In July, then-candidate Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt that took place during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Half of an inch made the difference between life and death. About a week later, a snap pollrevealed at least “one-third of Democrat respondents agreed with the statement, ‘I wish Trump’s assassin hadn’t missed.’” However, approval is flooding in regarding a different assassination attempt — except this assassin did not miss his target.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed on December 4. The alleged assassin is a young man named Luigi Mangione. Mixed reactions to the death rose up immediately. While some understood the act to be nothing short of “cold blooded murder,” some have celebrated the assassination. In fact, a recent poll by Emerson College found at least 41% of young voters aged 18 to 29 believed the killing was “acceptable” — 24% claimed it was “somewhat acceptable” and 17% said it was “completely acceptable.”
The poll was conducted between December 11 and 13 on 1,000 adults. According to Axios, the data points to the larger picture of what’s happening in the online realm. “TikTok, a top social media app for young people, was awash with comedy over the killing,” the outlet noted. “Even before Mangione was arrested, posters hailed him as a folk hero and posted jokes and memes celebrating the suspect and his purported cause.” There has even been a trend of online merchandise “including sweatshirts, wine tumblers and hats emblazoned with words ‘deny,’ ‘defend’ and ‘depose’ — industry parlance found on shell casings at the crime scene.”
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American journalist Taylor Lorenz had said on Piers Morgen’s “Uncensored” that she felt “joy” after hearing of Thompson’s death. She later clarified that “joyful is the wrong word,” and instead contended that she felt “vindicated” and “celebratory because … it feels like justice.” Many have pointed out that those praising the assassination are doing so as part of a larger debate regarding the health insurance industry and claims that it’s unaffordable and guilty of frequently “denying claims.” However, on the same show, OutKick’s Clay Travis emphasized that “you can be upset with a larger societal issue. It does not justify murdering people because of it.”
Notably, the majority of those polled by Emerson (68%) found the assassination of the CEO “unacceptable.” Even so, there’s clearly a notable group of people who see nothing wrong with an innocent husband and father of two being shot. Insurance debate aside, what moral issues arise when someone feels “joy” or vindication in reaction to a death? Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, shared his insight on an episode of “The Briefing.”
“Almost immediately,” he pointed out, “there was a scandal of a sort that … began to develop when announcements of the executive’s murder were actually greeted with thumbs up, smiley faces, and … even other more blatant signals of support for the murderer.” However, Mohler explained that while “at first glance it might appear that this is mostly just a phenomenon of social media … clearly there’s something more threatening going on.”
In fact, there have been several instances in which attackers have been praised, such as with Trump’s almost-assassin. “It’s a phenomenon that should absolutely shock us,” Mohler emphasized, “but should not surprise us.” Particularly “in a social media age, [this] just happens more publicly and on a larger scale. It’s morally reprehensible. But you know what? It’s not entirely new. There have been criminals, indeed, bloody criminals in the United States that have been celebrated by those who … effectively are fans.”
Mohler emphasized that this conversation cannot be detached from a biblical worldview. “It’s really clear that thinking Christians are going to have to be very alert to the kinds of moral conversation going on around us,” he said. As for the assassination of Thompson, “the first moral issue has to start with the fact that this was a cold-blooded murder, and it is wrong. And it’s wrong not just because of human moral judgment or even a moral judgment that exists outside human brains, but because it is a moral judgment that is based in the reality of God Himself.”
“Without that reality,” Mohler concluded, “I simply do not believe there is any binding morality for long.”
LifeNews Note: Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand, where this originally appeared.
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