We Can’t Give Up On A More Merciful World

No matter how tempting it is right now.

Last week, a gunman ambushed and fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside his Midtown Manhattan hotel. Monday, a New York jury acquitted Daniel Penny in the death of Jordan Neely. Penny had choked the life out of Neely on the floor of an F train. The reaction to these killings predictably broke along ideological lines but with a shared embrace of vigilante justice.

Witnesses claimed that Neely, who was homeless, behaved in a “hostile and erratic manner” before Penny attempted to violently restrain him.

“I don’t have food, I don’t have a drink, I’m fed up,” Neely reportedly screamed at passengers. “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die."

Neely’s despair was probably not a literal death wish. Penny was charged last year with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. (The manslaughter charge was dropped last week.) His supporters have contributed more than $3 million to his legal defense. It’s like the end of It’s A Wonderful Life if Mr. Potter were homeless and George Bailey choked him to death.

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Vigilantism is bad, actually

Brian Thompson’s murder was apparently premeditated, and bullet casings recovered at the scene bore the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose,” which has been interpreted as a reference to the methods the insurance industry uses to deny medical claims.

The shooting suspect was apprehended Monday at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after someone recognized him from images the police had circulated. He was found with a fake New Jersey driver's license that he’d reportedly used to check into a Manhattan hostel. Despite some initially confused reporting, the suspect wasn’t busted because he’d tried to use the fake ID at McDonald’s. They don’t actually card you for a Happy Meal, although my friend Melissa once suggested that McDonald’s should be a 21 and over establishment. The McNuggets can do more longterm damage to your liver than the well whiskey served at a local dive bar.

Talia Jane, a writer and labor activist who is also an adult human, posted on social media, “Pennsylvanians let our whole country down,” and suggested that the killer “would’ve been safer staying in NYC cuz the whole city agreed not to snitch …”

I admit the news of Thompson’s death hit me harder when I thought he was the actor Brian Thompson, but that was because I have a personal affection for the actor’s work on The X-Files, Buffy, and Werewolf — not because I was glad that a healthcare CEO was gunned down on a city street.

A theory that circulated in the sillier parts of the Internet painted this cold-blooded murderer as a Robin Hood-style working class hero who robbed the life from a healthcare CEO and gave to the poor absolutely nothing.

I’m not going to defend or criticize the private healthcare industry. That’s not the point. A man is dead, murdered on the street, and although journalist Ken Klippenstein argues that the media “airbrushed” his life, his profession does not justify his execution.

United Healthcare is based in Minnesota and the state’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, expressed normal human remorse over Thompson’s murder: “This is a horrifying and shocking act of violence. My thoughts are with Brian Thompson’s family and loved ones and all those working at United Healthcare in Minnesota.”

This resulted in a bizarre Substack rant from Eric Gross, who describes himself as “an increasingly cynical writer revulsed by the entire capitalist reality currently crushing our planet and species.”

Senator Klobuchar has received at least $182,870 from UnitedHealthcare throughout her political career, according to Open Secrets. It is unclear why she chose to mention “all those working at UnitedHealthcare in Minnesota”, since the incident occurred in New York and was clearly a targeted attack against the CEO. The larger and more pertinent question, though, is how Klobuchar and her ilk can keep a straight face when responding this way while they refuse to acknowledge that the U.S. healthcare system, and specifically insurance providers, conduct constant violence against their customers and the American public, for profit.

Corporate money in politics is a popular and perhaps worthy bogeyman, but I guarantee it’s not the primary reason Klobuchar posted her message of sympathy. Politicians don’t usually struggle over declaring “pre-dawn murder bad.”

Comedian Laurie Kilmartin responded to Klobuchar’s message, “You could’ve said nothing, Senator.” Sure, she could’ve ignored a shocking act of violence in a Democratic-run city that reinforces the crime-ridden narrative that sunk Democrats in major cities, but that’s not wise, politically or morally.

The Left supporting Thompson’s execution, even in jest, is not the least bit defensible.(Would Kilmartin have been so glib about a white girlboss healthcare CEO stalked and murdered by a young male shooter?)

True, Thompson and other executives were under investigation for insider trading, but that’s not a capital offense. Liberals supposedly oppose the death penalty, after all.

Aaron Regunberg, who Bernie Sanders endorsed for Congress last year, posted on social media, where people could see, “If your job is to win elections — to judge + channel public opinion — and you’re not taking note of how Brian Thompson’s murder has produced the most potent organic reaction of working class joy and solidarity of any single event in modern political history, you need a new job.”

That was a real quote, arguing that liberals could actually win elections in the real world if we’d only publicly embrace literal terrorism as a means to achieve socioeconomic change. Regunberg lost his House race but I don’t think it was because he failed to promote extrajudicial murder.

As Captain Jean-Luc Picard said, “I have never subscribed to the theory that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.”

Authoritarianism by any other name

Ohio composer Frank Wilhoit wrote in 2018, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

It’s easy enough to see how this definition applies to right-wingers who defend vigilante killers like Daniel Penny and Kyle Rittenhouse. However, the perverse response to Brian Thompson’s murder reveals that those on the Left are not immune to this thinking.

The Right considers the wealthy, Christians, and heterosexual white men in general part of the “in group” that the law must protect and relegates everyone else, specifically the homeless and other marginalized groups, to the “out group” that the law binds but does not protect.

MAGA has long argued that Democrats flip this script: They protect the “woke” marginalized groups and dismiss the wealthy, Christians, and most boring white men.

Journalist Elizabeth Spiers shared a screenshot of someone’s social media post detailing what she described as “one of the more evil UHC stories I’ve seen.” Corporations aren’t people but even those who willingly work for the worst of them still are.

I oppose rejecting the humanity of any group. I certainly detest vigilante violence of any kind. This form of far-left authoritarianism is morally self-defeating and politically stupid. Health insurers have removed their leadership teams from their web sites. They’ve increased overall security for executives. That level of fear will never lead to some socialist utopia. Indeed, it will result in Giuliani 2.0 in most major cities. The wealthy and powerful have both money and the law, against which liberal piety can only shoot blanks.

Neither Jordan Neely nor Brian Thompson should’ve died. They both deserved mercy, but let’s be honest with ourselves: At this moment in time, more average Americans empathize with Thompson, the prominent father of two, than Neely, who existed on the margins of society. Of course, we should rightly oppose the deaths of both men. The only way to a better future for all of us is together. Authoritarianism only thrives when we divide ourselves.

The man who killed Brian Thompson was found with a Travis Bickle journal that revealed clear “ill will towards corporate America” with such statements as “these parasites had it coming.” He appears to have grown up with a degree of privilege and is yet another in a long line of damaged young men who thought violence against others would give meaning to their own empty life. For a few days, far too many liberals granted him his wish.

Laurie Kilmartin posted on Monday, “I liked the shooter when the only thing I knew about him is he hated health insurance execs. That was a fun time.” Sharing common cause over one’s apparent mutual hates is not in fact a “fun time.” It’s the first step toward fascism.

You might think it’s silly of me, but at my lowest moments, when I’m inclined to wish ill on an amorphous, unknown other, I remember what The Doctor told his greatest enemy, who he saved at their most vulnerable: “I don’t think any of that matters … friends, enemies. As long as there’s mercy, always mercy.”