I think the online reaction have been sound and fury signifying nothing. The American healthcare system is the way it is by popular demand and any attempt to change it would cause huge backlash. There's just a lot of incoherent cynicism.
It's remarkable to me how little is being said about the high likelihood the killer had some type of psychotic break. He had chronic pain from an injury he appears to have been self-medicating with psychedelics, and he's right on the upper border of when schizophrenia would onset. His prior politics and reading make him look like someone on the tech center-right/heterodox liberal. Then at the beginning of this year he started reading and admiring Ted Kaczynski.
Read my next comment. If you think there is popular will to significantly change the healthcare system in America, then you're not looking at the data and recent history.
As we know opinion polling isn't necessarily perfect at capturing public sentiment (watch this -> https://x.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1866856971011514517), but we can look back to real political reactions to the attempts to change the healthcare system in meaningful but marginal ways. It was a generally disaster for the party in power every time - for Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. If you want to take on healthcare in American politics, you want to squander political capital and incite a popular backlash to your position/party.
The polling results are because the public doesn't understand the economics of the healthcare industry, or because they aren't reaching people who are unable to participate in the current system to get the care they need. Political reactions are as incapable as polling in terms of perfectly capturing the national sentiment. Many people don't follow politics.
The people who don't participate in politics are obviously irrelevant to political outcomes. Not sure what the point is there...
If you'd like to just dismiss the fact that we have consistently seen backlash in the form of lost political power incurred by the party responsible for changing or even trying to change healthcare policy, then you're choosing not to be part of the reality-based community. These reactions can be anticipated by a close reading of public opinion polling also.
If your position is a political movement has to be built be educating and motivating a critical mass to act, good luck. Additionally, there are plenty of "expert" economists who get things wrong about the economics of healthcare so holding out hopes that some meaningful number of Americans will get a good grasp of the system is also not being part of the reality-based community.
What will come of this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The people cheering on Mangione are distinguished, more than anything, by their lack of efficacy, tending toward timidity and cowardice in any real-world situation. The revolution, or even just anarchy, that excites them so much while posting on social media would require far, far more real-world effort than they can, or will, ever devote to anything.
The reaction is definitely a sign of rancor. There's a real rage at the perception, often the reality, that a few people are gaming the system at the expense of everyone else. I think your commentary is on the mark.
This all somehow reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath. Replace "bank" with "health insurance company:"
We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men. I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
[when the farmer ponders who he will have to shoot]
"Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank... But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man that's starving me."
It seems like Elizabeth Warren and AOC have both been making an effort to speak to the Mangione-sympathetic crowd.
Just today I happened to read about a UK woman who died after not being approved for a drug that could have extended her life by a few months, and a Canadian man who died after waiting 6 hours in the emergency room where they didn't diagnose his aortic aneurysm. So national socialized universal healthcare isn't a panacea?
The pro-murder fans of Mangione seem to think that 1. universal healthcare means that everyone gets whatever care they want/need, whenever a doctor suggests it and that 2. insurance companies are the main institution standing in the way of that happening. I'm not convinced!
From a political perspective, however, it seems like moving the US to a socialized universal system where everyone gets equally shitty rationed care with everyone (except the rich) enduring the same extremely long waits for the doctor, the emergency room, MRI machines, etc., would help assuage some of the populist rage described in the article.
More to Jesse James: For his background with Quantrill's Raiders he was a hero to the successful Lost Cause party in Missouri,, but the song seems to have been written later, during the Populist or Progressive era, when he was styled as anti-corporate.
I feel sad for Thompson’s children. It’s so terrible that they lost their father this way and that his death has been cheered on by countless people who don’t know him. Extremely traumatic for them.
I'd originally missed your December 2023 Guardian piece. The idea of a New Romantism in the face of all this is deeply interesting, I daresay even more so in the wreckage that is December 2024.
"The United States is not as violent as it once was, and the likelihood of copycat killing is unlikely. We aren’t prone to forming militias, either, and there will be no serious, tangible revolts—certainly no civil wars."
You can't know this. No one can. In fact, this may have been or may as well have been a kind of copycat crime, akin to the Trump assassination attempt.
And for those who say that nothing will come of this assassination, in fact much already has come of it, much both tangible and intangible, already occurred and to continue to occur. For example, a health insurance company already changed one of its policies because of this assassination, and very many effects are rippling throughout society, including effects that raise awareness and levels of solidarity among the public, to name a mere couple.
Recently I’ve been thinking about rise of New Journalism as a response to the turmoil of the 60/70s as also a response to the genre conventions of the media institutions that blinded them to the profound questions that the Vietnam War presented. That in order to capture what was going on new art had to be created to document the on-the-ground reality. I’d argue that the 2010s onward present a similar situation. That so much of elite media remains trapped in their genre conventions and don’t understand that we are living with fundamental ground conditions. So surprise, surprise no one cares about a dead healthcare CEO. I could have told anyone that waaaay before this happened.
I think the online reaction have been sound and fury signifying nothing. The American healthcare system is the way it is by popular demand and any attempt to change it would cause huge backlash. There's just a lot of incoherent cynicism.
It's remarkable to me how little is being said about the high likelihood the killer had some type of psychotic break. He had chronic pain from an injury he appears to have been self-medicating with psychedelics, and he's right on the upper border of when schizophrenia would onset. His prior politics and reading make him look like someone on the tech center-right/heterodox liberal. Then at the beginning of this year he started reading and admiring Ted Kaczynski.
If not a psychotic break a severe disturbance. This was not a person in poverty. His mental health was certainly questionable.
Popular demand? I think not.
Read my next comment. If you think there is popular will to significantly change the healthcare system in America, then you're not looking at the data and recent history.
I'm looking forward to the psychiatric evaluation.
“Popular demand”?
Yes, this is quite obvious from the public's behaviors and opinion polling that dramatic change to the healthcare system would not be welcome. For instance recent polling shows that 84% of American rate their healthcare coverage as fair, good, or excellent with over have that proportion in the good/excellent camp (https://news.gallup.com/poll/654044/view-healthcare-quality-declines-year-low.aspx#:~:text=Between%202001%20and%202020%2C%20majorities,negatively%20than%20they%20rate%20quality.)
As we know opinion polling isn't necessarily perfect at capturing public sentiment (watch this -> https://x.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1866856971011514517), but we can look back to real political reactions to the attempts to change the healthcare system in meaningful but marginal ways. It was a generally disaster for the party in power every time - for Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. If you want to take on healthcare in American politics, you want to squander political capital and incite a popular backlash to your position/party.
The polling results are because the public doesn't understand the economics of the healthcare industry, or because they aren't reaching people who are unable to participate in the current system to get the care they need. Political reactions are as incapable as polling in terms of perfectly capturing the national sentiment. Many people don't follow politics.
The people who don't participate in politics are obviously irrelevant to political outcomes. Not sure what the point is there...
If you'd like to just dismiss the fact that we have consistently seen backlash in the form of lost political power incurred by the party responsible for changing or even trying to change healthcare policy, then you're choosing not to be part of the reality-based community. These reactions can be anticipated by a close reading of public opinion polling also.
If your position is a political movement has to be built be educating and motivating a critical mass to act, good luck. Additionally, there are plenty of "expert" economists who get things wrong about the economics of healthcare so holding out hopes that some meaningful number of Americans will get a good grasp of the system is also not being part of the reality-based community.
What will come of this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The people cheering on Mangione are distinguished, more than anything, by their lack of efficacy, tending toward timidity and cowardice in any real-world situation. The revolution, or even just anarchy, that excites them so much while posting on social media would require far, far more real-world effort than they can, or will, ever devote to anything.
Whoa. Incredibly strong (and brave) writing.
The NY Post put Penny on page 1, Mangione on page 5. They don’t know how to spin this one.
The reaction is definitely a sign of rancor. There's a real rage at the perception, often the reality, that a few people are gaming the system at the expense of everyone else. I think your commentary is on the mark.
Sacco and Vanzetti vibe. They had a song written about them too.
"print the legend!"
https://www.theconundrumcluster.com/p/reminder-sacco-and-vanzetti-were
Great, if sobering, analysis. This, and Hamilton Craig's moving piece in Compact, are the best takes I've read.
This all somehow reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath. Replace "bank" with "health insurance company:"
We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.
No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men. I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
[when the farmer ponders who he will have to shoot]
"Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank... But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man that's starving me."
It seems like Elizabeth Warren and AOC have both been making an effort to speak to the Mangione-sympathetic crowd.
Just today I happened to read about a UK woman who died after not being approved for a drug that could have extended her life by a few months, and a Canadian man who died after waiting 6 hours in the emergency room where they didn't diagnose his aortic aneurysm. So national socialized universal healthcare isn't a panacea?
The pro-murder fans of Mangione seem to think that 1. universal healthcare means that everyone gets whatever care they want/need, whenever a doctor suggests it and that 2. insurance companies are the main institution standing in the way of that happening. I'm not convinced!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7ven1277dmo
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2515799/canadian-man-dies-from-aortic-aneurysm-after-healthcare-delays
From a political perspective, however, it seems like moving the US to a socialized universal system where everyone gets equally shitty rationed care with everyone (except the rich) enduring the same extremely long waits for the doctor, the emergency room, MRI machines, etc., would help assuage some of the populist rage described in the article.
Well written and very sad.
More to Jesse James: For his background with Quantrill's Raiders he was a hero to the successful Lost Cause party in Missouri,, but the song seems to have been written later, during the Populist or Progressive era, when he was styled as anti-corporate.
Excellent writing.
I feel sad for Thompson’s children. It’s so terrible that they lost their father this way and that his death has been cheered on by countless people who don’t know him. Extremely traumatic for them.
Bloody great (no pun intended).
I'd originally missed your December 2023 Guardian piece. The idea of a New Romantism in the face of all this is deeply interesting, I daresay even more so in the wreckage that is December 2024.
"The United States is not as violent as it once was, and the likelihood of copycat killing is unlikely. We aren’t prone to forming militias, either, and there will be no serious, tangible revolts—certainly no civil wars."
You can't know this. No one can. In fact, this may have been or may as well have been a kind of copycat crime, akin to the Trump assassination attempt.
And for those who say that nothing will come of this assassination, in fact much already has come of it, much both tangible and intangible, already occurred and to continue to occur. For example, a health insurance company already changed one of its policies because of this assassination, and very many effects are rippling throughout society, including effects that raise awareness and levels of solidarity among the public, to name a mere couple.
Smart, sad analysis.
Call me a Park Slope liberal but I used to be so frustrated by your analysis of VP Harris. In the end I suppose you were right.
Where is the off ramp to something more optimistic?
Recently I’ve been thinking about rise of New Journalism as a response to the turmoil of the 60/70s as also a response to the genre conventions of the media institutions that blinded them to the profound questions that the Vietnam War presented. That in order to capture what was going on new art had to be created to document the on-the-ground reality. I’d argue that the 2010s onward present a similar situation. That so much of elite media remains trapped in their genre conventions and don’t understand that we are living with fundamental ground conditions. So surprise, surprise no one cares about a dead healthcare CEO. I could have told anyone that waaaay before this happened.