Much of America, over the past week, has been consumed with the murder of a health insurance executive, and the chase that unfolded in its wake.
For those re-emerging from comas or caves, a bit of catch-up: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down Dec. 4 on a New York City street. While dining at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Penn., on Monday, suspect Luigi Mangione, 26, was taken into custody. The internet has not been able to get enough of this dramatic tale, one full of symbolic bits of evidence and featuring a classically handsome suspect with a compelling narrative. But if you dig just a bit deeper, you’ll see that Americans are largely enthralled because they see the victim at this story’s center as a pain profiteer – as he pulled in a $10.2 million salary working in the healthcare industry’s C-suite.
Thompson had been en route to an annual investors meeting when he was shot – convening with a group of suits in early-morning hours to discuss the vast sums they made as patients suffered and died en masse, because they withheld medical treatments. It’s not just UnitedHealthcare – America’s whole health insurance apparatus quantifiably harms its subscribers, while those without access die by the tens of thousands every year. It’s a system that disproportionately harms our most vulnerable communities, over and over again, through the denial of vital care. As such, some have heralded Thompson’s killer as a hero of the people – a notion which has been met by strong disapproval from many in society.
What I’ve been mostly struck by however – when I observe this entire situation from a bird’s eye view – is how utterly and completely not-normal things are.
How not-normal things have been for years, actually.
We’re All Mad Here
In March 2020, Covid entered our collective reality, following months of rumbles and whispers about a new virus taking hold. Until vaccines came along over a year later, many of us stayed socially distanced and scared – living through a mass, long-term horror in relative isolation.
When things began opening back up in earnest, the demands of our capitalist society pressured us to “get back to normal” as quickly as possible – at least, those of us who had not been deemed essential workers, who toiled away through the worst of it. But we weren’t told to return because those in power recognized how much we yearned for one another – they mandated us back into offices so that commercial rents could be justified. They urged us back into the habits of shopping and dining out, so the money could flow once more.
And we collectively leaned into it, at least at first, because we were so desperate to reconnect that we embraced any opportunity we could get to see and be together. To feel like ourselves again. To access the forgotten ease of those comparatively less complicated “before” times.
But we never stopped to process any of what we had been through – we never got a chance. And it’s to our continued collective detriment. We never stopped to accept that those “before” times are in fact gone, and gone for good. And we never stopped to grieve – not the millions we lost (and are still losing) to Covid, and not the lives we once envisioned for ourselves.
Atop that lack of resolution, a swirling mania has only intensified on both micro and macro levels, with everything growing ever more expensive, more hateful – just, harder. We’re desperate for necessary resources, from clean air and water to safe food. We’re still sick, and still dying needlessly. And – we’re still lonely and depressed as hell.
The ruling class, meanwhile, has become more oppressive, more conservative, and more motivated by greed these past few years. And through the tumult, the richest among us profited.
I would posit that, now, we’re seeing the cracks that splinter out when one tries to build and grow atop such a critically damaged foundation. We’re seeing the desperate measures that desperate times can create. It’s mass hysteria of the most understandable order.
Cowboy justice is a slippery slope, and I won’t condone it. But I also refuse to pretend it’s an impossible response to comprehend, even sympathize with, from a society that is hungry and frightened and crying – and whose class consciousness is ever rising while the Thompsons of the world reap the profits generated by our flailing attempts to find safety and solace.
Or, as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren more succinctly put it: “This [assassination] is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change. Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far.”
Building a New Way
Our myriad problems – the economic, the ecological, the emotional – will not be solved topically.
Well, to be clear, those at the top – that is, our political and financial leaders – should be taking on far more responsibility in this regard. But what I mean is, we will need to go far deeper, to the very roots of us, for longer-lasting treatments and cures to what ails us.
True, part of the solution will come from, as Mr. Fred Rogers famously put it, looking for the helpers, and finding comfort and hope in their ongoing acts of good. And part of it will surely come from being the helpers. Rogers’ advice was intended for children, after all – we adults should, if anything, look to the helpers for guidance, women in particular. Those who have been in the trenches of direct, communal help for years, who can show us how to tangibly assist.
But there’s another layer to get to – one that involves opening our eyes to behold the full truth: We are not okay, and we haven’t been for a long time. We can debate when the backslide started, and we should acknowledge that, in several critical ways, things have never been alright. But one especially significant dip came from scraping through a global trauma – it shattered us, and continues to shatter us. We must go bone-deep to repair such fractures.
A world has been created by the powerful that cannot support thriving life. Everyday people are now anguished and terrified enough to kill. To celebrate killing. We’ll solve none of the pain and rot behind that by slapping a Band-Aid on it – even if that’s all that we’re approved for. ◼️
