In the immediate aftermath of the casual shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel on 4 December, the story went full Gotham.
Early surveillance footage of the handsome suspect wearing a hoodie, which was released by the NYPD on 5 December, went instantly viral. Added to the growing mythology was the shooter having used an e-bike to flee the scene of the murder. No carbon footprint.
Later, police revealed that a “ghost gun” – untraceable and fashioned by a 3D printer – had been used, and the words “deny”, “defend” and “depose” had been engraved on bullet casings found at the scene.
This is believed to be a reference to a 2010 book by Jay Feinman titled Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It, an “exposé of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and legislators to fight it”.
“He is our Batman,” “Literally our vigilante hero”, “I feel safer with him at large” was the noise on social media.
And then, after the arrest of Luigi Mangione, a “person of interest”, in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on 9 December came “he’s hot as shit you must acquit”.
Read more: How the shooting of a medical insurance CEO (briefly) united America
This is a country, after all, where in 2008 the state bailed out the big banks that had created such gargantuan indebtedness that they almost collapsed. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens paid and are still paying the price, unable to afford to get sick while holding down four jobs.
It is also a country where the president-elect, Donald Trump, has loudly proclaimed that he could shoot someone in a Manhattan street and get away with it. And where the president leads, the people follow.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said after Mangione’s arrest: “He is no hero.” He also said: “In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint.”
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Saint.jpg "Luigi Mangione in an image that has gone viral on social media. (Photo: Reddit)")
Mangione (26) has become the Robin Hood of the deeply transactional and profit-driven 21st century in the US, where if you can’t pay, you can’t play.
In this instance it appears that his callous act has found wide traction among disgruntled serfs to the left and to the right. And if something finds traction, there has to be Velcro.
“I am your retribution” was a Trump election promise, not so?
The hierarchy of health
Pull into any private hospital in the world, including South Africa, and particularly in Cape Town, and you get to see who posts the largest bills at the end of an encounter with a “customer” in need of medical help.
The anaesthetists are the top dog, with their Lexuses and Bentleys parked in bays right at the front door. If you are here with an elderly relative with heart failure, best you park up over there by the highway and hobble the half a kilometre to Emergencies.
On 6 December, two days after Thompson (50), a father of two, was gunned down, insurance company Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said it would be reversing a policy that would have capped coverage for anaesthesia in Connecticut, Missouri and New York.
The response on the “people’s” platform was “Damn, I guess there is something more effective than voting”. Which sort of rings true.
New York governor Kathy Hochul responded to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield’s announcement: “We pushed Anthem to reverse course and today they will be announcing a full reversal of this misguided policy. Don’t mess with the health and well-being of New Yorkers – not on my watch.”
Private health companies provide the bulk of care in the US, by the way.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/12667925-1.jpg "Police investigators at the scene where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in an apparent targeted attack in New York on 4 December 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Justin Lane)")
Trumpism takes hold
Of course, Mangione had, according to police, “a robust social media presence” and a three-page manifesto in his possession at the time of his arrest. He harboured “an ill-will towards corporate America”, apparently.
A police official who had sight of it said the suspect wrote “these parasites had it coming” and “I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done”.
But this is an age in the US where internal disputes are resolved through violence or the threat thereof. The guns are now pointed inwards, even the “ghost guns”.
It is the American dream, people. A huckster rises to the top, he speaks to every small man who admires this nous, this ruthless game. Elon Musk, as a boy growing up on South African-fuelled cruelty, has even misinterpreted Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, like every charlatan misinterprets a holy book.
Instead of understanding it for its indictment of imperialism and a satire on the meaning of life, Musk has shorn the text of this in his certainty, his megalomania and misanthropy. In this world, Mangione was waiting to happen. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
