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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12326 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.

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.

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.

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 had 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.

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