It's clear that many, many people want this. They want to find someone they can blame for health insurance sucking. They want a Robin Hood. They want a Sheriff of Nottingham. My problem? Y'all up in this b acting like I don't understand that. Me. The guy who takes sixteen different insurance plans. The guy whose business is 1/3 Medicaid. The guy who legit has a lobbyist on payroll. me. I'm the one who doesn't get it. What's clear to me - and which none of y'all care a lick to hear - is that this is going to leave us worse than before. The narrative requires a good-hearted vigilante with a just cause bypassing the broken rules in order to strike a blow for Truth, Justice and the American Way against the evil oligarchs hell-bent on oppressing the kind citizens of Sherwood Forest. That's what everyone wants. That's what everyone has been pining for. Play up MarioLuigi's history of chronic pain. Play up Sneedly Snodgrass' use of AI in denying claims. Human interest stories about "pretend, offend, be friends" crocheted on toilet cozies. "We got 'em, Lou." And it's all feel-good murdersegments for GMA until the truth intrudes. Sneedly had two kids. He'd managed public benefits for twenty years. He'd raised concerns about "are we the baddies." Mario isn't a cheerful plumber, he's the Ivy-educated scion of a wealthy east-coast healthcare empire who freaked out his fellow moneyspawn at surf camp. Far from being the hard-luck chronic-health T-J-A-W blowstriker everyone's narrative requires, there's no evidence the sumbitch ever had a claim denied, no evidence he'd ever had Sneedly Insurance, and ample evidence that whatever his life concerns, "I can't pay for my medical care" was not among them. Hey 'member when that upstart college student was gonna disrupt girl's education so baaaad that everyone was all "sure go ahead and steal a Beastie Boys song?" Whatever happened with that? I've seen Goldieblox at Joann Fabrics. They're uninspiring bullshit that sells for pennies on the dollar compared to anything else because their ten minute hype into existence wasn't supported by evidence. It was a rich bitch of privilege cutting the line and expecting to be excused because if you're rich you can grab them by the pussy. Public sentiment went from "girrrrrrrl powRRRRRRRR!!!!!!one" to "well that was embarrassing" in about a news cycle and a half because THE NARRATIVE WAS FALSE. Debbie Silverspoon, for her part, learned that there are better ways to spend a million dollars but who fucking cares daddy buys her whatever she wants anyway. But that's just bullshit craftcrap being peddled as educational. Nobody got shot. Here's what's already happened in the health insurance industry: - executives are "othering" their clients - and billing security details to the company - and spinning up the PR machine about how great Sneedly was - and leaning on every influence to make sure Mario's trial sucks all the air out of everything else - and showing how they are the victim here Meanwhile, the gentle folk of Sherwood Forest are wrapping their heads around the fact that they lionized a rich psychopath who thinks Joe Rogan is a philosopher. Know who actually did more for class warfare? Billy McFarland. Wanna see a quote I loved back when I was 23? "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." But see, then I grew the fuck up. "Shoot the bastards" generally goes badly for everyone. "Shoot the bastards" usually ends up with collateral damage. You see, the problem with bastards is they're better at evil than you are. This is you, screencapping the Washington Post because somehow, a vanity publisher owned by a gazillionaire doesn't carve their headlines in granite. And all this - all this - is wish fulfillment. Everyone going "yay streetmurder" is imagining themselves being lauded by millions for shooting Sneedly in the back. So lemme put this in scare quotes "LUIGI MANGIONE IS NOT YOU" now let's talk about Robin Hood for a minnit. You don't have to dig too deep to see that Robin Hood was a legend the English nobility used to scare the English nobility into not being such dicks that their serfs refused to obey. Fun Fact: that's what Machiavelli's The Prince was about, too - it was one in a long line of medieval self help books intended to keep the nobility in power. So the narrative everybody - including the insurance companies - wants is the one where the insurance company acted badly and one of its subscribers called them out and they felt bad and they learned and now everyone is friends with the insurance companies because fuckin' hell we pay them a thousand a month at least they could be nice about it. But the one we're going to get? is "don't break the omerta. 'cuz here's the CEO of Aetna supporting single payer. And here's the CEO of Walmart calling for more than doubling the federal minimum wage. See his stock price being punished in the upper right corner? Doug's still on the job and Walmart stock is parabolic because frankly it's the only retailer left. Mark, on the other hand, got ousted when Aetna got bought by CVS. He knew it was coming. You can see it in his dead eyes. _____________________________________________________ And here, ultimately, is the conversation I wanted to have with Spence, if only he weren't so busy hugging his ragebear and swaddling in his hopelessblanket. - Be Luigi Mangione - Be upset about injustice - Be mad about healthcare prices and policies - Be coming home for Christmas - Be saying "hey grandpa I wanna start taking on the insurance companies that are screwing us over" - Be saying "hey cuz I feel like our state needs insurance reform" - Be slipping into a glass slipper held waiting for you since birth - Be using that Penn degree to actually mutherfucking help people Because that dude ain't us, man. Ain't us by a fair sight. We can't do any of that shit. I try? I want some fuckin' credit for that, by the way, because everyone here is all "yes yes you support single payer but have you shot a bitch lately" AND FUCK YOU ALL WE PICKAXED AN EXTRA MILLION AND A HALF DOLLARS OUT OF THE STATE THIS YEAR TO SERVE UNDERPRIVILEGED COMMUNITIES but since i didn't shoot a bitch fuck me I guess? 'cuz where y'all go, to a man, is - Be Luigi Mangione - Fuck all that - Shoot a bitch - Be a hero And all I'm trying to do? Is stave off the inevitable disappointment when y'all realize that Mario Luigi is, in fact, just another TESCREAL dipshit.Obviously this is far from a perfect robin hood, in practice, but as a symbol, this has provided an important opportunity to re-center the conversation on class warfare and wealth disparities, and of course healthcare insurance, in particular.
before I even say anything else, you will now marinade for about a day in the acknowledgement that indeed, using your influence and wealth to create a pretty unique type of healthcare that satisfies what, obviously, quite a lot of people are seeking is fucking amazing and deserves explicit recognition. I dunno how you stayed as involved in it as you did. Four years is a long time. I might have paid someone to do something Noble and it surely would have failed miserably. Begin your marinade timers
Lol that wasn't wealth that was loans I tapped the crypto to buy a friend a kidney, I tapped the crypto to buy a replacement for my '95 Dodge, I tapped the crypto to buy the FrankenKern and I tapped the crypto to buy the house. Birth Center is self-supported. Of the seven nearby birth centers it is one of two that survived COVID. When we were a county distribution point for PPE. And a designated EMS receiver of ambulances. And NEVER ONCE had to shut down for COVID. because we can't afford professionals lol We got a grant this year. Could have spent it on "here, Vonage, have $2500 a month so I don't have to deal with gawping assholes." Instead we gave out $47k in bonuses. But fuck me, $47k prolly coulda hired a hitman so I could go shoot a bitch.I dunno how you stayed as involved in it as you did.
I think 99% of people choose non-violence because you come back from it. I think 99.9% choose bitching about it on the Internet rather than doing something. I think "fuck yeah someone shot a bitch" serves to satisfy the urge to do something, so the suppression is feeling smug about a stranger getting shot in the back instead of going to a town hall meeting. More than that, I think that the people most directly impacted by health insurance shenanigans are so busy dealing with health insurance shenanigans that they don't waste their time being mad on the Internet. They're the ones - like me - raising the issue with the insurance commissioner, who found her inability to do anything an impetus to run for fucking governor. I want to say "I honestly don't see what's so hard about this" but that would be a lie. What's so hard about this is you don't get to clutch an AR and scream 'wolverines!' like it will accomplish something.
'member that time when they cut childhood poverty in half? 'member the most sweeping reforms against monopolies since FDR? 'member that $2t dems-only package that spared the US economy the worst of COVID economic malaise? Of course you don't. They're boring. But 'member when the libs went "maybe they'll get used to doing something" Naaaah you don't remember that either.
I'll go one further: violent solutions must be effective. A TALE OF TWO TOWERS Ramzi Youssef set off a fertilizer bomb in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993. It killed 6 people, injured a thousand and broke a lot of glass. The FBI totes knew about it. One of the towers was closed for a few weeks. Some TV stations lost their over-the-air broadcast towers for a few weeks. A couple d00ds went to jail forever. On the other hand, Osama Bin Laden, world-renowned insurance CEO, had some d00ds fly jetliners into the WTC and the Pentagon. It killed thousands, injured thousands more and radically reshaped American domestic and foreign policy. Ultimately it launched two forever wars, destabilized at least five regimes in the Middle East and reshaped global politics for a generation at least. Any MFer worth his salt will acknowledge that violent solutions can be effective. Just ask the Mossad. Just ask Zelenski. We're in UR tenements, bombing UR Birdscooters. My argument is that the death of United's CEO at the hand of a privileged TESCREAL dipshit isn't just ineffective it's counterproductive. Further, my argument is that it's fucking pointless to single out a single anonymous bureaucrat when the villain in the movie is a conglomerate of faceless multinational corporations. Brian Thompson - dude who presided over board meetings. Igor Kirrilov? Putin's direct report in charge of unconventional warfare. There are absolutely CEOs whose assassination would shape the narrative. Elon Musk, obviously. Sam Altman. Mark Zuckerberg. I'll go one further and argue that this is the most target-rich corporate environment since the era of Robber Barons; prior to Zuck I don't know that there would have been a point in killing anyone other than Jack Welch. You have to look at it with a gimlet eye and not just fucking assume that random stochastic violence will accomplish anything. "I feel like hitting something" is a useless feeling. "I feel like hitting Prof. Plumb in the forehead with the lead pipe" is a plan. "I feel like hitting Ismael Haniyah in the middle of Tehran with a planted bomb" is a useful plan. Marioluigi had a useless plan that is being bouyed up by useless feelings.