r/tuesday • u/JustKidding456 Believes Jesus is Messiah & God; Centre-right • 17d ago

“After UnitedHealthcare CEO Killing, Doctors Speak Out.” Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zV9qk5rIaM

25 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

u/Maximus_2698 Right Visitor 17d ago edited 17d ago

The lionization of Luigi Mangione is grotesque. A spoiled, privileged, rich kid murdering someone in cold blood because of their profession should never be turned into a folk hero. All the supportive rhetoric on Reddit and elsewhere will only encourage copycats and is deeply authoritarian.

The simple fact is that while most Americans aren't satisfied with the American healthcare system in the abstract, a majority of Americans are satisfied with the cost of their own personal healthcare.

The primary difference between our system and a system like Canada's or the UK's is who picks up the tab. For us its private insurance, and for them it's the government. I'm sure the same people arguing that this murder shows we need to overhaul our healthcare system would not feel the same way if the NHS director in the UK was killed in the same fashion.

14

u/permajetlag Left Visitor 17d ago

All the supportive rhetoric on Reddit and elsewhere [...] is deeply authoritarian.

Can you explain this? I thought the anger was populist.

10

u/Maximus_2698 Right Visitor 17d ago

So we're just going to kill people with no due process, or when they haven't even broken any laws, just because some populists decided they deserved it? Sounds like a pretty authoritarian mindset to me.

I think you could make an argument that, historically, populism almost always devolves into authoritarianism without proper checks. I mean, would you disagree that the Trump movement, which is populist, is also deeply authoritarian?

8

u/upvotechemistry Right Visitor 16d ago

So we're just going to kill people with no due process, or when they haven't even broken any laws, just because some populists decided they deserved it?

This has been happening with great fanfare already - usually at the hands of an officer with a badge. The difference here is this victim was an elite who ran a company implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and he dabbled with insider trading on the side.

People are not joyous over the murder. I think they're seeing that the law was never there to protect them to begin with. Why should we care about rule of law when the rule of law is weilded so indiscriminately to oppress the majority in service of protecting a wealthy elite? That sounds authoritarian to me.