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Culture war going hot: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
A gunman has killed the CEO of United Healthcare this morning, and has disappeared into the city. I’m somewhat surprised this isn’t more common, especially given the nature of healthcare company’s profit motives. I could imagine “we denied your wife’s medical claim and are sorry for her death. Also your bill is past due and we are sending you to collections. Thank you understanding.” might be a story that exists in a lot of people.
Expect to see more private security, more private flights, more underground parking and armored cars and so forth for a while.
This was clearly an assassination.
These things are never as they seem. People way overestimate indignation as a motive, when in the vast majority of cases it's mental illness or nihilism. Maybe he saw an easy getaway and a chance at infamy. This was the case with the Trump shooter...the guy had no coherent worldview. It's interesting how he got away way like that making such a brazen kill like that and fleeing into the darkness of the city.
Exactly. Even without considering the possibility that the murder is non-ideological, assassins often have incoherent worldviews that do not cleanly map to tribal politics as normally understood by the non-insane. Perhaps he believed the insurance company to be responsible for implanting a mind-control device in his brain or some other similarly schizo reason. Time will tell presumably
This isn’t an insane person, though.
Insane people flail wildly in the general direction of their targets and neglect to bring the proper equipment.
This is very much not that (this person doesn’t seem surprised their pistol doesn’t cycle on its own, and that may even be on purpose since doing that makes it even quieter) especially considering the authorities haven’t caught him yet.
(And, I’m not sure they want to reveal the ability to catch him if they could do it. NSA probably could, but this was only a quasi-government actor so maybe not worth burning the latest in AI classification tech to do it; if this guy is caught, that’s going to be one hell of a parallel construction case.)
Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon in very similar fashion in New York City and was undeniably insane with incoherent and deeply personal motives. Alternatively at times he has described the motives as due to Lennon's blasphemous statements, Lennon's hypocritical lifestyle, or to promote the book Catcher in the Rye. He had attempted suicide on numerous occasions. Despite his insanity he had planned the murder over a month in advance and flew all the way from Hawaii to do it, located John Lennon and waited outside his home until the opportunity presented itself.
agree. insanity does not mean what people often think it does . it does not mean a total lack of composure or forethought
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