Luigi Mangione, 26, Arrested in Connection With UnitedHealthcare CEO’s Killing in New York – WSJ:
Police said the man was acting suspiciously and had a firearm suppressor, a ghost gun potentially made with a 3D printer and clothing and a mask consistent with the suspect’s. He also had a U.S. passport and multiple fraudulent IDs, including a New Jersey ID that matched the one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel.
The man also had a handwritten three-page document that showed ill-will toward corporate America, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
A valedictorian of his class. High school picture seems to match the images that law enforcement have made public, including one earlier today from a taxicab. From his Good Reads profile, he was apparently taken with the Unibomber’s manifesto. Hard to say if he’s a socialist, an anarchist, or just a societal malcontent, but clearly he would have an AD&D alignment of neutral evil or chaotic evil.
Which is something of a problem given the online masses cheering for his actions and evasion of police. We’ve created a society where a great number of people believe that violence is the answer, and the law seems to be something of a general guideline that can be ignored rather than a set of agreements on how we’re all going to live together.
Will the murder of a healthcare insurance company’s CEO move the needle of healthcare reform in the United States? I seriously doubt it. It will shine a brief, temporary spot lot on the area, then the cameras will turn to something else, because violence is not convincing in this way. You can’t force someone to change their mind. You have to convince them through ideas and argument. If you put a gun to my head, I’ll tell you anything you want to hear, but that’s not the same thing as believing it, and as soon as the threat is eliminated, I will likely be hardened in my original position and boy will I hate your side.
Publicity does not equal persuasion. This is something that climate change activists, anti-Israel protestors, Black Lives Matter folks, and so on all seem to miss. If you glue your hand to a Picasso or illegally block traffic, you’ve achieved publicity by alienating even people who might otherwise be on your side. Ratcheting up the protests to include violence, harassment, or property destruction does not improve matters.
But I must concede that we’ve raised a generation (or two) of people who seem to believe otherwise.