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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.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."
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 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.
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.
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