America had an "astonishing" and dark reaction to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, anti-Trump conservative-leaning evangelical writer and former GOP adviser Peter Wehner wrote for The Atlantic — and it reflects a "dehumanization" we should be worried about.
The accused shooter, Luigi Mangione, has been trumpeted across the internet as a sort of justice warrior for the oppressed, even as he hails from a wealthy family. The support for the killing extends into real life too, with fellow inmates reportedly celebrating him.
"So how did Mangione become a folk hero?" asked Wehner. "It’s not just the crowd attending SNL. An Economist / YouGov poll shows that 39 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 view him favorably, while an Emerson College poll shows 41 percent of that cohort finding the assassination acceptable. At least a hundred people even showed up at a court hearing to support Mangione."
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The phenomenon appears to be an outpouring of anger against the American health care system in general, he wrote.
"To many people, Thompson embodied a system they consider not just broken but evil. They saw his killing as a strike against a system that exploits them. No one can plausibly argue that the murder of Thompson will do a single thing to fix the problems in America’s health-care system. Yet for some, his murder seemed cathartic, while others greeted the development with open glee." And yet, this is an incredibly dangerous development for society, Wehner continued.
"What a lot of people who are celebrating Thompson’s death and demonizing UnitedHealthcare don’t seem to understand — or don’t seem to want to understand — is that in every modern health-care system, some institution is charged with rationing care. In some, it’s a government bureaucracy. In others, it’s a private for-profit or nonprofit insurer. In America, it’s a mix of all three," wrote Wehner. "You don’t have to be a fan of the way that UnitedHealthcare makes its decisions" — but "The reality of scarcity is not their fault, nor is it 'social murder.'"
Moreover, the danger of this type of mob mentality becomes clear when the logic is extended to other issues, Wehner continued.
"Some Americans believe that abortion is murder, and that those who facilitate abortion deserve to be punished for their complicity with evil."
That doesn't give them the right to kill abortion providers, which has happened many times. And the list goes on, he said: "gun-rights lobbies; those who want to defund the police; individuals opposing childhood vaccinations, and those who administer them; groups that want to cut funding for the global AIDS initiative; those that want the United States to withdraw from the Paris climate accords; those that oppose a higher minimum wage. So who decides which Americans are guilty of 'social murder'?"
"When angry mobs of social-justice activists get riled up, their righteous anger needs targets, some figurative and some literal," he concluded. "In the meantime, Bryce and Dane Thompson just spent their first Christmas without their father."
