By Eric Zuesse
Eric's Substack
December 17, 2024
Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of the United Health Insurance Division CEO Brian R. Thompson, issued a "manifesto" afterward explaining it (which is suppressed, blocked from publication, by America's Deep-State-controlled 'news'-media) saying:
I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty."
However, that as the explanation for what Mangione did is to hold a top employee as being a top person responsible for the world's most corrupt regime, which is the U.S. Government - the Government that is now producing a shorter life-expectancy in the U.S. than it did in 2014 (and which is also producing, by its imperialism, and associated illegal economic sanctions, coups, and outright military invasions and military occupations, and arming of terrorists to overthow Governments they want to overthrow, vast misery, in places throughout the word, such as in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, and Palestine). And, so, Mangione's manifesto is not intelligent, because the controlling owners, America's billionaires (nobody's mere employees), are the top and most powerful persons not only in the corporations that they control and which are eliciting such outrage from these customers, but they are also the top individuals controlling and served by the U.S. Government that does their bidding and NOT the bidding of the voters, the public. And this is by now a clearly documented fact. (For example: why does every other economically advanced country provide basic medical care as a basic human right to every citizen while the U.S. still does not do that?) Similarly, then, these - the controlling billionaires - are ultimately the persons who were responsible for America's invasion of Iraq in 2003, and overthrow of Syria's Government and placement of al-Qaeda in charge there today, and who were likewise responsible for America's overthrow and replacement of Ukraine's Government in a very bloody February 2014 coup that started Ukraine's war. That group of perhaps around a thousand people are the ones who are ultimately responsible for what the U.S. Government does and refuses to do. It's not top executives in either Government or corporations, who are just doing the jobs they were hired to do, but the top owners who control and hire and fire both. It wouldn't be done by their employees if they weren't being PAID to DO it. Murdering employees can't achieve any good, at all. What America needs is real regime-change, not mere employee-change, and ONLY its own population can do that, if it will - and no one such as Luigi Mangione can be a part of this. It would need to be, instead, a well-organized, brilliantly led, and rapidly growing movement, outside of any Party-politics, to re-establish democracy here, which became lost on 25 July 1945 (which was when the U.S. empire became founded, which started all of this misery throughout the world, and not ONLY overpriced healthcare here at home).
And yet it seems as-if what Mangione did isn't just a fluke. On December 13th, CBS in Miami headlined "Florida woman used 'delay, deny, depose' to threaten health insurance company, police say", and reported:
Briana Boston, 42, told a representative of Blue Cross Blue Shield, "Delay, deny, depose. You people are next" as they ended a phone call Tuesday in which she unsuccessfully challenged the company's denial of her insurance claim, Lakeland police say a recording shows.
The words "delay," "deny" and "depose" were written on the casings left at the scene of the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street on Dec. 4. The words reflect the "delay, deny, defend" strategy some insurance companies use in dealing with expensive claims: Delay the decision, deny the claim and aggressively defend themselves.
Luigi Mangione, 26, is charged with murder in Thompson's killing....
Boston was arrested and charged with threatening to conduct an act of terrorism. She was being held without bail Friday at the Polk County jail.
The charge is a second-degree felony, which could be punished by up to 15 years in prison if she is convicted.
Did she have the right to express the opinion she held - is that a First-Amendment right, which the Government is violating?
Is the Government that arrested her violating her First-Amendment right?
Should the Government employees who are threatening her for having expressed that opinion be charged with having violated her First-Amendment right?
Who is the actual "terrorist" here - and who is the victim?
Briana Boston might have been carried away by her outrage in her expressions to employees of Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance company, but what the local Government did is vastly worse than that - and none of these Government officials is being charged with anything. Why aren't Floridians outraged against the elected Government officials who are doing the work of the billionaires, instead of the work of the voters?
Why are the billionaire controlling owners of these corporations, instead of their employees, being targeted by such Americans as these? It is sheer stupidity. It is anger misdirected. And the controlling owners have total impunity in this America. It is democracy turned upside-down - rule over the public on behalf of America's aristocracy of the super-rich. Not any American democracy, it is instead today's American aristocracy - and shooting or threatening their employees can't fix it.
This originally appeared on Eric's Substack.