All the Ghouls are Complicated

Breaking down the reactions to the fatal UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting

Cover collage assembled by me. I do not own any of these images. Credit to rightful owners.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a Substack post detailing my journey learning about the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In that post, I expressed that, while I do not agree with suspect Luigi Mangione’s violent act, I understand and respect the motivation behind it. I also mentioned the shortcomings and oversimplifications of criticisms of Mangione and what they fail to understand about this case.

In this article, which I am writing after Mangione accepted ever-growing donations from a GiveSendGo fundraiser and thanked supporters for writing to him in prison, I will be zooming out to look at Mangione’s supporters, derisively called “ghouls” by the media— who they are, what they want, and how they are already impacting the case.

The Rise of the Term

Initial reactions to the shooting of Thompson were… jarring, to say the least. As soon as the media confirmed that the killing had been targeted, the internet exploded with widespread sentiments of vindication and even celebration. People cracked jokes and made memes. And although these were inspired by an understandable rationale of rage against the healthcare industry’s practices of denying claims to paying customers, much of this nuance was not immediately apparent, and so these statements came off as being too soon and in extremely poor taste. Thus, the mainstream media seized on this opportunity to demonize most of Thompson’s critics as “ghouls”, a term that originally referred to a phantom from Arabian folklore that was said to rob graves and feed on corpses. In everyday speech, this term is used to refer to people who harbor a morbid fascination with death.

Below are a few news headlines from that time:

Why Are So Many Americans Acting Like a Pack of Ghouls? A few theories about the seeming collapse in public morality by Noah Smith

Ghouls Launch Legal Defense Fund for UnitedHealthcare CEO [Slaying] Suspect Luigi Mangione by Ronny Reyes

EXCLUSIVE: Ghouls Cashing in on 'Assassin' Luigi Mangione's 'CEO Murder' — By Selling Mugs and Merch Emblazoned With His Face and 'Triple-D Bullet Calling Card' by Lauren McIver

The Ones Who Laugh: The Role of Humor in the Rise of an Anti-Hero

No doubt, some people happy at Thompson’s death did go to far and were cheering for murder just for the sake of legitimizing violence they happened to agree with. For others, however, the memes and dark humor were their knee-jerk reaction to the killing and later gave way to expressing legitimate grievances about the healthcare industry and the disastrous effect it has had on Americans. As X user @itsbighonkin posted a few hours after the execution,

you’re laughing? a wealthy CEO who profited off of the health concerns and often worst moments of millions of people[‘s] lives got shot point blank in broad daylight and they can’t find the suspect bc too many people wanted him dead to narrow it down and you’re laughing?

Humor, especially dark humor, has for ages been a well-known way of processing other emotions such as grief and rage. People were being villainized for laughing at aspects of the crime that were, frankly, darkly humorous —some “personal touches” of the crime included the Monopoly money the killer's backpack was stuffed with, the handmade 3D-printed ghost gun (I can just imagine Mangione defiantly thinking, “Take that, gun control activists! You can make it harder to buy guns, but I’ll just make my own— try and stop me now!”) and the quippy, conversational tone of his “minifesto”: (“This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it.”) (For the plebes among us who don’t have bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Ivy League schools, CAD stands for “computer-aided design”. I myself had to look this up.)

The crime, although a violent tragedy, contained humorous elements that many observers found disarming. The shooter was humanized by the fact that he had a sense of humor and, for better or worse, was someone many people felt they could laugh with. And laugh they did, when the authorities mounted a frenzied manhunt while ordinary people turned a blind eye. Laugh they did, when the suspect was finally caught—at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania—having been identified by a customer who didn't even receive his promised reward money. Laugh they did, as New York City launched a special security hotline for CEOs while failing to prevent a woman from being set on fire on the Subway. "Laugh So You Don't Cry" is the title of a famous song, and, once Americans were done laughing, they began to cry out against the hypocrisy of elites attempting to portray their preoccupation with power as concern for law and order. Mangione was egregiously overcharged and prejudiced against through multiple public statements by New York City mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom, as Mangione’s chief attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo pointed out at his arraignment, ignored the presumption of innocence and undermined his right to a fair trial. With the two-tiered justice system on full display, many people began to view Mangione as a righteous vigilante— the only person willing to bring consequences to insurance companies for their long-unpunished crimes.

It’s Not Left vs. Right, It’s Up vs. Down

Because almost everyone, regardless of political affiliation, has known someone who has died or suffered because of denial of healthcare coverage, the people supporting Luigi range in political beliefs from communist to MAGA and everything in between. Luigi put it best in his February 14th statement:

"Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded MDC from across the country, and around the globe.”

People everywhere on the political spectrum agree that the American healthcare system needs reform and thus acknowledge that Luigi had a point. And because health insurance companies such as UHC spend millions of dollars each year lobbying both political parties, many of us were skeptical of reform coming through the political process until Mangione thrust this issue into the national spotlight. And just as it had stalled progress through laws for decades, the corporate system attempted to shut down the growing conversation about health insurance reform by making an example out of Mangione and censoring merch and speech from his supporters online. This corporate-sponsored censorship took the form of accusing a vendor who made t-shirts depicting Mangione’s face of “copyright infringement” under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and hiring a defamation lawyer to silence Dr. Elisabeth Potter, a surgeon whose video exposing UnitedHealthcare for calling her mid-surgery to attempt to deny coverage of a patient’s overnight stay garnered comments of “In Luigi we trust” and similar sentiments. This corporate overreach baffled many—why would UHC claim exclusive rights to Mangione’s face, or hold Dr. Potter accountable for others’ internet comments? These actions taken by UHC to stifle protected speech that opposed them exemplified their need to hold onto power by any means, legitimate or not. This in turn fomented even more of the distrust of the system that continues to be a crucial motivation both for Mangione and for the people supporting him.

As I touched on in my previous article about this case, Mangione’s views don't map neatly onto a standard left-right axis and can more accurately be characterized as “anti-system”. As Peter Rothpletz wrote in his Guardian article titled, Luigi Mangione is the median American voter, “Increasingly, even if they lack the exact language to explain it, voters do not identify foremost as Democrats or Republicans, progressives or traditionalists, or even left or right. They identify as pro-system or anti-system.” Therefore, the ghouls found themselves coming together from both the left and the right to protest a system that serves itself rather than the people.

Florida!!!

Between the weather, the wildlife, and the fact that there’s always something exciting to do, there is a lot to love when it comes to the state of Florida. Impressively, Florida has also gained status as an important locale for this case, despite the fact that none of the events of the crime itself took place here.

Between December 12th and 14th of last year, one of the first statewide polls about Thompson’s assassination was carried out by randomly sampling the opinions of 675 Florida voters. Among other insights, this poll illuminated the generational divide of opinions about the assassination and whether the ends would justify the means if the killing were to lead to positive changes in health insurance. According to the survey, approximately four in ten, or 39%, of respondents under age 45 believed the ends would have justified the means if the killing led to reform, while just 8% of those over the age of 45 believed the same. Notably, roughly 20% of respondents across all groups (Republican, Democrat, under 45, over 45, and overall) expressed ambivalence when asked this question, revealing nuanced responses to a complicated crime.

Mangione also inspired some Floridians to take action by voicing their discontent with health insurance denials. On December 10th, Briana Boston of Lakeland, Florida, was arrested and charged with threatening to carry out an act of terrorism after she uttered the words, “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next,” at the end of a call with a Blue Cross Blue Shield representative. During the call, the 42 year-old mother of three had unsuccessfully challenged the denial of one of her claims. Boston told the police during questioning that she owned no guns and had used the words because of their prominence in the news. She added that, in her view, insurance companies “are evil” and “deserve karma.” Due to widespread support for her case, she was bailed out on December 13th and is currently awaiting trial. If convicted, she could face up to 15 years in prison. UPDATE: As of February 25th, 2025, all charges against her have been dropped.

Beyond polling and prosecutions, Florida has also been a hotspot for Mangione’s impact on popular culture. In the wake of Mangione’s ubiquity on the news, three lookalike contests have been held so far around the world: one in New York City, one in Brazil, and one at the University of Florida. Because most of the contestants, like Mangione himself, were on the younger side, these events were decried by critics as “tasteless” and further evidence of the youth’s supposed moral decay. To be sure, some statements made by contestants were completely disgusting and inappropriate, such as one that called Mangione’s actions “a beautiful thing”. However, others’ reasons for participating in the contest revolved around admiring Mangione’s willingness to stand up for a cause he believed in and the need to bring awareness to the economic and social struggles wrought by the healthcare industry. In the wake of the crime, a lookalike contest was a disruptive but nonviolent and thus thematically fitting way to raise awareness of the significance of Thompson’s assassination.

The final episode I am going to describe here —and maybe my favorite for a variety of reasons— happened near my new home city of Miami. Last December, 33 year-old Broward County business owner Levi Jones got a tattoo of Mangione's face on his leg from Anthony Medina at Sacred Eye Tattoos in Fort Lauderdale. Although a video of the tattoo reveal was removed from TikTok, it went viral on Instagram, where it quickly amassed 1 million views in just a few days. Jones told the Miami Herald, “That was the plan,” and explained that his rationale for getting the tattoo had been to go viral online. Part of the reason the tattoo went viral was no doubt its encapsulation of the intersection between internet culture, moral ambiguity, and spectacle, which had dominated much of the discourse around Mangione up to that point as well. It was hard to tell where the line between satirical use of a popular likeness and genuine admiration for the assassin lay, or whether it even existed at all. Elaborating on Thompson’s assassination, Jones said that he doesn’t support murder, but, like many Americans, “understand[s] the frustration” and, like most of the ghouls, “love[s] the kind of vigilante aspect behind it.”

For his part, 27 year-old tattoo artist Anthony Medina said, “Killing someone in general is never justified, but I’m sure [Mangione] had his reasons behind it.”

Both men’s statements echoed many people’s complicated sentiments and discomfort with picking a side: “I don’t really know enough about it to even say if I’m with or against him,” Jones admitted. Similarly, Medina said that “I haven’t done research into it to even form an opinion whether it was justified or not.”

Jones’ act of getting this tattoo is also subversive in that it flips on its head the stereotype that most of the ghouls are liberal or left-leaning. While past polls have shown that liberals are more likely than conservatives to view Mangione favorably, this by no means represents all of them. Medina reacted to mistaken assumptions of his and Jones’ political views by saying, “I think it’s hilarious because we’re both Republicans, and he’s a full Trump supporter.” Indeed, Jones’ social media accounts and fitness merch he sells through his company, Iron Outlaws, express enthusiasm for gun rights as well as “politically incorrect” jokes and content. It also seemingly endorses vigilantism, as many of the items sold contain the words, “Train hard, kill pedophiles.”

A former employee of the healthcare industry, Jones drew on his past experiences to offer his hopes for the impact of this case on health insurance:

“I know firsthand how corrupt it is, how people care more about money than patients. At the end of the day, people are paychecks. I do like the fact that people are kind of waking up and seeing this because before this, no one would have cared.”

Based on this statement, Jones seems to share the view of many ghouls that, while Thompson’s killing was not necessarily moral, it has brought about a much-needed reckoning by raising awareness of a pressing issue in a way that is impossible to ignore.

Debunking Smears

Because the impact of Mangione’s actions could not be ignored, the mainstream media tried to silence it by censoring speech and bullying the public into submission. When this still failed to work, they resorted to combatting their opposition through propaganda, such as by discrediting Mangione and his supporters with false claims. I will debunk some of these below.

The Ghouls are terrible people who are glorifying murder

The loudest voices in any movement are often the most extreme and the least representative of the wider consensus. While it’s absolutely true that a sizable minority of ghouls reacted to the crime by cracking jokes about it that seemingly ignored the gravity of a life being taken, it’s important to remember that these individuals are by no means representative of the entire movement or its moral outlook. Furthermore, the internet and its attention-grabbing algorithms favoring extremism hardly foster in-depth, nuanced discussion of social issues, and people’s initial knee-jerk reactions to events are often very different from opinions they form and express later after solidifying and organizing their thoughts. For a prime example, take leftist journalist Taylor Lorenz. Lorenz, whom I was already not a fan of, reacted to the shooting on X by posting a meme that said, “CEO DOWN”. She later went on Piers Morgan and said that she felt "joy" and “certainly not empathy” in the wake of Thompson's execution. However, an article that Lorenz had earlier posted to her Substack on December 5th contained a more nuanced discussion of outrage at the healthcare industry:

“People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. Again, not so they can be murdered, but so that we can change the system and start holding people in power accountable for their actions.”

She also wrote,

“Have some people’s jokes gone too far? Yes. Are some people being craven and cruel? Yes. Are some people irresponsibly calling for more violence? Yes. But to report on the online commentary surrounding Thompson's death without examining the systemic cruelty of our healthcare system is to willfully strip context from these online outpourings.

All of this is very intentional. The media, and especially journalists at places like Fox News, want you to be outraged at bad Twitter jokes and random heated comments. They want you to direct your anger at random people on Twitter who ‘took things too far,’ rather than question the system that led to these conditions in the first place.”

To my slight surprise, I found myself agreeing with Lorenz’s point here. Acts of violence, especially by wealthy, charming Ivy League graduates, don’t just happen in a vacuum. We do a disservice to our understanding of the world when we ignore the context behind conversation-shaping events, even violent ones.

Next, let’s take a look at the rationales that the ghouls who have donated to Mangione’s fundraiser have given for their support. These ghouls are among the most involved since they are giving some of their hard-earned money to a cause they view as worthy, so their words should count the most when trying to build an accurate picture of what the ghouls actually believe. The group responsible for starting the fundraiser, who is known as the December 4th Legal Committee, describes its purpose as follows:

We are not here to celebrate violence, but we do believe in the constitutional right of fair legal representation.

This is fitting, especially in light of the fact that Mangione is having the book thrown at him and facing multiple unprecedented charges.

Below is what some donors had to say. An anonymous giver of $1000 who was one of the first donors to the fundraiser wrote,

I feel sorry for both Luigi Mangione and the healthcare CEO. A brilliant student with education from top schools is a killer now. He could have accomplished greater things in life instead of taking away someone else[’s] life.

After this statement clearly condemning and lamenting the assassination, the donor offered their solution to the problem.

I personally think, young or old should all get free medical care. Government should do away with private insurance companies. CEO compensation should be capped…

Another donor identified their gift of $1300 as:

Coincidentally the same amount I was charged for my 100% covered medical procedure :/

Countless others also shared their stories of health issues and claim denials as reasons for sympathizing with Luigi’s motives and hoping for a fair trial. Thus, the vast majority of the ghouls, including the most involved ones, are not celebrating murder but protesting injustice in the health insurance industry and supporting a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

Finally, I believe that the chart below depicting the results of the Center for Strategic Politics' poll is helpful for visualizing the prevalence of certain stances among the ghouls:

As you can see, 31% of respondents view Mangione somewhat or very favorably, but only 21% of respondents believe that the killing was justified. Both the killing and the health insurance industry are viewed negatively by a majority of respondents (57% and 60%, respectively). This suggests that there is significant agreement with Mangione’s grievances, but not his actions. Additionally, there is much ambiguity about each of these subjects, especially when it comes to Thompson and Mangione themselves as well as UnitedHealthcare. This could reflect the difficulties that arise when trying to categorize people or organizations as unilaterally “good” or “bad”, especially when one doesn’t know all the details.

All of the ghouls are far left and want socialized medicine

This claim is just plain false. As I touched on earlier, Americans from all stripes have been united by the rage this incident brought to light. Mangione is being smeared as a leftist by some right-wing pundits and as a “far-right tech bro” by some leftists (the people who find fault with Luigi’s “right-wing” tweets, but not his killing of Thompson, are ridiculous and can go straight to hell) in an effort to keep their audiences from looking into his views and vision for themselves. Fortunately, these attempts from corporate media to promote ignorance and division are not working.

Right-leaning YouTubers Ray William Johnson and Arthur Greenwood have made videos about Mangione’s case and why there is so much sympathy for his motives. In his video, Arthur Greenwood advocates for the Australian model of healthcare, which is neither entirely capitalist nor socialist. He describes Australia’s healthcare system as follows:

Unlike in the UK, where everyone is forced to use government hospitals, Australia offers a choice: patients who can afford higher-quality private hospitals get lower wait times and better service. But patients who can’t afford those hospitals have the option of free government hospitals. Australia gives the same choice when it comes to health insurance. Those who can afford private insurance have that option, but you can also choose public health insurance, which is either free or extremely cheap. This avoids adverse selection and, unlike private insurance, public insurance doesn’t have a financial incentive to deny claims in bulk and prevent people from getting medically necessary care. Australia spends less on healthcare than Canada, America, or the UK, yet they have shorter wait times, better service, and better results.

Seemingly alluding to Mangione’s citation of America’s stagnant life expectancy as evidence of our healthcare system’s failures, Greenwood goes on to explain that Australia’s healthcare system has resulted in a life expectancy significantly higher than that of other developed nations; while the United States ranks #55 for life expectancy, Canada ranks #40, and the United Kingdom ranks #29, Australia ranks #7, behind only a few wealthy natons, such as Switzerland.

To wrap up this point, Americans everywhere across the political spectrum agree that more oversight is needed to curb the abuses of the for-profit healthcare system that cause death, suffering, and financial ruin for millions of Americans each year. People on both sides agree that there always seems to be enough funding for wars, but what about for healthcare? Hopefully, reforming the healthcare system becomes a new policy priority in the coming years.

The ghouls are terrible people for writing letters and doing dances

First of all, writing letters, including to prisoners, is protected speech according to the First Amendment. Secondly, people want to show support for a man they view as being treated like a political prisoner in any way that they can. This has taken a variety of forms, from fundraisers and in-person protests to more unexpected means such as online memes, viral TikTok dances, and the prisons Luigi has been held at getting flooded with mail.

Although the fact that a TikTok user posted himself doing Charli XCX's "apple" dance in front of the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania may seem strange, like the crime itself, this was an absurd way of bringing awareness to a larger issue. Any movement that largely takes place online is going to be use spectacle in order to boost engagement and spark conversation.

The people calling some of Mangione’s supporters "ghoulish" because they sent him letters and commissary money is an accusation that, frankly, frustrates me. According to the Bureau of Prisons' own website, inmates are not only allowed but encouraged to send and receive mail. Furthermore, Mangione is clearly intelligent and an avid reader, so the isolation and lack of stimuli he experienced over a 21-day “evaluation period” in what essentially amounted to solitary confinement was likely extremely painful and exacerbated any mental health issues he may have been struggling with. (A note: the United Nations categorizes solitary confinement lasting greater than 15 days as a form of psychological torture. Luigi was in solitary for six days longer than that.) To make matters worse, his access to books was limited to five at a time, and, as mentioned in the third FAQ on his info website, some people have even had their letters sent back by the prison staff, proof that the Bureau of Prisons was not living by its own rules.

The letters that have reached Luigi have all been opened and read beforehand, so nothing glorifying violence has gotten through. In light of the fact that Mangione has received a lot of letters, it would follow that the letters people are writing do not contain glorification of violence or any content against prison policies. Therefore, the accusations of ghouls’ letters being immoral lack support.

The ghouls are young women who only like Mangione because of his physical attractiveness

The right missed the biggest opportunity here to make fun of ghouls on the left for abandoning their enthusiasm for body positivity and the 4B-movement, which originated in South Korea and involves women swearing off dating, marriage, sex, and children with men. Instead, they participated in even more villainization based not even on Mangione’s alleged crime, but on the fact that many of his supporters happen to be young women. However, this is a generalization that paints an incomplete picture (you should be noticing a theme here).

Check out this quote from a Miami Herald article about the Center for Strategic Politics' poll:

“There was also a significant gender gap, with 23% of men saying they have positive views [of Mangione], while 14% of women said the same.”

Another significant finding from that poll reads as follows:

Men were over twice as likely (17%) as women (7%) to believe the killing of Thompson was justifiable.

This evidence is completely at odds with the stereotype that most or all of Mangione’s supporters are smitten young women. A greater share of men than women are actually ghouls since men are more likely both to hold a favorable view of Mangione and even to believe that the killing was justified.

The claim that people praising Mangione’s looks have anything in common with the women who thought that serial killer Ted Bundy, the Boston Marathon Bomber, or the Columbine school shooters were attractive is baseless and insulting to the victims of those killers. All three of the above examples murdered and injured multiple innocent people, including women and children. Mangione killed Brian Thompson expressly because he believed that Thompson wasn’t innocent, and he deliberately did so in a way that would not harm any bystanders, opting to use a gun instead of a bomb like he had once considered. Thus, his case has little to nothing in common with these others. Also, the widespread reckoning that has resulted over health insurance companies’ murderous practices has shown that, even if assassination wasn’t the answer, Americans agree that Mangione had a point.

Finally, people find things about Mangione attractive that have nothing to do with his looks. It’s true that his looks don’t hurt. But moreso than just his physique, people are also attracted to Mangione’s intelligence, willingness to engage with different ideas (as seen on his X feed), eloquence, sophistication, and obvious concern for humanity and its future. In short, I believe that people are attracted to the fact that Mangione held very strong convictions and acted on them, even if they disagree with the way in which he did so.

Ghouls are committing idolatry by worshipping Mangione

This claim is going to be a little bit different to debunk because it’s not exactly false. Yes, some ghouls are engaging in what could be considered “worship” of Mangione by making candles of him depicting him as a saint and drawings comparing his arrest and trial to that of Jesus. As a Christian, I find this completely inappropriate and sacrilegious, but I also understand why it’s happening.

A critic of New Atheism, Mangione himself observed that humans, fallen and limited as we are, have a natural desire to turn to something greater and higher than themselves. Put simply, we have an impulse to worship. When people stop worshipping the perfect God, they will find other things to fill that void— wealth, power, identity politics, politics in general, and imperfect humans.

Many people believe that Mangione’s actions were ultimately on behalf of the vulnerable. Given that some results of his actions were injustice being brought to light (see Ephesians 5:11), a highly publicized arrest, and the possibility of being sentenced to death, it doesn’t surprise me that parallels to Jesus Christ, who took on a harsh penalty for his ministry uplifting the lowly, ensued. The difference is that Mangione is an imperfect human who fought injustice through violence, and Jesus is perfect man and perfect God, who brought God’s kingdom to Earth through peace and sacrifice.

Ghouls who engage in this kind of idolatry should redirect their worship impulse towards the God who stood up for the vulnerable by sending his Son Jesus as a perfect sacrifice to die for our sins.

Copycat killings of executives will ensue

This claim will be the easiest to debunk because this just hasn’t happened at all.

For all the corporate panic about a wave of CEO assassinations, absolutely nothing of the sort has happened. Not one. Although an employee at Michigan-based automotive manufacturing company Anderson Express stabbed the company’s president on December 17th, no motive has been determined for certain, and the attack was not fatal— fortunately, the victim survived and remains in charge of the company.

Do I want more executions of executives to happen? Do “we”, the ghouls?

No.

I don’t want any more executives to die. I don’t want any more people to die from denied healthcare claims. I don’t want any more people to die, period. This crime has raised productive awareness that we now have the opportunity to channel into a peaceful push for change. It is now up to us to take that chance and demand better healthcare for all Americans, regardless of ability to pay.

Jury Nullification: A Real Possibility?

The outpouring of support for Mangione has led to concerns from some legal experts that a ghoul could get on the jury and prevent it from reaching a verdict. Jury nullification occurs when a jury believes beyond reasonable doubt that a defendant has broken the law, but returns a “not guilty” verdict anyway because they believe the law is unjust, they believe the prosecutors misapplied the law, they believe the punishment is too harsh, they are sympathetic toward the defendant, or they want to send a message about a social issue. A Not Guilty verdict cannot be overturned and a jury cannot be punished for the verdict, so jury nullification is a legitimate part of the judicial process. It is probable that the prosecution will have an extremely difficult time selecting a jury who will not be biased toward Mangione because of his motives— even moreso because it only takes one person to hang a jury and thus cause the case to be declared a mistrial.

Where does yours ghoul-y stand?

One of the documentaries about Mangione that has come out recently is from the New York Post and titled, Luigi Mangione: Monster or Martyr? The only question I’m asking is why this type of black-and-white thinking is even necessary. People aren’t simply entirely good or entirely bad. Mangione is a flawed human being who fought back against a flawed system in a flawed way. This was a case of good intentions, but bad execution— literally.

I view Mangione as a misguided vigilante who took justice into his hands in the wrong way. I know and love people who disagree, both some who view him as a cold-blooded murderer and some who hail him as an outright hero. But this is where I stand.

So, what do I think should happen in this case? What would I do if I were the judge presiding over his trial? Well, I’m saving that conversation for a later article. Stay tuned! ;)

Disclaimer: This Substack is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I do not condone or endorse any acts of violence. All defendants are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law.