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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   24158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Apparently some stuff has been happening with Luigi Mangione lately; the front page of reddit is filled to the brim with pictures of the guy, and today I saw posts showing part of his arrest video (full video here, but does not contain the full arrest), and finding that he had a ticket for a bus to Pittsburgh on the night of the shooting, and also that the bullets in the bag were what made him a suspect for the CEO killing.

I am seeing some commonalities in all these threads: either hedged understanding/support for Mangione's actions, outright support, and extreme skepticism of the police along with claims that Mangione was framed or otherwise dastardly policing tricks were pulled on him. Police misconduct claims include that the backpack with gun and manifesto was planted on him and that they used an illegal method to find him, yet are claiming that an anonymous caller recognized him and tipped them off.

I find it interesting how pervasive these claims are. My own brother actually has told me that the backpack was likely planted on Mangione, (part of a wider array of left-wing conspiracy theories; he also was the first I'd seen state that the Trump assassination was one random attendee shooting another random attendee and accidentally wounding Trump, then later stating that it was the teleprompter glass that injured him, not the bullet itself). It's true, it's a little hard to believe that a murder suspect would keep such dangerous incriminating evidence on him in the face of a nationwide manhunt. However, I think a murderer might not make moves that someone might expect them to, and I also think that police officers have to be cautious in following the rules when it comes to the entire U.S. news media and also defense lawyers watching their every move carefully.

The thought strikes me that this is probably going to be one of the most televised court affairs since Rittenhouse. apparently not televised since it's in federal court, but everything that comes out will be highly scrutinized, at least. This time, for the first time in many years, it seems that this is a more Left-aligned murder trial. I desperately hope he gets convicted, but anything could happen. There are many ways he could get acquitted, including plain-and-simple jury nullification, which is definitely a possibility on account of his popularity.

Walter Kirn has said numerous times that his read of the media surrounding Mangione tells him there will be an acquittal. I'm not super confident in that prediction myself, but I would take the under on him getting the death penalty. Seems like what you're seeing puts a chit in the Kirn basket.

What does the dog do when it catches the ambulance? Mangione had a reasonable enough plan for fleeing the scene, but does he really strike you as the sort that would be able to abandon his life, leaving the assassination behind him? His motive was personal - back problems that weren't covered by insurance? - and it's not like he had a hideout to run off to and remain in. Consider the scenario where he didn't get caught - would this individual be able live as a fugitive, abandoning being an upper-middle-class 20-something college-educated techie? It seems like he didn't really know what to do after shooting Brian Thompson and evading the police. Luigi Mangione isn't Agent 47, he doesn't have another hit lined up in Milan or Monaco after this one, and there's no patron helping him escape. Compare to Assange or Snowden - Assange had a country provide him asylum for seven years (!!) and Snowden made it two countries over before getting his passport revoked!

Edit to add: I don't see much difference between Luigi Mangione and Tyler Robinson - to a first approximation, they both seemed to have assumed that they would just disappear under the cover of the next news cycle, and instead were both the subjects of nationwide manhunts.

Consider the scenario where he didn't get caught - would this individual be able live as a fugitive, abandoning being an upper-middle-class 20-something college-educated techie? It seems like he didn't really know what to do after shooting Brian Thompson and evading the police.

I think he very much didn't expect to be identified in surveillance video. He probably thought he would just slip away and the trail would go cold. People may not immediately realize that even if every single step in and out of Manhattan is not under overlapping video surveillance, it's not too hard for police to work backwards in time. He almost certainly didn't expect the actual murder to be caught on video, which was a stroke of wild luck.

After that, it’s basically a step-by-step backtrack. Start with the murder camera, scan every nearby camera for the same hooded guy, and when you find him, use that location as the new starting point. Repeat this block by block, working backward in time, until you eventually trace him back to the hostel, where they had his actual full face on camera and a name on his fake ID, which was found on him in Altoona.

(Obviously he should have ditched the fake ID and murder weapon and manifesto note wtf)

A long time ago I was watching one of these "Top 5" true crime videos on Youtube. One of the discussed cases was the murder of some law student, as far as I can remember, in NYC. He was an associate of some local organized crime group and a drug runner between NYC and LA or something like that. For whatever reason they decided to whack him in a rather simple but effective manner. Apparently two assassins followed him around and waited for the moment when he was passing the entrance of a rather busy subway station. One guy called him on his cell phone for a made-up reason in order to distract him. As he was talking on the phone, the other guy shot him in the head and immediately left for the station. It happened in broad daylight and the killer was never caught. No eyewitnesses, no CCTV footage that was worth a damn as the suspect was wearing a hoodie, nothing. This happened in 2012 or so. So yes, it can be done.

If you can find the link, I'd love to watch this. 2012 is right on the edge of full on surveillance state, especially in NYC.

https://jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/12/who-killed-brandon-l-woodard-manhattan.html

https://theweek.com/articles/469437/why-anyone-commit-murder-during-day-midtown-manhattan

https://abcnews.go.com/US/killer-lay-wait-brandon-lincoln-woodard-shot-south/story?id=17929640

Unfortunately I misremembered; there was also a getaway driver assisting the hit, so the hitman used a car, not the subway. Either way, he was never found. The man who supposedly ordered the hit, on the other hand, was arrested and sentenced.

Was Robinson meaningfully on the radar before his dad reported him in?

I don't think the Snowden or Assange comparisons make sense. You have to be on-site to shoot someone, whereas leaking documents to the press can be done from anywhere. In fact, afaik Assange has never been to the United States.

That said, while I do think escaping after a successful assassination is actually-difficult, it really does look like Mangione and Robinson were both basically retarded in their attempts. You don't just waltz off to McDonald's while you're still hot. And you definitely don't watch someone else get caught by going to McDonald's while they're still hot, make a joke about it in your Discord, then run off to the much-safer sanctuary of Dairy Queen instead.

Robinson was like Timothy McVeigh, he made some nominal attempts to escape, but was overall resigned to being captured and didn’t make a particularly serious attempt to get away with it. Otherwise I don’t think he would have admitted to it in his discord group. Mangione seems to have actually developed a pretty detailed exfiltration plan which makes his later bumbling around odd.

Consider the scenario where he didn't get caught - would this individual be able live as a fugitive, abandoning being an upper-middle-class 20-something college-educated techie?

Why would you do that? Either they have enough evidence on you to catch you or they don't. I would just go back home and act like nothing had happened. After about two weeks, I figure either they have the evidence to catch you and you're in jail, or they don't and you put it out of your mind and never tell anyone.

Jan 6th Pipe Bomber's plan.

After about two weeks, I figure either they have the evidence to catch you and you're in jail, or they don't and you put it out of your mind and never tell anyone.

Unlikely, the odds are very much against you, the only ‘smart’ move is to use your head start to get as far away as possible and then blend into a new life, like that American guy who hid in Wales for 20 years. Even stuff like AI facial recognition on public sector camera footage (outside any federal building, on an officer, a police car, in any government office, facility, bus station, subway station, outside a court, a school etc) is going to be much more common as those things increasingly feed into centralized FBI systems. The further you go, the less likely you trip some kind of alarm (the way the would-be Welshman did).

So basically grab a Big Mac and wait for the whole thing to blow over?

Fair. I thought someone said he'd been mooching around all over the place contemplating whether he should kill someone else.

That doesn't fit the profile at all, though - aimlessly contemplating and carrying out multiple murders is more of a school shooter thing, no?

School shooters are spree killers; what Corvos is talking about would arguably be serial killing. Profiles are pretty different.

I really don't understand the "cops framed him and planted backpack" style comments. They support him BECAUSE he killed a CEO, how can they square that with thinking he was framed. How can you love him for doing it and think he didn't do it at the same time? Literal crazy people I guess.

This is very different from the meme of "Hey Luigi, thanks for helping me hang drywall at X time on X day" which is a joking attempt to provide an alibi. That is gross but at least only requires them to hold the thought of "he did it, and its a good thing" and not ALSO "but actually he was framed."

For some people, there is no objective truth, there are no facts. Particularly on Reddit, facts are distorted to promote a narrative.

They did the same with Tyler Robinson (Charlie Kirk’s murderer). He did it because he was right wing, or maybe it’s because he wasn’t in a leftist organization, never mind that the Reddit folk feel Kirk should had died.

On Reddit, the truth doesn’t matter. It’s the narrative that matters, and if the narrative contradict itself, well your average Reddit poster is too drawn by their extreme hateful left-wing narrative to let facts get in the way.

There is no objective truth, there are no facts. Particularly on Reddit, facts are distorted to promote a narrative.

This is not just on reddit, this is everywhere including here. The absence of a clear truth (objective or otherwise) is a core feature of online discourse.

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

facts are distorted to promote a narrative.

Is it a narrative or 'feels'?

I've been seeing BPD everywhere lately for my own 'reasons'.

The Tyler Robinson Right Wing stuff I just figure that a lot of people stopped paying attention after the first messaging that his parents were Republicans (since nobody has ever voted differently to their parents) and have no interest in receiving further updates past that. I've seen people on Twitter saying the trans roommate/partner is an elaborate frame job

I don't find it difficult to understand at all. They're starting from the position that Mangione should not be punished, and then formulating their arguments accordingly.

There is no such thing as truth, only competing power narratives. Arguments are soldiers. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

"Midwit" is a title many people can only aspire to.

I don't see how "the CEO killer was right" and "Luigi was not the CEO killer" are incompatible ideas. This comment below gives the argument more or less as I've seen it: the government needed to frame someone because letting someone who assassinated a CEO get away with it would break the social order. So they support the real killer for having killed someone they think should have been killed and they support Luigi because being framed is bad.

It doesn't make sense why they'd choose someone like Luigi to frame. He's obviously cute as hell: plastering his face all over social media with WE CAUGHT THE KILLER is surely going to make people think assassinating unpopular CEOs is the sexiest thing ever. Heck, judging by the court photos coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if Brooks Brothers has contracted him as a model to market their new Winter Season apparel.

If the feds wanted to frame someone to quell the enthusiasm, they'd choose someone ugly, preferably with an existing record of unpopular crimes (ie., sex crimes).

I don’t think he was necessarily framed (in the sense that I think he might have actually done it). But I think the media was genuinely being tone deaf and stupid about what the coverage would be, like they always are. They were equally tone deaf and stupid in the way they portrayed the victim.

I read it not as a form of double think, but as a reflection of American hyper-proceduralism for criminal justice.

For this, the process matters every bit as much as the facts. You can have extremely strong evidence that someone committed a heinous crime, but a flawed process used to gather evidence, arrest the suspect, etc. is enough in itself to exonerate the suspect.

Mangione, then, is a hero for his act of murder. He's also a super genius who hid his tracks perfectly, and it was only through evil parallel construction and planted evidence that the government was able to get him. Therefore, since the process was abused, he must be found innocent, validating his genius and heroism.

I really don't understand the "cops framed him and planted backpack" style comments. They support him BECAUSE he killed a CEO, how can they square that with thinking he was framed. How can you love him for doing it and think he didn't do it at the same time? Literal crazy people I guess.

This kind of thinking is pretty common. For example, I'm pretty sure that most people who deny the Holocaust also think it would have been a pretty good idea.

I think the reasoning is (1) What he (Mangione) did was right; so (2) he should be acquitted; but (3) his best chance of being acquitted is if he didn't do it; so (4) I will convince myself he was framed.

I think the reasoning is (1) What he (Mangione) did was right; so (2) he should be acquitted; but (3) his best chance of being acquitted is if he didn't do it; so (4) I will convince myself he was framed.

I am also certain that is the thought process, I just don't see how you can actually convince yourself of that. That's why I used the people jokingly giving alibis as a counterpoint. That seems like the same thought process, but processed by a sane mind.

I am also certain that is the thought process, I just don't see how you can actually convince yourself of that.

In my experience, people have phenomenal powers of self-deception. In fact, it takes a great deal of effort to think about things critically. Even with that effort, I would say that just about everyone has at least one or two issues where they fool themselves pretty well.

The default for a lot of people is very much anti-Litany of Tarski, and closer to all the corollaries of "faith can move mountains" (an actual idiom, reflecting a paradigm reinforced in all sorts of ways in our dominant culture: cf. also "don't jinx it" contra speculating about bad possibilities). Really believing a thing can make it true, and if the thing being true leads to good outcomes, then isn't it your moral duty to believe it?

It doesn't help that in a lot of contexts where the Random Civilian's beliefs are polled at all, a dynamic holds that with some squinting really looks a lot like faith-based miracles: the sick individual is healed by placebo, and the Ghost of Kyiv style stories translate into a general atmosphere of "Ukraine can do it" that percolates through social media back to the frontlines and results in Ukrainian soldiers being more willing to sacrifice themselves and believing that their fellow soldiers and adjacent units are likely to do likewise and hence actual Ukrainian battlefield success.

Even as I sympathize with that general line of argument, Ghost of Kyiv is a poor example to use for that argument. It had about as much relevance in the Ukrainian media sphere of the time as the Iranian AI-claim of shooting down a skyscraper-sized F-35 had in the Iranian sphere during the 12 day war. It existed, people cheered (or jeered), but it wasn't the reason people involved felt the way they did, as opposed to the many other things going on at the time.

The reason it makes a bad example is because the presentation presents as if it was the cause of the Ukrainian faith. The opening days of the Russian invasion weren't exactly lacking in verifiable, faith-building reasons for the Ukrainians to believe 'Ukraine can do it' when the 'it' at the time was 'meaningfully fight back.' The Ukrainians crushed the Hostomel Airport air assault, the Bayraktar TB2 drones hunted Russian air defenses, Ukrainian volunteers were hunting Russian armor with anti-tank weapons in the forests, Ukrainian farmers dragging mud-dragged Russian equipment, and of course the many shoot-downs that did happen away were all much more influential in the Ukrainian media-sphere. The Russian and a fair deal of the global expectation at the time was that Ukraine was days from collapsing, the Ukrainians disagreed, and nearly four years later one side's belief that meaningful resistance was possible was vindicated.

I fully agree that such media stories helped motivate Ukrainians to believe that resistance was not futile and that others had their back and would risk alongside them. But that social perspective was far more because of things like the mixing of molotovs in the streets of kyiv, something that a large part of the country's political and social centers had direct visibility of, than the Ghost of Kyiv propaganda. Ghost of Kyiv was never load-bearing on the Ukrainian willingness to fight on the ground, and it wasn't exactly long before the video game origin was recognized and circulating.

Ghost of Kyiv's cultural impact was more of a western obsession. First in the 'we want it to be true' sort of the pro-Ukraine camp, but over time in the 'Ukraine is lying liars and we can't believe anything they say' anti-Ukraine camp, where it regularly emerges as a reason to dismiss Ukrainian success (they claimed the Ghost of Kyiv, and it was fake!) and to believe pro-Russian framings.

Look into Jonathan Haidt's "the elephant and the rider" model. Most people don't operate in a hyper-rational fashion, motivated reasoning is the norm.

Doublethink like this is endemic to conspiracy theorists of all stripes.

  • The movie JFK alternates between claiming Oswald was an innocent patsy framed for two murders he didn't commit, and a skilled assassin betrayed by his co-conspirators and killed because he knew too much.
  • Palestine sympathisers will swear up and down that Hamas and the broader Palestinian independence movement have the right to engage in violent resistance – but, conveniently, every single civilian killed on October 7th was killed by Israel under the Hannibal directive. Thank Christ for that!
  • Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare. (You can make this not-doublethink by phrasing it as "either immigrants are taking our jobs, or they're mooching off welfare". But at that point the fig leaf has wilted and you might as well just admit that you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.)

Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare.

I don't find that hard to square at all. Immigrants are adding to the labor pool more than they're driving job creation, therefore "taking jobs" is accurate on its face. Same with net tax payments vs. receipts (I assume).

As a current resident, the first-order effect is that it's harder to find a job and the government takes more from you while giving you less in return.

Option 2: One immigrant gets a job, brings in half a dozen family members, and receives welfare to pay for their needs.

Option 3: Fraud. There is no "except when", just "while simultaneously"

Option 4: Immigrants drive down wages of the industries they work in, to the point they qualify for welfare while doing a previously-high-paying job. No locals are willing to do the job that cheaply, which just justifies the need for immigration! Instead of one immigrant stealing one job, it's the entire immigrant workforce stealing (and degrading) an entire job sector. (This one's the most dubious IMO).

Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare. (You can make this not-doublethink by phrasing it as "either immigrants are taking our jobs, or they're mooching off welfare". But at that point the fig leaf has wilted and you might as well just admit that you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.)

...are you familiar with various techniques on how to conduct welfare fraud?

I for one am not.

One very simple one, because many illegals either work under the table or with a stolen identity: If you don't have any reported income you can still get welfare while having a job.

The amount of ways to do it are boundless though, that's just one of the more common ways.

Another variation is the kickback schemes to bribe someone to certify that you deserve the aid. So if the state has an inspector or certifying authority to sign off that you qualify, you give them part of the welfare to attest that you actually deserve it. So if the welfare check is 1000, you kick back X00 back to them so that you both profit.

This later form is easier to scale in an organized crime / corrupted institution way, such as with the recent Somali fraud ring in Minnesota. While the typical risk of scaling is a defection risk of someone wanting a bigger cut and bringing down the whole system, if you can use something like familial/social networks to coordinate, you can mitigate the defection risk and increase the scale of the corruption. All the more so if you can leverage political influence to deter local investigators.

On the immigrants thing, they can easily be doing both. Any immigrant with income below approximately the 60th percentile of income is a net negative to the taxpayer.

Then they are both taking our jobs and being net consumers of welfare.

I think there's an important distinction between "working hard, but also availing of public benefits (like healthcare etc.)" and "not working and availing of social welfare".

you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.

The principaled economic reason to oppose immigrating in this case is that you want immigrants to be net taxpayers, and also work in jobs complementary with (most) Americans rather than in competition with them.

For example, high skilled specialists we just don't have enough of. (Original use case of H1B, before it got exploited as a source of cheap accountants and php drones.)

Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare.

People literally do this, you can get paid under the table in cash and then get various types of benefits that you shouldn’t actually be eligible for.

Super common. Every Latina immigrant receives visions of the exact cutoffs for Medicaid and other government benefits while gestating her first child, along with a MLM/cash business starter kit.

Tfw no fecund Latina welfare-scamming gf :(

It is entirely possible to be working and paid under the table while claiming social welfare benefits and you don't have to be an immigrant. Many criminals in Ireland have hundreds of thousands in cash and assets while claiming the dole, it turns out when the court case eventually makes its way to trial.

(Link one)

In 2017, CAB raided the home of Kenneth Carpenter and his partner, Elaine Byrne, and seized a €2,600 Chanel handbag, four high-end watches worth €100,000 and a Brown Thomas Platinum card that requires holders spend at least €5,000 a year instore. The couple's only legitimate declared income was Elaine Byrne's allowance as a lone parent.

An early social welfare target was James Gantley, a father-of-four who found his dole payments blocked by CAB in 1998. The court heard evidence of property transactions of more than €200,000, a villa in Spain and €94,000 in a biscuit tin. Mr Gantley, years later, pleaded guilty to "voicing" the ransom demand in a botched attempt to extort money from a delivery firm.

Earlier this year, gardai in Drogheda announced they planned to target feuding drugs trafficking gangs that have terrorised the Louth town by going after their social welfare payments.

Its most recent annual report showed that of the €5.6m CAB returned to the State last year, €323,000 arose from social welfare overpayments, while it also recovered €2.2m seized as the proceeds of crime and just over €3m in taxes.

Mr Ryan's thesis finds that between 1996 and 2006, CAB's social welfare activities has generated savings to the exchequer to the tune of €7,808,753.04 and received recovery payments of €4,066,136.36.

"Whilst considerably less than the financial income generated from forfeiture of assets it nonetheless represents a significant denial of cash flow to criminality from an area of the bureau that does not receive significant attention in wider academic or media discourse," it said.

The thesis, "The examination of how the methods employed by the Criminal Assets Bureau move Ireland in a new direction of crime control", was completed as part of Mr Ryan's doctoral studies at the University of Limerick.

(Link two)

McInerney has convictions for drugs, theft, assault and passing counterfeit currency.

He bought the farmhouse and land at an auction for €233,000 in 2010 and paid a cash deposit of €23,300.

McInerney was on social welfare but claimed he got the money through the sale of another property, investments in Lanzarote, the sale of a Toyota Land Cruiser.

He also said that he had found "€5,000-€6,000" in another house he bought.

He said he got the cash deposit through a combination of "horse trading" money which was "under the counter" and two people, "Marie" and "Cha" he met for a loan of €156,000, but "didn't sign any forms at that meeting".

(Link three)

A father of five faces jail for unlawfully claiming almost €283,000 in social welfare payments uncovered following a Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) investigation.

Judge Keenan Johnson remarked on the irony that John McDonagh, 50, Dalton Park, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, has begun repaying the money using funds from his current social welfare payments.

At Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday, he imposed sentences totalling six years, but suspended four and a half on the condition McDonagh does not reoffend in the next five years. The prison term was postdated to commence in July.

McDonagh pleaded guilty to theft in connection with the social welfare fraud, unlawfully claiming a total of €282,881 in the Jobseekers Allowance payments from July 2009 until August 2022.

Over the same period, his bank accounts showed he had other lodgements totalling €382,000.

There were €8,000 lodgements in the first year, but the annual figures increased to €85,000 before being detected when he claimed some of that money was from selling cars.

(Link four)

The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) seized more than €116 million worth of assets over 12 years with some €64.4 million transferred to the exchequer as a result of its work during the same period, according to new figures.

…This included €22,209,595 under proceeds of crime legislation, €38,021,925 in taxes and interest collected and €4,213,719 in social welfare recoveries.

Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare.

That’s not even a conspiracy theory, let alone a contradiction. Both of those things do indeed happen. (They don’t even need happen from the same immigrants, although that also happens.)

If you wanted a right-coded conspiracy to balance out your selection you could have just referenced Q.

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently well-acquainted with Q to know what beliefs of theirs would qualify as doublethink.

not sufficiently well-acquainted with Q

"Trust the plan" vs. Perpetual crisis Followers are told everything is unfolding according to a masterful plan, yet simultaneously urged to act as if democracy is in constant imminent danger requiring their immediate intervention. If the plan is working perfectly, why the panic?

The "Deep State" paradox The shadowy cabal is portrayed as both omnipotent (controlling all media, governments, and institutions globally for decades) and simultaneously incompetent (leaving obvious "clues" that amateurs on the internet can decode, being constantly on the verge of defeat).

"Do your own research" vs. Rigid orthodoxy Heavy emphasis on independent critical thinking and questioning mainstream narratives, while anyone who questions QAnon claims or reaches different conclusions is dismissed as a "shill" or "sheep." Independent research is encouraged only if it confirms predetermined conclusions.

Immigrants are taking our jobs, except when they're mooching off welfare. (You can make this not-doublethink by phrasing it as "either immigrants are taking our jobs, or they're mooching off welfare". But at that point the fig leaf has wilted and you might as well just admit that you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.)

That seems pretty different to me. It seems very possible to believe that a large number of immigrants have jobs where they are working for below market wages and undercutting native wages as a result (both illegal immigrants and H1B fall under this) and also that many more are not working at all and are mooching, and that only a small number have market rate jobs. This does not require believing that any single individual is doing both at once in a double think manner. It is even possible for a given immigrant to believe they have done both, say starting as a wage undercutting day laborer and then mooching off of welfare once he was able to get signed up for benefits, or that this individual with the wage undercutting job is ALSO getting food stamps or medicad supplementally or for their dependents. I don't think it requires believing the superposition of A and NOT A simultaneously the way the other examples do.

Furthermore, I think some immigrants get here with visas to take jobs (undercutting domestic labor), then import a bunch of family members who immediately start extracting resources from every government program they can.

But at that point the fig leaf has wilted and you might as well just admit that you don't have principled economic reasons to oppose immigration.)

@FtttG Bad form. >:|

Sorry bro.

Same thing as "it didn't happen and it didn't go far enough", I guess.

This case, in particular, is one that really shows me the reality of the two screens effect.

In the communities online that I follow, I haven't seen much response to this case either way. CEOs do awful things, that CEO in particular was probably doing pretty normal stuff for his class, and freelance vigilantes murdering people doing legal things is crossing a general principle of liberalism that we mostly don't want to cross when it comes to people peacefully doing legal but arguably vile things. The same norm preventing this is the norm that prevents, say, the father of someone screwed up (by the father's lights) by trans ideology and surgery from going and vigilante-ing intellectuals like Judith Butler who are, in some diffuse but obvious sense, clearly culpable for the ideology and thus its downstream material effects. Lode bearing norm etc - this gets fully general in a hurry in a society with meaningful liberal pluralism, because it means everyone is tolerating other people who are (by their lights) behaving like moral monsters.

But I have interacted with a few adults recently - people who have FAANG jobs or similar and pensions and families and mortgages - who brought up the Mangione case unbidden, and their frame of it was very much, paraphrasing, "This is a canary in the coal mine. People are getting fed up. There's going to be more of this. CEOs better take note." And... I mean, it's not like I'm unsympathetic to critiques about health insurance companies. I get the frustration, absolutely. But the moral frame of it, and the flat certainty of who had culpability and agency, caught me off guard, I have to admit. There was a distinct undercurrent that the communities these people were in had already reached consensus that, legal or not, this kind of assassination was, functionally, licit. Or perhaps something like, there no longer appear to be political ways to address this problem, so extra-political solutions are on the table.

And in that sense, it very much does remind me (along a different moral axis) of the Rittenhouse case - where, again, it really did seem like the moral debate hinged on whether someone saw the protesting and rioting and destruction as a normal part of democratic participation, and thus only to be responded to by similarly legal democratic moves, or if you saw the situation as having devolved into an extra-legal situation where certain parties were behaving, essentially, as outside bounds of law, and thus other private citizens were morally compelled to defend their community by force.

I guess it brings to mind that old Arnold Kling model of politics, where conservative tend to have a strong barbarism-vs-civilization axis, and progressives tend to have a strong anti-hierarchy oppressor-oppressed axis.

The same norm preventing this is the norm that prevents, say, the father of someone screwed up (by the father's lights) by trans ideology and surgery from going and vigilante-ing intellectuals like Judith Butler who are, in some diffuse but obvious sense, clearly culpable for the ideology and thus its downstream material effects. Lode bearing norm etc - this gets fully general in a hurry in a society with meaningful liberal pluralism, because it means everyone is tolerating other people who are (by their lights) behaving like moral monsters.

Spending time on Tumblr as I do, the argument seems to be that we don't need "the norm" to prevent this father from "going and vigilante-ing," because the force of the state will do that. One side gets to attack the other for "behaving like moral monsters," and the state will mostly let them get away with it, and the other doesn't get to attack back, because the cops and courts will come down on them like a hammer.

To provide further example in a different context — the murder of Iryna Zarutska — someone made a comment about how, if our legal system keeps letting out people like Decarlos Brown Jr. to reoffend again and again, then eventually people will start resorting to vigilantism. The immediate reply was that, no, such people would be stopped immediately, because we've had laws put in place since the Civil Rights era to prevent such "vigilantism" — or, to call it by it's proper name, lynching — and the cops and courts all know how to properly deal with any such person, even if they decide this time to leave their pointy white hood at home.

Everyone hates health insurance companies because their premiums keep going up and the system is a pain to deal with. It's not complicated.

All the way back in 2019 Cory Doctorow wrote a short story about people radicalized into doing violence against health insurance companies due to claim denials. In his story it was a bombing rather than assassination, but still.

"This is a canary in the coal mine. People are getting fed up. There's going to be more of this. CEOs better take note." And... I mean, it's not like I'm unsympathetic to critiques about health insurance companies. I get the frustration, absolutely. But the moral frame of it, and the flat certainty of who had culpability and agency, caught me off guard, I have to admit. There was a distinct undercurrent that the communities these people were in had already reached consensus that, legal or not, this kind of assassination was, functionally, licit. Or perhaps something like, there no longer appear to be political ways to address this problem, so extra-political solutions are on the table.

If I say "Hey, it looks pretty stormy out there - there's a very high chance of rain, so you should take an umbrella" I'm not actually saying "Rain is morally good and I support the rain falling on you and getting your clothes wet". People are simply pointing out that when you live in luxury and riches earned via rent-seeking in an industry which can just arbitrarily ruin people's lives due to an accident or illness they weren't at fault for, you're going to create more and more Luigis (or whoever the real killer was, if it turns out he is innocent). They're not endorsing extrapolitical assassinations as a means to effect change, they're identifying that a large underclass of people who have no ability to effect change politically while occasionally losing the lottery and getting their lives completely ruined by people like Brian Thompson (have you looked at what he actually did? That man was no angel!) is going to regularly produce more and more violence.

If I say "Hey, it looks pretty stormy out there - there's a very high chance of rain, so you should take an umbrella" I'm not actually saying "Rain is morally good and I support the rain falling on you and getting your clothes wet".

And when an Italian gentleman with a crooked nose says "nice business you've got here; it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it," he's just paying your shop a complement, and then making a true observation about an entirely hypothetical situation.

It is true that one can say "this is a canary in the coal mine, CEOs take note" in a manner where they are not endorsing murder, just warning that it's likely to happen if things continue as they are. But in my experience, most people who say such things about the United CEO's murder are absolutely tacitly endorsing it. Perhaps not all, but it's enough to make one leery of anyone else who shares such a sentiment.

I'd like to point out that this is the exact same argument feminists use when they say that any advice like "Don't get drunk in a skimpy outfit and hang around lots of desperate horny men" is actually blaming the victim and morally wrong. That said, my personal position (not that I can speak for the people you're referring to) isn't so much "more health insurance ceos need to be gunned down in the streets" as it is "these health insurance ceos need to be reigned in so they aren't causing so much damage to society". If a fentanyl dealer gets killed because he sold a bad batch of drugs that killed a bunch of his clients, I'm not going to pretend that I'm terribly upset when someone gets revenge on him. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes - and when your industry performs as awfully as the US healthcare insurance industry does, profiting on the back of destroying lives and denying people medically necessary procedures, you're going to be buying a lot of tickets for the Luigi lottery. Sure, most of the victims will just die or suffer in silence, but all it takes is for the right person to get screwed over and something like this will happen again. The right thing to do would be for the government to crack down on these people and implement a much better healthcare system, but seeing as how that isn't happening anytime soon we're just going to get more and more cases like Brian Thompson as the years go on.

Insurance companies, in general, tend to make more money when they don't have to pay out. They often make the worst day of your life even harder by looking for any excuse to not pay you. I got rear-ended at a stoplight a while ago; I took a picture of the car that hit me, including their license plate, as they sped away. When submitting the claim, I included the license plate number, the photo, and described the person driving the car as a "man between ages 20 - 50 with dark hair". My claim was denied because the license plate I reported belonged to a 70s model car (the car in the photo was obviously an older model, so definitely matched) registered to a man in his 30s. Because it was a government monopoly (thanks, ICBC), I couldn't do anything about it, and had to pay the repair costs out of pocket. This was obviously infuriating, and the start of my character arc towards hating any and all governments.

With something like healthcare in the US, where the costs range from "all the money you'd make in a month" all the way up to "all the money you'd make in a lifetime", dealing with individuals who are determined to nickle and dime you over things your physician said you'd need in order to not be dead is something that boils the blood; like, it's more surprising to me that someone didn't do something sooner. I've also heard that Brian Thompson/UnitedHealthcare was particularly stingy; that may or may not be true, but it's probably a bit of a factor.

I'd like to point out that this is the exact same argument feminists use when they say that any advice like "Don't get drunk in a skimpy outfit and hang around lots of desperate horny men" is actually blaming the victim and morally wrong.

Feminists are saying that it is possible to say such things sincerely but most people who say them in real life aren't? I find this unlikely as a feminist position.

these health insurance ceos need to be reigned in so they aren't causing so much damage to society

But they're not. US healthcare is overpriced, but the money is flowing to doctors and hospitals, not to the insurance industry, whose profits are small. The insurance industry are just the middle man, paid to redirect the customers' ire from those lovely doctors and nurses.

Although your misunderstanding does really highlight how bad the 'randomly execute people I assume are responsible for my problems' method of political activism is.

This is a more complicated question than it sounds.

It's true health insurance companies have very thin margins: almost always <5%. And it's even true that the ratio of premiums paid out to revenue collected (the 'loss ratio') is rather high across the board: >80%. ...But the reason it's strictly >80% is that that's the legally mandated minimum per the ACA. If they fall below that number, they have to issue rebates to customers to meet it.

On the face of it this sounds like a good thing, right? I've argued in the past that corporations aren't always eager in practice to maximize profit (principal-agent issues where employees and not owners are making most of the decisions), but they largely do try to maximize their own size. The law limits administrative bloat!

Except... it doesn't. It limits bloat to a percentage of payouts. If they negotiate well and push prices down, they reduce their profit/operating budget! Unless it's compensated by more custom, of course; the normal competitive pressures do still exist. But this rule absolutely acts against that pressure.

This is a classic example of Goodhart's Law. Without this requirement, loss ratio is a good measure of efficiency; since a company will always try to minimize their expenses (the ones that involve sending checks to other businesses and don't benefit any employees, anyway), high loss ratios just mean there's adequate competitive pressure to keep them lean. But now? Who can say? The number is going to be >80% no matter how much or little competitive pressure they're under. If competition is insufficient, they'll just throw money at doctors and hospitals, because that's the only way they're allowed to raise profit/operating budget (via higher premiums). And if they were, it would exactly like you're describing.

But are they? I'm really not sure. Loss ratios were often lower before the ACA (sometimes as low as 60%), but a lot has changed about the healthcare market since 2011. Health costs are going up everywhere, not just the US. It's a murky subject and I don't think there are many easy answers to be found.

But they're not. US healthcare is overpriced, but the money is flowing to doctors and hospitals, not to the insurance industry, whose profits are small.

I don't see any numbers in that linked post, or in the posts linked from that, that compare hospital profit and insurance industry profit.

And even some of the links from that post blame the problems on the insurers when you seem to think they don't.

The bloat is not necessarily "profit". For instance, when insurance companies and hospitals hire armies of bureaucrats to argue over the claims, all those bureaucrats get paid and none of that is "profit" to either side.

Er... what? I'm not making any argument of the sort, simply observing that most any time I see someone expressing the "that's to be expected" point of view it's because they are actually happy the guy was murdered. I'm not sure how you get from there to some kind of thing about victim blaming.

There's a slippery slope going from "I'm warning you about this bad thing and you aren't listening" via "Why are you still not listening? Honestly when it happens the I-told-you-so moment will feel good" to "I want this bad thing to happen to you".

"This is a canary in the coal mine. People are getting fed up. There's going to be more of this. CEOs better take note."

Boogaloo rhetoric is bad, and I think PMC Blue Tribers engaging in it may be a new low, but it is very LARPy. If everyone is thinking "I'm mad as hell, but I'm too pro-social to raise the black flag and start slitting throats myself. There are other people like me are just as angry and not as restrained so I'm hopefully anticipating things going down when someone else does." then nothing goes down, or worst-case you get a bunch of disorganised pseudo-political violence by people who aren't quite right in the head, which is what we are seeing in the US now.

I don't know why 2020's America, a society which produces mass material prosperity on a grander scale than any other in human history, is full of people (on both sides of the aisle) claiming that they are suffering to the point where raising the black flag and starting slitting throats would be an understandable response. But empirically 2020's America is not full of people who are actually suffering to the point where raising the black flag and starting slitting throats is a likely response.

But given that all the cool kids online are raising metaphorical black flags in their mothers' basements, it doesn't surprise me that people who should know better are talking like this. And given the taboo against assassinating elected politicians, health insurance CEOs are the closest thing to an acceptable target in places where the high-status politics is pro-establishment left.

I don't think this is particularly a partisan issue - online pro-2nd amendment culture definitely includes sharing wish-fulfillment fantasies about how one more Blue outrage will finally drive other Reds (but definitely not the poaster) to take back the country by force of arms. The one time I went shooting IRL with American 2nd amendment activists, everyone spent the drive to and from the range talking smack about shooting Democrats, but reverted to talking like grownups as soon as their hand was anywhere near an actual gun. I particularly remember ESR's post about armed anti-lockdown protests in Michigan because he has written a lot about healthy gun culture and is definitely smart enough to know better than to engage in Boogaloo fantasies.

I'm currently watching the ken Burns documentary about the revolutionary war. The 13 American colonies were a relatively prosperous place, and the absolute value of the taxation they were facing was relatively minimal to what British citizens were paying, and what most Americans would have to pay after the war ended.

In 1773 they could be described as loyal subjects of the crown. They thought the differences and problems they were having with England were reconcilable. Many thought the King would help by supporting their cause in parliament. Three years later they are declaring independence, calling the king a tyrant, and fighting a hot war.

It gives you a sense that things can kick off real fast. And I think people know this in their gut as well. The time to signal your loyalty is not once things have started kicking off, that is way too late. You need to let people know where you are beforehand.

There is a difference between prepping for a bad situation and wishing it to actually happen though. Anyone with two brains cells to rub together should know that a revolution or civil war in the US at this time would be completely awful, so they talk a big game just in case, but no one tries to make it come about.

I don't know why 2020's America, a society which produces mass material prosperity on a grander scale than any other in human history

Everything is cheaper and easier to access now. Except food. And housing. And cars. And gas. At least electronic gewgaws are cheaper... oh wait that’s over now.

Is food, excepting beef, really more expensive in real terms? Or do you mean like eating out?

Processed food(here used broadly to include things like bread as well as sodas and lean cuisine) and beef are a majority of most Americans' grocery bills, and those things are much more expensive regardless of the cost of staples like potatoes and milk.

I think there is certainly an element of "people's domestic skills and reflexes have atrophied to the point that they can't cook for themselves" (and despite whatever the spreadsheets say, the cost of eating out decently seems to have about doubled in real terms in the past 10-15 years) + blue cultural norms raising expectations (eating similar slop every day no longer registers as a fulfilled life, and who has time and money to master making foods from a dozen world cultures?), but you also have to consider complex factors making cooking for yourself less viable: small temporary habitations and frequent moving (-> can't accumulate equipment), jobs with high time demands and irregular hours, and delays in formation+overall decline of stable pair relationships reducing the opportunity for division of labour (one cooking for two).

since I started working, I stopped cooking on the stove. My heater is having issues, so I just, 5min ago, turned on the burners to try and add heat. Should have vacuumed the dust out first. Posting this face-down in the floor on the opposite end of the building.

I'd rather min-max food than obsess over concepts like variety and 3 meals a day of specific categories. So when I'm writing the grocery list, it's peanut butter, tortillas, rice and produce. And nuts, because we can't finish a thing without something overpriced making it in :( .

I don't know why 2020's America, a society which produces mass material prosperity on a grander scale than any other in human history, is full of people (on both sides of the aisle) claiming that they are suffering to the point where raising the black flag and starting slitting throats would be an understandable response. But empirically 2020's America is not full of people who are actually suffering to the point where raising the black flag and starting slitting throats is a likely response.

COULD IT BE that there are other forms of suffering than lack of excessive material prosperity?

Have you tried finding a spouse, raising a family, or buying a home lately? Have you tried finding a good career? Particularly if you're young enough to be competing with AI for entry-level positions? Have you tried finding a healthy community to be a part of?

By the grace of God I have succeeded in all these categories. But I can see the writing on the wall and now I'm terrified about the world in which my children are growing up.

Lots of people seem to be settling into pod life. Thin gray walls, netflix, delivery slop, no (or exclusively poor) romantic relationships, sterile sex only, if any. They do not know their neighbors. The prospect of ever having property or children -- especially multiple children -- recedes farther into the realm of fantasy every day. There is no unifying identity; no shared values. Just alienated fragments of what used to be a collective human organism, dying in infantilized isolation. More and more turn to substance abuse just to feel okay for a little while. Others turn to increasingly-radical political movements which blame the pain and horror of modernity on the other side. This is about to get much, much worse.

Man does not live by bread alone.

I don't know why 2020's America, a society which produces mass material prosperity on a grander scale than any other in human history, is full of people (on both sides of the aisle) claiming that they are suffering to the point where raising the black flag and starting slitting throats would be an understandable response...

I think this is because 2020s America is even better at showing everyone all the people just a little bit better off than you (and then cherry picking only their best moments so it looks like with all that material prosperity you're actually falling further and further behind).

But I have interacted with a few adults recently - people who have FAANG jobs or similar and pensions and families and mortgages - who brought up the Mangione case unbidden, and their frame of it was very much, paraphrasing, "This is a canary in the coal mine. People are getting fed up. There's going to be more of this. CEOs better take note."

Liberals get the bullet, too! "I'm one of the good bourgeois" has never saved anyone, and they should perhaps consider the fact that they are much more like the CEO getting shot than they are to the usual suspects that get shot without too much news coverage.

Liberals get the bullet, too! "I'm one of the good bourgeois" has never saved anyone, and they should perhaps consider the fact that they are much more like the CEO getting shot than they are to the usual suspects that get shot without too much news coverage.

Everyone calling to "kill the rich" or "eat the rich" conveniently defines "the rich" as everyone in the income percentile immediately above theirs, or higher.

That's perfectly natural, once you accept "eat the ____" as a goal. Anyone richer than you is likely to have higher nutritional value than someone poorer than you (not an endorsement of cannibalism). This particular scenario seems more like a complete lack of self-awareness. Something like "I'm a better than average driver," or "advertising doesn't work on me".

Anyone richer than you is likely to have higher nutritional value than someone poorer than you

Given the inverse correlation between socio-economic status and BMI, I'm not sure if this is true.

Hah, good point. On the other hand, leaner meat is usually more expensive.

In the current American market, yes, but fattened meat has often been more expensive in history.

Absolutely. I was more caught off guard that people who really ought to know better (or, well, really need to know better) had latched on to these arguments and were repeating them. Historically, these were the kinds of people who occupied the middle or upper middle classes who served as a bulwark against radicalism, which is obviously exactly where their interests lie. I think it mostly made me think that these people were marinating in subreddit forums (which I know they frequent) and were thus internalizing a certain point of view as being normal and consensus that was really, at least by my lights, quite radical.

Historically, these were the kinds of people who occupied the middle or upper middle classes who served as a bulwark against radicalism

Lenin, Trotsky, Castro and Robespierre were all middle class university graduates that could have had pretty decent careers in the square world if they had wanted to. Same with Mao, although he was more from landowning small gentry than the university set. Stalin was born in the lower class but was able to get into seminary and probably could have had a pretty comfortable middle class life too.

Che Guevara was a medical student when he embarked on his famous motorcycle journey (in fact, the trip is what radicalized him), and completed his degree before he got involved with communist guerillas. He could have totally led the easy life of a doctor in Argentina, but he didn't.

were all middle class university graduates

I thought the argument that I had generally seen (not sure if it's true) is that the ranks of revolutionaries, especially in late 19th century Russia, were often occupied by the children of the middle class and upper middle class bourgeoisie (especially lawyers, doctors, and bankers) who had been bred for success but weren't seeing it, or had a sense of their opportunities drying up. Even now, the most actually radically inclined people I know, generally, are grad students who have no actual career prospects in universities - their education and self-regard is highly unbalanced with their actual economic prospects.

I was thinking more of their parents - the actual middle and upper middle class that had launched successfully, had valuable credentials and professional experience, owned meaningful property... basically the layer of society that has skin in the game to lose if significant disruption happened. I'm almost positive Aristotle talks about this, so the idea isn't new.

children of the upper middle class bourgeoisie (especially lawyers, doctors, and bankers) who had been bred for success but weren't seeing it, or had a sense of their opportunities drying up

Only 14 percent of Zoomer college grads actually have a job that requires a college diploma.

Only 14 percent of Zoomer college grads actually have a job that requires a college diploma

The WSJ gives a number of 52% for "jobs that don’t make use of their skills or credentials"

https://archive.is/ZZ6le

This includes some younger Millennials as well.

Either way, that’s more than enough to drive radicalization.

Lenin, Trotsky and Castro were all middle class university graduates that could have had pretty decent careers in the square world if they had wanted to. Same with Mao

Maybe higher education was only meant for the upper class after all. Warrior poets with no fiefdom to take care of (and no peasant revolts to avoid) seem to be hell-bent on reshaping the entire world instead, based on your presented examples.

Well, the whole reason for the initial bourgeois revolutions in England, America and France was that the ruling aristocracy had devolved from warrior poets into a bunch of incompetent inbred pajama boys.

Yes, so catereng to them by expanding higher education was mistake.

FAANG forums may as well be /r/politics as well - it's the water they swim in. See: Damore, Eich, Donglegate, etc.

Rittenhouse didn't shoot anyone because they were rioting.

Well sure - but if I remember correctly, I think the progressive argument was something like "just because they were rioting in a community he cared about, that didn't give him any justification for being there and being armed, which was obviously responsible for the provocation and escalation". Something like that. I mean, this was the specific tangled set of arguments that tore the sub-reddit apart for a time and led to that theSchism breakaway subreddit, right? The argument about the frame of the argument is the real argument, on some level. I'm not a progressive, so I'm not going to do the best job of steel-manning their argument here, but I remember people at the time making them.

Lest we forget the argument that he crossed state lines with a firearm! Ignoring the fact that the guy he shot did the same while being a prohibited person.

It doesn’t surprise me. There always a kind of push-pull effect for political figures that you want to support but doing so would make you look less virtuous to other people. The Reddit community wants to support the destruction of capitalism and the death or at least confronting of CEOs. They’re also self-aware enough to understand that open support of Luigi is going to make them look like terrible people who support the things he did. It’s much easier to hide behind claims that Luigi was framed, that he couldn’t have really done those things, that the state is bad for arresting him and so on. You can still support the man, but now it’s not because he did something you support, but because it’s an obvious miscarriage of justice that all of this happened.

The only part of the story that I doubt is that he was apparently noticed and reported by McDonald’s staff during lunch rush. I doubt anyone at McDonald’s would have had time to notice him (he’s actually fairly normal looking), or had time to call the police, or would have bothered. But that can be explained as a way to hide drones or other surveillance that the cops don’t want public.

he’s actually fairly normal looking

The reason the Internet is simping over him and not over Tyler Robinson is precisely because he is not "fairly normal looking". Tyler Robinson is fairly normal looking — Mangione, by contrast, is ever so dreamy.

I’m not convinced being “good looking” is enough to set a person apart from a crowd enough to have someone not only recognize him, but be sure enough of that recognition to call the police. If there’d been something truly unique about him — say a scar on his right cheek, bright orange hair, green eyes, a limp, etc. sure I get that. Luigi has dark hair, brown eyes, maybe a bit tall and his hair is curly, but on the scale of human appearance, he’s within the median human appearance. Usher is unique— very dark skin, a prominent scar, unusual voice. Those things people will notice because of how unusual they are for the median American. Being “dreamy” isn’t necessarily being weird enough to stand out. There are plenty of tall men who have dark, curly hair and brown eyes who could be described as good looking.

You're right, I was being a little facetious.

His problem was that he continued to wear a mask in an area where masks were weird. And said mask was worn when he was photographed. He actually would have been better off taking the mask off! I think the anonymous tip is reasonable. Also, Bayes rule/selection bias. While I’m not sure how many other municipal cops got tip offs of various types that turned out to be false, I bet there were still a lot. We are only seeing the one tip that panned out.

The only part of the story that I doubt is that he was apparently noticed and reported by McDonald’s staff during lunch rush. I doubt anyone at McDonald’s would have had time to notice him (he’s actually fairly normal looking), or had time to call the police, or would have bothered. But that can be explained as a way to hide drones or other surveillance that the cops don’t want public.

I agree that this is a bit of an anomaly, but on the other hand, there are people out there who are really really good at recognizing faces.

It's quite strange the extent to which people on Reddit believe he legitimately didn't do it. I've seen people go as far as to suggest that Luigi is a doppelganger/look-alike for the actual suspect, which strikes me as ridiculous considering all the circumstantial evidence. I can imagine not wanting him to go to jail, but if he didn't do it then what's all the excitement about? Perhaps if he's locked up then that dashes the hopes of the terminally online spinsters who are attracted to him.

What is more reasonable is the hopes that he'll get off on some sort of mistrial due to the large amounts of law enforcement tomfoolery. I wouldn't be surprised if his sentence is shockingly short (say, 20 years).

What is the usual sentence for premeditated murder of someone who is not a CEO?

Varies tremendously from locale to locale. Federal sentencing guidelines are a bit complex but it seems unlikely he will get life in prison considering his lack of criminal history and the potential legal issues with the investigation. From a cursory reading, it seems a lot hinges on it his actions are deemed terrorism.

The full guidelines give offence levels of 43 and 38 for 1st and 2nd degree murder respectively. Cross-referencing against the table in your link gives a life sentence as the only option for 1st degree murder and 235-293 months (c. 20-29 years, of which 85% will be served behind bars) for someone with a clean record whose 1st offence is 2nd degree murder.

I don't know whether US (or NY) law knocks premediated murder down from 1st degree to 2nd on the basis of "diminished responsibility because he was batshit in a way which falls short of legal insanity". But that looks like Luigi's best hope.

Thanks for doing the homework. It'll be fascinating to see how Mangione's lawyers try to thread the needle.

I believe the terrorism charges have already been dismissed due to the govt not introducing sufficient evidence.

Murder probation

but if he didn't do it then what's all the excitement about?

If he didn't do it and there's a sinister government plot to frame him, this makes the initial murder out to seem like a much more successful and thus appealing form of rebellion. Not only is the real culprit still at large (so cheer up, kids, if you want to give it a try, you might get away with it!), but if The Man was this determined to close the case by hook or crook, to the point of fabricating evidence against an innocent, then it shows that they're running scared.

Ah, I forgot about The Man. That's a sensible explanation.

Given the quality of his manifesto, either it was written by the cops or that $40k/year prep school he was valedictorian of is a total scam. The manifesto isn't even competitive with the median sneedpost on Reddit, much less the median mottepost.

I’m not sure that proves anything other than his use of informal language. He’s not writing a properly cited thesis here, he’s saying “Im going to shoot this guy in the face and this is why I did it.”

Uh, is Mangione even claiming he didn't do it? It's like the lefty American version of the Siri thesis.

I'm also kinda confused what happens with the whole Mangione cult of personality/'he was justified striking back against the evil Healthcare CEO' vibes if he's arguing he flat-out didn't do it and it was somebody else.

"It didn't happen and it's good that it did"

He pled not guilty to all four charges.

Thank you for linking the actual charges! I found it interesting that the first two counts mention interstate activity quite a bit, right down to using "interstate wires" by way of a cell phone, and staying at a hostel that serves interstate customers - is this an attempt to make the case federal?

Attempt? Under Supreme Court precedent, basically everything is interstate commerce.

And I thought Wickard was overreach! Thank you for this infuriating bit of knowledge.

There are several things about Mangione and the events surrounding the killing of Brian Thompson that confuse me. I'm hoping some of you here can provide some serious answers to these questions. I don't necessarily believe in any grand conspiracy theory, but I'm hoping somebody can keep me from ending up believing one.

  1. If Mangione has a back so bad that he could not fuck, as alleged, how was he speeding away on an e-bike and then taking an unguided tour of God's Country on a bus with shocks that likely haven't been replaced since the Carter administration?
  2. If Mangione's aim was to evade justice, why did he keep the gun, the suppressor, the bullets, and the manifesto? Getting rid of the bite is trivial - you can literally eat something like that. Getting rid of bullets is easy. Shoving them in a to-go cup and trashing it makes for a search surface so big that police might not find them before they ended up in a landfill. There are a lot of greyhound stops between NYC and Altoona. Getting rid of a suppressor would take a little more work, but should not be difficult; most people probably would not recognize the individual components in a pile of garbage, or tossed into the bushes at a park. The gun would be harder, but without the first three would be weak evidence. "Armed guy with a unibrow" is not particularly unique in rural PA.
  3. If his goal was instead to get caught and martyr himself, why did he wander all over rural PA first?

I'm still pretty sure Mangione was the shooter, but there are a lot of irregularities in his behavior and the official narrative that make me think they're holding things back from public view.

Typically, people like this seem to over focus on a few more particular steps and have blind spots. Robinson was amazing at finding getting into a spot with a rifle, and had at least an immediate getaway, heck physically he seemed to have gotten away with it, but totally ignored/didn’t address the human element (family and roommate and discord). Luigi had a plan for a getaway, to minimize his face via a mask (at least partially), a detailed plan to evade capture in the first few hours by taking a variety of transportation to lose people, but ignored the gun. Or actually, there’s a case to be made that keeping it is smart. Lots of criminals are caught because they are seen in the act of dumping evidence, and usually criminals hope to avoid being caught and ID’d (thinking if they are caught it’s all moot) more than they hope to legally be exonerated openly.

If Mangione's aim was to evade justice, why did he keep the gun, the suppressor, the bullets, and the manifesto?

There have been cases (note the plural) from my state where a murder suspect was arrested months later in a different state and still had the murder weapon in his car. Each guy could've taken any number of scenic routes in the thousand miles in-between and dumped the gun in any number of rivers and odds are it would never been found.

For a very high-profile example, after the June 26 shootout with the FBI at Pine Ridge that killed 2 FBI agents, Leonard Peltier was encountered in mid-Sept (he successfully fled from police) and one of the killed FBI agent's guns was under the driver's seat in the car he was in.

There's a place in NJ (the Passaic River between Lyndhurst and Nutley) which is known for being full of such crap, including artillery shells. Even better, the area is full of people who look vaguely like Mangione. If he'd taken the time to dump the gun and silencer a little downstream of the bridge, they'd likely have never been found. Though honestly any river would have done; if they'd found no incriminating items on him he could have brazened it out.

While I think it's much more likely than not that Mr Mangione did it, the keeping the gun/silencer/bullets/MANIFESTO on you is so stupid it boggles the mind.

For days too right? Why would you do this?

You could drop a bullet off per garbage can as you travel around PA. You could buy a hacksaw of some kind and do your best to break down the gun and silencer in a gas station bathroom.

Fuck you could rent a car and bury them in the woods, you could buy a bike in cash on Craigslist and bury them in the woods, the possibilities are literally infinite.

You could drop a bullet off per garbage can as you travel around PA.

I'm not sure if splitting the bullets is a smart idea or not. If they find one that matches what they're looking for in a garbage can on a highway, they're gonna look through all the stops along the same way. Every place you leave evidence is giving the police more material to spot correlations. They then need to identify which vehicules were spotted around NYC, then along the same path since the last time that trash can was emptied. Each bullet you drop off is an extra chance they have to match you, maybe at some point they'll be able to find there's only one car that stopped at all those stops. Maybe surveillance cameras have spotted you going to some of the trash cans and they can even confirm that there's only one person that roughly matches the profile they're looking for, or they correlate with cellphone data around the crime scene. Or they correlate cellphone data with license plate readers along the route you left breadcrumbs on, and become interested in the few (or only) car that had been driving that route without a cellphone at all!

I'm not sure if splitting the bullets is a smart idea or not

Probably isnt, I was just vibing

I'll have to lock in harder when I want to get away with murder

You could buy a hacksaw of some kind

For the suppressor, you probably don't even have to go that far. The end caps unscrew, allowing the baffles to come out. At that point, you basically have a tube and some funny washers.

The modal American isn't going to look one individual piece of those and think "NFA item". They're going to think "weird kid trend, like a fidget spinner."

What you are missing is that the criminal mind is not ordered. At least not often. Also, some of the things you speculate about would be foolish IMO from a LE perspective.

Did Mangione want to get away with it? I dont know. His actions imply some dedication to that cause, and some failures. Key failures are not remaining masked and fully anonymous in a city space chock full of cameras while making his escape and keeping implements of the crime on him up to the point of being caught.

The first is probably because he didn't do enough research. The second is more likely he was trying to keep mementos of his achievement. The latter is a common thing. But even if you didn't, smattering bullets and gun parts into trashcans only works if you never get seen and reported. They can retrace your steps and see all the trashcans you walked near then search them, stop order trash trucks, etc. All your plan assumes his date of being found is much later than it was. Burying things in the woods is probably better, but dont rent a car to do it. Jeeze. For a crime like this, you have to be in super anonymous mode to have a chance. You executed a civilian on video in NYC. You need something like a plan to get to rural PA without ever uncovering your face and without ever leaving fingerprints or DNA on anything. Then you need to ditch everything off a boat you rent in florida 3 days later when you take the metra from harrisburg to miami (if that exists).

Or put rocks in the backpack with all the stuff in it and dump it in a random pond.

Even then I remember some cases where people fail to weight or tie it properly and it floats back up anyways. Few methods are totally safe.

Burying things in the woods is probably better, but dont rent a car to do it. Jeeze.

LOL, fair, after I wrote that I realized it wasn't a great idea so I spliced in the bike idea because you can do that with cash

For a crime like this, you have to be in super anonymous mode to have a chance.

I think even the smartest and most prepared person would struggle to pull this off, but you don't have to make it easy for them by holding onto the murder weapon

Great comment overall though, thanks for that

Just spitballing:

If Mangione has a back so bad that he could not fuck, as alleged, how was he speeding away on an e-bike and then taking an unguided tour of God's Country on a bus with shocks that likely haven't been replaced since the Carter administration?

He can endure back pain on a temporary basis but the pain is distracting enough that it's difficult for him to maintain an erection.

If Mangione's aim was to evade justice, why did he keep the gun, the suppressor, the bullets, and the manifesto

He didn't realize how close he was to getting apprehended and figured that it wouldn't be too hard to get rid of this stuff if it seemed like the police were closing in. He kept the gun and ammunition because he was considering a further assassination down the road.

If his goal was instead to get caught and martyr himself, why did he wander all over rural PA first?

He was considering a follow up assassination and/or he wasn't entirely sure what his plans were.

Who was he planning on going after next?

Who was he planning on going after next?

I don't know, but if you want me to guess, I would say he probably had a hazy idea of targeting some other healthcare executive.

He was considering a follow up assassination and/or he wasn't entirely sure what his plans were.

That's pretty straightforward. Thanks

there are a lot of irregularities in his behavior

Norm MacDonald voice: "Irregularity Number One: he assassinated a guy!"

I'm not sure "I should wander around rural PA with my manifesto and weapon" is any crazier than "This shooting should definitely fix American health care, or at least impress Jodie Foster or something!"

And she wasn't even that hot.

She was smoking hot in Taxi Driver, which is the movie that got John Hinckley Jr. obsessed with her.

Goddamn, son.

She was 12 in Taxi Driver.

I know.

Out of 10!

I think the issue here is that we're finding out now how much of a hash the police in Altoona made of the initial arrest, and the fact that so much of the key evidence stems from this arrest makes the prosecution a little dicier than it seemed initially. When the arrest first occurred it appeared to me, based on the reporting, that Mangione had consented to a search, which makes sense because anyone stupid enough to carry obviously incriminating evidence around with him for several days after committing murder would probably also be stupid enough to consent to a search. Now it looks like the police may have not obtained consent and instead relied on specious reasoning to determine they had probable cause and didn't need a warrant.

Now, whether this was a mistake is theoretical, because it doesn't appear to me that they would have had any justification to either get a search warrant or detain him based on an identification of a McDonald's employee who had never seen him before. The police were under pressure to investigate every lead, no matter how improbable, and I doubt they wanted it to come out later that someone had identified a mystery man whom they had questioned briefly but had eventually gotten away with a backpack that may have had incriminating evidence in it. Anyway, I suspect the judge will find the search justified and allow the case to go to trial because it's obvious that Mangione is guilty and any technicalities are an issue for the appellate court. But it looks like the police may have actually fucked up here.

search warrant or detain him based on an identification of a McDonald's employee who had never seen him before

It would be especially hard to get probable cause from this given that she’s a made-up person with an AI generated photo that never actually existed.

Wait, what?

•Initial reports that the identifying witness is named Nancy Parker, photo circulated by media

•there’s only one single photo of her in existence and it looks like like something a three year old instance of stable diffusion would crap out on a bad day

•initial reports that she’s 85 and lives in a nursing home and she is technically a “volunteer” at McDonalds so the press can’t interview her and there’s no actual record of her employment.

•FBI quietly says she’s not actually getting any reward money due to a technicality

•all the information about her and the photo all seem to have been subsequently retracted and scrubbed

•all subsequent media reports just call this person “the employee” and don’t give name, age or gender

•So now we have no name, no face, we don’t even know the employee’s age and gender and no one is actually getting a reward

I’ll be interested to see if this person actually testifies at the trial or if they’ll find a way around that

I fully agree that would be super interesting to hear.

That said, I don't see any reason that at a criminal trial, you'd have to call in the individual whose tip (putatively) lead to the suspect's arrest. That isn't normal in most trials and isn't super probative as to any real (?) factual question about the defendant.

So while maybe all that is true or not (I don't know enough to say one way or the other), I don't see how it would be relevant at trial.

Initial reports from whom? Any reputable media organization? Or people on Reddit? I couldn't find anything about this woman from a reputable source. What I do know is that the police released the 911 call last week as evidence in the suppression hearing and the woman on the call most certainly wasn't an 85-year-old volunteer but someone in management who said she was reluctantly making the call at the behest of customers who insisted she do so. I mean, what's the theory here, that the police already knew who he was and where he was and made up a fictitious person to take credit for the arrest then inexplicably decided to do a U-turn, even though it would have been abundantly clear to law enforcement from the beginning that she may have to testify at trial? Not to mention that there were interviews with McDonald's patrons who were there at the time of the arrest referring to the woman as a manager. I'm not sure what the theory is here.

I mean, what's the theory here, that the police already knew who he was and where he was and made up a fictitious person to take credit for the arrest then inexplicably decided to do a U-turn

Yes! I think they probably traced him from New York all the way to the McDonalds with some kind of illegal-for domestic-use Palantir-type monitoring software that’s probably embedded on every cell phone in the nation. They interdicted him there, planted the evidence on him (the arresting officer that handled the backpack “accidentally” switched her body camera off while she was handling the backpack). Then they needed to write this up in some way that wouldn’t get the case thrown out of court so they ginned up this McDonald’s employee whistleblower so they had a reason for actually being there and finding him. I say this as someone who thinks what he did is morally repugnant, by the way. I think what Brian Kohbargher did was horrible too. But I’m seeing worrying signs that these types of surveillance back doors are now regularly being deployed against American citizens. It always starts being used on scumbags, then five years later it’s being used on everyone else.

so they ginned up this McDonald’s employee whistleblower so they had a reason for actually being there and finding him

The FBI doesn't need a reason to be in a McDonalds. It's not a private residence, it's open to the public and they can just go.

Maybe there were in there due to illegal surveillance, but even then it doesn't help the defendant. A defendant can't (at least how 4A law is today) argue that a search or arrest is illegal because the police were in a public place but due to information they obtained unlawfully. That information itself isn't admissible tho.

You need probable cause to actually search and arrest someone. If all your actual reasons for arresting and searching them are illegal, then the evidence collected during the search is illegal.

More comments

This article https://thealliancerockband.com/nancy-parker-has-reportedly-been-fired/ says her family removed her info to stop her being harassed, which makes sense to me.

This is blogspam.

The police don't have probable cause to search a suspected hitman that a McDonald's employee calls 911 over and says they recognize the guy from the news and then the police show up and think hey yeah he kinda does look like that guy from the news? And then they talk to him and he presents a fake ID and starts shaking if they ask if he's been to NYC recently?

You know what proves he was clearly recognizable from the surveillance pics on the news? The fact they caught the exact guy that was in the surveillance pics on the news!

I would hope they put handcuffs on him right there and at that point everything on his person is fair game to open up.

What should have happened if the suspect didn't talk at all and offered no ID and simply said "no searches! I want my lawyer! am I free to go?" over and over?

it doesn't appear to me that they would have had any justification to either get a search warrant or detain him based on an identification of a McDonald's employee who had never seen him before.

The police would have also seen the surveillance images of the suspect, and could ID him themselves once they saw him based on the McDonald's tip, no?

If I remember right, the only images those officers had seen were (1) where he was wearing a mask and (2) poor quality / unusual angle - so a confident positive ID is unlikely. Now, Mangione did fuck up by presenting the police a fake ID, the same one he used for the hostel he stayed at in NY which gives them cause for arrest, but the police didn't get a search warrant before searching his backpack which is a big screw up.

The images are here: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2024/12/b73a00e1-472a-4bda-9d4e-16efbd624c61_1920x1080-800x450.jpg

I would think that if you are standing talking to this guy you could form a pretty good probable cause based on those? You're not like counting nose-hairs, but he seems pretty recognizable.

And as pusher_robot points out, once the cops have probable cause, the next thing the will do is arrest you! And then they can search your stuff (that you are carrying) without a warrant. (may be some exceptions, but I think a heavy-ish backpack in the possession of a guy who probably just assassinated a dude with a silenced pistol would not be one)

Why wouldn't that be covered as a search incident to arrest?

Depends on when the arrest and search occurred. Police in my state have screwed this up before by doing the following:

-Detaining someone to investigate something suspicious (specifically a misdemeanor where an arrest is not mandatory)
-Searching the suspect's backpack
-Arresting on the misdemeanor + what was found in backpack
-Charges on the felony stuff in the backpack get dismissed because officers can't show they would've inevitably discovered the backpack's contents because the arrest on the misdemeanor wasn't mandatory

It's only a search incident to arrest if there's a valid arrest first. If detaining Mangione on suspicion of a fake ID wasn't a mandatory arrest type of offense and he was only detained and not arrested, then it's possible they searched the bag too early.

extreme skepticism of the police along with claims that Mangione was framed or otherwise dastardly policing tricks were pulled on him.

It's called parallel construction, and I assume they used it to snag Mangione.

The funniest outcome would be if they drop all charges to keep Palantir's trade secrets.

There was a nut in Idaho who murdered four sorority girls who recently got a sweetheart plea deal (well he got life in prison instead of the death penalty) due to basically all the evidence against him being collected illegally with intelligence tools.

murdered four sorority girls

Correction: 3 girls and one guy.

While possible, I think it's more likely the prosecutors were very aware that death penalty appeals are never-ending and incredibly expensive. For example, the last execution in Idaho was 2012 (for a 1984 crime) and Thomas Creech has been on death row in Idaho since 1981 with several failed execution dates moved due to ongoing appeals. Getting a defendant to take a plea offer means far fewer appeals and less expense.

See also this guy, who murdered 2 people after escaping from prison and got a plea offer to life in prison.

Was this some "fruit of the poisoned tree" thing? I'm reading that they literally found his DNA on the knife sheath left at the crime scene.

They weren’t able to match the DNA on the sheath until after they had already caught him using sketchily collected cell phone data. Hence the plea: if all that stuff got thrown out the state’s case is screwed, if it stays in the defendant is screwed. No one wanted to risk it.

Do you have a source for that? I tried a few search terms, and I couldn't find anything.

Yes, this is very well-attested in general. It's not a secret.

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