Ken Klippenstein is a very reliable journalist and this version of the manifesto contains the snippets that have been released by law enforcement. Also, considering the thing was hand-written, that very long version involving his mom is dubious. (And there’s not any good evidence that his mom is in anything besides decent/good health)
The author here knows what they're talking about, and while not explicitly saying it, they're saying there will be more Luigi's, Adjusters, whatever attention grabbing description you like.
More business execs will be recognized as the tyrants they are, and shot. Because the entire world just taught all the school shooter types that shooting a business exec will turn you into a folk hero. It will get you fame and admiration. It will get people trying to send you money for your legal defense. It will get you people spreading the word about jury nullification to use the system against itself.
This month taught would be school shooters to instead go for board members, ceos, and billionaires. And it's a far better lesson.
Unfortunately school shooters want to hurt society
Some of them, sure, but not all of them. Some of them just want a "high score", some of them just want to hurt somebody, some of them just want their name in the history books.
they aren’t interested in fame. They want notoriety.
It doesn't matter what you call it. They want attention, and they've been shown new way to get a shit load of attention, much of it positive.
Pain makes people desperate. Desperate people are not known for being particularly calm about things, and it is entirely unreasonable to expect calm and decorum from someone in constant pain (that can be improved if not eliminated by certain treatments that are unfortunately usually quite expensive).
Socialized medicine would benefit every single sector of the economy besides the insurance industry. It would deradicalize millions of Americans in an instant. It would increase the amount of doctors and nurses and healthcare workers tremendously. It would save them tons of money. But the government won't do it because they aren't powerful enough to tell roughly 20 of the 1000 most powerful executives in the country to fuck off.
"peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn't possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense."
So Doctors, take note of this when sending authorization requests: corporate executive homicide is now a known symptom/side-effect of untreated or insufficiently treated pain and mental health issues.
Unfortunately, that would end up under the Tarasoff precedent and we would be required by law to report it to police and the intended target. There's better ways to weasel around this when filing insurance paperwork, but we'll have to have a designated person in the clinic whose job it is to fight with the insurance companies.
Well put together piece. Im saddened at my impression that this will largely change nothing in the insurance industry besides executives funneling off money to hire security rather than funneling more of that money into patient care
I'd like to add that he hasn't been found guilty for anything, for all we know he could be a completely innocent person who just happened to fit the profile of someone they could pin it on.
A lot of the discourse seems to revolve around why he did it (e.g. from the article: "nothing he read or posted explains why he gunned down an insurance executive better than this single image in the background of his Twitter profile") but it's important to remember that there's a reason we have presumption of innocence, especially when it comes to how many innocent people have spent their life behind bars or even gotten executed.
I've read that spinal surgeries are especially iffy, with roughly 1/3rd chances of improving/stagnating/worsening. It's a shame that his pain only resulted in one dead health insurance demon when there are so many to choose from. Thousands just walking around as the most prolific serial killers in history. Put me on the jury.
Interesting article and yeah, a lot of mass shootings in the US were in some way related to the shooters wanting to go out with fame.
Luigi showed a new kind of fame. To be clear, I'm all against any form of violence, I want it avoided whenever and wherever possible. Having said that, I am very much reminded of this little comic I saw yesterday
I detest violence, I detest murder. But if murder do happen, I prefer to see single greedy CEO's killed a hundred times over all those school children.
I'm all against any form of violence, I want it avoided whenever and wherever possible
The universal motivator for any kind of social improvement should be just that. Suffering breeds violence, whether out of a desperate need to survive, spiteful desire to pay back the pain done to them or a helpless need to reach out somehow for lack of a healthier way to cope. It's not the only reason for violence, but it's one, and to reduce suffering also helps to reduce violence.
Regardless of empathy or morals, a selfish desire for safety alone should push you to support measures that decreases the odds of you getting caught up in something.
I detest violence, I detest murder. But if murder do happen, I prefer to see single greedy CEO's killed a hundred times over all those school children.
Honestly I think that's a big reason people are seeing Luigi Mangione as a hero, no innocent victims. He had a target. He killed that target and no one else. No kids. No innocent wage slaves. Just one bastard.
If violence is the only way a message will get through to our oppressors let it be as little violence as necessary.
Steven Erickson''s Malazan series had a big bad introduced in the third book named the Crippled God who was the personification of this, a mind subjected to terrible pain with no rehabilitation in the aftermath of its trauma. This god quickly establishes himself as the biggest player in the game, with torturous power that contorts people's bodies, and so pain is presented as something fundamental, something antithetical to meaning that is more powerful to living creatures than the spheres of any other God.
To counteract the treatbrain I'll also bring up the fact that solitary animals do not tend to cry out in pain like social animals do. They do experience pain, even though some people will try to classify it as something lesser with words like "nocicpetion," but the important distinction is that they aren't usually sent into fits of screaming and paralysis like social animals. This tells me that, for social animals, pain is something that MUST be answered, even to the point of wanting revenge when the pain is gone. The CEO (I spit on him let's be clear) would be alive today if Luigi's pain had been addressed properly. But if this CEO had pushed such a policy, my guess is that he wouldn't have been made CEO in the first place.
At almost the exact same time the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated, a gunman walked into a religious school near Oroville California and shot two young children before killing himself.