Do you feel sorry for Luigi Mangione?

Obviously, I don’t think he did anything wrong. And while his politics appear to be incoherent, his actions seem to have brought discussions of the US’ lack of a health care system as well as some discussions about class that are usually absent. Everyone seems united and behind this guy, which is completely understandable.

Why feel sorry for him? He was sane enough to write a manifesto, plan and premediate a killing, carry it out, plan an escape successfully. What’s the mitigating circumstance for his actions? There is none.

Who appointed him to be the rescuer of angry medical patients? Not anyone I know.

Don’t make him out to be a hero. He was a guy with a grudge, who had the smarts and the means to do something about it.

This doesn’t make him a hero. It makes him a spoiled brat with a chip on his shoulder.

Feel sorry? Not too much. A little. I have known several people like this. Spectrumy, highly intelligent, from an affluent family. They have a need to make change, have radical political ideology and are willing to act. It’s a little more complicated but ultimately, they feel a little guilty for their familial wealth and seem to want to lash out like this. All that said, the insurance companies should have known that this would happen as they have been so blatantly turning to the dark side without restraint or accountability. I’m surprised it has not happened sooner. There is no excuse for what they have been doing. For profit health insurance companies should not exist IMO.

No, and I find it hypocritical of those on the left that want gun control while they simultaneously make Luigi out as a hero.

@hat You don’t think he did anything wrong? He murdered someone.

^ Actually he did do a couple of things wrong. 1. He broke with boycott McDonald’s, and 2. He was too careless and got caught.

But seriously, I can’t work up sympathy for the death of someone whose work was to deny medical care for profit.

I think the simplicity of the question and the details are a bit disingenuous. The situation is infinitely more complex than whether the alleged shooter is evil or mentally unhinged or in unbearable pain or just a dude with a cause.

@hat That’s just a horrible take. Murder is wrong. Always.

He shot someone in the back. It’s hard for me to feel sorry for him.

@Caravanfan: ”Murder is wrong. Always.”

We disagree. Sometimes killing is wrong.

@hat You have a huge problem with your ethical compass. I don’t feel sorry for Luigi. I feel sorry for you.

@Caravanfan – And I’m sure if you think “Murder is wrong. Always.”, things might proceed uncomfortably if we were to discuss some relevant topics.

But specifically related to this one, I think context is very important. The context in this case is that we have two corporate parties who have done everything in their power to maintain an evil and unnecessary industry. Besides the fact that we have for-profit health, the entire existence of the health insurance industry is unjustifiable. The tens/hundreds thousands of people who suffer and die because it exists. The people committing murder in large scale are health insurance companies, their executives, nearly every single Dem and Rep in office, etc.

In this context, getting upset that Luigi offed Thompson reveals a very strong political ideology that I do not adhere to.

@Caravanfan: ”I feel sorry for you.”

It’s important to point out that you and I most definitely share this ethical compass. I promise you.

I’m with you that for profit health insurance companies should not be a thing but, murder/killing is wrong. Full stop. Your ethical compass is quite fucked up.

@canidmajor I deliberately made it vague so people can take it in the direction they want to (as they are). Of course any feelings and opinions are welcomed and valuable.

Fair enough, @jca2, but it has sparked a simplistic insult war here, with people proclaiming absolutist moral codes with no shades of grey. On other threads I have seen people proclaim absolute moral stances on things that are fuzzy when examined, it gets a bit exasperating.

I doubt my childhood friend who lost her husband of 47 years to the “not medically necessary” statement would see it as a black and white issue that some here espouse.

Murder not black and white?

@canidmajor I just asked a question. I had no bad intentions. If I put a slant on it, then I might take some blame.

“Do you feel like Luigi Mangione is misguided”
– Only technically.

”or mentally ill,”
– Not necessarily.

“or do you feel like he’s a cold blooded killer who deserves what he gets?”
– No.

Do I feel sorry for him? Not at all. Do I think he is misguided? Yep. Do I think he is mentally ill? Possibly but not to the point where he is incompetent for his choices. There was WAY too much planning involved in this to say it is insanity. He killed someone in cold blood, he needs to face the consequences. I might give him a bit of a reduced sentence if he had the story that he was paid by Pelosi or someone to kill this guy and had the proof to back up that claim.

If there was no other person involved (no one paying him to kill this guy) then we might want to start looking at why he would think killing someone was an acceptable way to make a point or show your displeasure.

@Blackwater_Park’s post after mine illustrates exactly my point, that the one-dimensional view is simply a lazy, high horse, absolutism.

@canidmajor Murder is wrong is a pretty basic absolute to have in your moral compass. Rape is wrong is also a good one.

It was a question, directed at you. @canidmajor. This instance, it is very black and white. You’re the one clamoring otherwise. What is your take?

He’s my sexy perfect-jawline folk hero. :)

I just find the whole spectacle around this thing hilariously out-of-touch. That perp walk was ridiculous. If their attempt was to make him into more of a villain, it just made him look badass. Eric Adams and NYPD acting like they solved the case, when it was a McDonalds customer recognizing him that did it. Sure, terrorism for the guy that kills a CEO, nothing for those who drop bombs on children in the Middle East.

Word is they’re having trouble finding jury members who aren’t sympathetic to him.

Pearl-clutchers and finger-waggers are losing this one. Keep losing, I guess.

To say this is is anything other than a one dimensional issue is to say that if you feel you were wronged somehow then any action you care to take is acceptable and your feelings should be considered, no matter what your actions were.

What @Demosthenes said.

And we can save the Ethics 101 lectures about “murder = wrong” being an absolute when we’re all contributing in murder on a mass scale right now.

The reason Luigi is so loved (or at least has sympathy of large population of the US) is that we’re all living the reality of a private health insurance system. We’ve all watched our family members and friends lose everything, including loved ones.

Very few people who hold a positive view of Luigi are suggesting that killing a single CEO is a strategic and valuable move towards revolution and a solution to this problem. But many of us see the disproportionate response of a state as absurd. There is legal killing on a large scale that we’re seeing daily, and then there is this one guy who kills a killer, and we’re all supposed to be upset.

And re: the perp walk – yeah, the only people I fear in those scenes are the police state tough guys and the mayor.

@seawulf575 No shit? Scary just how many people let their moral compass go astray based on exactly this.

@hat I don’t feel sorry for the CEO but I still despise his murder. The health insurance industry has fucked me over just this year and, nearly cost one of my coworkers her life. Not killing for that. It’s still not ok.

@Blackwater_Park – But are you suggesting that we should be holding those responsible for deaths in the US responsible? Should Thompson have been charged with terrorism?

@hat Health insurance companies who deny treatment should be held responsible, yes. The individuals making those decisions to deny should be charged with manslaughter if not murder in blatant cases like we see every single day.

That does not legitimize vigilante justice.

If there’s a single-axis moral compass with pure evil on the left and pure good on the right, with perfect indifference in the middle, then killing a monster like Brian Thompson is on the left side of the line, but as close to the asymptote of neutrality as possible. It would be like going back in time and killing Hitler when he was still a little kid, still technically “wrong” to murder kids but just barely in his case.

Not only are we and people we love continuing to get worse and worse abuse, neglect, abandonment, our finances and lives destroyed and ended, etc, but the perpetrators are the health “insurance industry”, and the for-profit side of the health “care industry”, and neither those industries, nor the companies in them, are particularly assailable.

In fact, they’ve long realized the people would like to un-do their profiteering bonanzas, and they’ve been working long and hard to analyze the situation and then develop as many business practices, contracts, laws, politicians, and ideas and conversations, to try to keep that stranglehold as long and as hard as they can.

@Blackwater_Park – Then we likely agree. Let’s also bring in those that have fought to keep such a deadly system in place (Biden, etc). Charge them all.

But since that is not going to happen, you can probably imagine why this “murder” as you call it hasn’t caused the same reaction that something like a school shooting has.

@gorillapaws There is no neutral. Murder is wrong. Full stop. It troubles me that you call yourself neutral on this.

Oh, and I just saw an article that had me feeling sorry for Luigi:
Luigi Mangione Judge Married to Former Healthcare Executive

@Caravanfan I’m not neutral, I’m on the left side of the centerline. It’s wrong, I agree, but the least wrong possible while still remaining wrong.

@gorillapaws You can not say the word “but” when you are talking about murder. It’s wrong but…

No. It’s wrong. Period. NO buts.

Abortion is the one “but” I’m ok with.

^ Everyone here has a ton of “but” justifications. We all do. To pretend otherwise is silly.

@Blackwater_Park Abortion is not murder.

@Caravanfan I see a spectrum of wrongness. Killing 2 people is more wrong than killing 1 for example. Killing good people is more wrong than killing horrible, evil people. In all cases, killing is wrong, but some are even worse than others.

@gorillapaws Well, we have a fundamental disagreement here. You see it in shades of grey. I do not. Murder is bad is a solid black/white issue. Just like rape is bad. Would you say it’s less bad to rape evil women than good women?

@Caravanfan “Would you say it’s less bad to rape evil women than good women?”

No, but I would say that it’s worse to rape 2 women than 1, or to rape one woman multiple times instead of once.

@gorillapaws Still no. It’s all bad.

@Caravanfan “It’s all bad.”

We agree on this.

“Justifiable homicide” isn’t murder, either.

@Zaku But who gets to decide when it’s “justifiable”?

@janbb A jury.

@janbb That depends on the context and perspective. Or, as a legal term, the laws, evidence, judge, and jury. In this case, legally, apparently it’s going to be a judge whose wife is a former healthcare executive . . . and whatever jurors they end up selecting.

But there are other contexts where that term might apply too. In the court of public opinion . . . hundreds of millions of people feel like there has been a whole lot of death, suffering, and theft, and no satisfactory legal place to put their outrage. How many people have to die, be ripped off, and have their lives ruined, before anything changes for the better?

What Luigi could have done is gather his rich friend’s and family, and started their own insurance company, with focus on people over profits.

It’s mentally ill to pretend like this societal situation is OK.

He’s a person that pulled himself up by his bootstraps, which is what Americans love.

I feel sorry for him that he’s been charged with terrorism.

Perhaps had he known he’d be served with such a charge, he’d have put in more effort to take out more fucking insurance executives rather than just the one.

I cant condone murder, but like other activist cases, I understand his fury.

The act of murder is bad. Whether it is justified or not is another debate, but it being justified does not automatically mean murder is good.

Take self defense as an example:
Self defense is justified. But at the end of the day, a life was taken. That is still bad. Even if the life taken was a mass murderer. It is the act itself.

I do not feel either way for him. I understand and agree with his motive, I do not feel bad for the victim either. Despite my previous comments here, I am not pro-murder.

Not feeling bad ≠ agreeing with the act of murder.

Guns are the leading cause of death of children in the US and instead of talking about how easy it was for Luigi to buy and make a ghost gun, we have Democrats drooling over him. I’m disgusted with the hypocrisy. A fifteen year old just killed people in her school and Democrats think it’s okay to kill someone as long as their reason is justified. Maybe this young girl had a legitimate reason. ~

Keep in mind that one of the people drooling over Luigi Mangione also is a strong supporter of the Hamas October 7 massacre and the taking and keeping of Israeli hostages.

So that’s the mentality we’re dealing with.