying more than any other country on healthcare and yet not having near the best outcomes. But, let’s be honest: an incredibly annoying part of dealing with insurance is that specific doctors, specialists, and hospitals might be out of network. If the only available doctor near you doesn’t accept your insurance, you have three choices: you wait for however long it takes for one of the relatively nearby in-network doctors to have an opening, you bite the bullet and pay out-of-pocket, you travel a longer distance for medical care which is going to cost you more both in time and in money as you pay for transportation. Under universal healthcare, there’s no such thing as “out-of-network.” When people retort with “but look at the wait times in Canada,” if we point to plans to increase the amount of healthcare professionals and facilities, it’s an easier sell. People are frustrated and angry at their insurance companies. Anger is not a healthy basis for politics. I don’t agree with the populists who say we should harness that hatred and direct it at healthcare CEOs and I especially don’t agree with the few who are pro-murder because of that. But we can improve things and lessen that anger… by fixing the problems. Fixing the problems will decrease stress and anger while increasing trust.
If we switch, what happens to the people working for the insurance companies? Well, I’d imagine, if they want to stick with that line of work, we’ll need a massive increase in the federal and state workforces to handle such a large insurance program.
The data any advocate for Medicare-for-All has to content with is that a majority of people like their private health insurance. It’s not a vast majority, but still. We have plenty of people to convince and, as populism continues to infect the populace, it’s harder to get people to trust. It’s harder to trust in general and especially in the government. Leftwing populists who gleefully inflate that distrust are kind of making clear they don’t care about leftwing policy, because a decent amount of our policy goals, especially around healthcare, require a high trust society. A society where “the people are heard” via violence on the street is not a high trust society. It’s a dangerous, unhealthy society. If you are cheering on murder, you are harming our causes. If that enrages you to hear, it’s because you’re more attached to your anger and your performance of hatred than you are to actually achieving anything. The leftwing populists who threw a fit at me when I said using the r-word and other slurs is bad, that their desire for cruelty is bad, they care more about being celebrated and allowed to be assholes than anything else. That’s what populism is. So how do we get to Medicare-for-All? We have to lay out a policy plan that tackles health in this nation, building up trust, until we can get the public to buy into universal healthcare.
One way to do that might be something like Pete Buttigieg’s Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It. During the 2020 primaries, people bitched at Pete because of this, and they got really annoying about him in general. It didn’t go far enough. And, well, yeah. By design. It’s a stepping stone policy. You allow people to purchase Medicare and then you prove the government is competent at running health insurance. As you build that trust, more people will choose government funded healthcare. Eventually, the majority of people will opt in. We will have the political support for universal healthcare. This is not immediate, so a lot of people will write it off, but it seems to be the most realistic path towards universal healthcare. If you actually care about achieving that end, you will take the steps to get there even if they’re annoying and take too long.
There are plenty of other things we can do, including any of the following: government-run dental insurance programs; increased manufacturing to lower the costs of dental supplies; mass subsidized use of Ozempic and similar drugs to tackle the obesity crisis; mandated comprehensive sexual education to lower the rates of STIs, teen pregnancies, sexual injuries, and sexual assaults in the next generation; building more gyms, pools, recreation centers, parks and so on to encourage physical activity while keeping prices down; implement gun control measures to lower the rates of violent crimes including gunning down people on the streets of Manhatten; a federal theatre program to employ more people in the arts and increase access to theatre, an artform that forces and shared communal experience and thereby builds a sense of community and social trust; and an active effort to tamp down on our desires for cruelty.
Can populism save us? No. It’s specifically designed not to save anyone. It’s designed to kill. It’s designed to make Brian Thompsons, and it doesn’t give a single shit about improving things for the rest of us. It only wants us angry. Can terrorism save us? Obviously not. Can murdering people save us? No. We’re no closer to universal healthcare than we were a month ago. But bloodthirsty people got to celebrate their bloodthirst. They got to experience catharsis.
What can? The annoying work of politics, of improving people’s lives and building social trust. Best of luck.
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