Luigi Mangione: The New Left Anti-Hero

Source:Don Lemon talking about Luigi Mangione.

"Luigi Mangione has returned to New York after waiving extradition. Still, many Americans view Mangione as a sort of folk hero rather than a cold blooded killer. What is fueling this public support? Are authorities making him a martyr? Tune in for Don's take!" 

From Don Lemon

"More than forty years ago, Richard E. Meyer, a scholar of American folklore, noted the essential difference between the outlaw—which Meyer defined as “a distinctively, though not exclusively, American folktype”—and the mere criminal. He wrote that “the American outlaw-hero is a ‘man of the people’; he is closely identified with the common people, and, as such, is generally seen to stand in opposition to certain established oppressive economic, civil and legal systems peculiar to the American historical experience.” (The italics are Meyer’s.) The outlaw-hero’s persona is that of a “good man gone bad,” not unlike the oncology patient Walter White, of “Breaking Bad,” who started cooking meth because his insurance didn’t cover his cancer treatments. To remain in good standing as an outlaw-hero, a man’s crimes must “be directed only toward those visible symbols which stand outside of and are thought of as oppressive toward the folk group,” Meyer writes. In exchange for both his audacity and his discretion, “the outlaw-hero is helped, supported and admired by his people... 

By contrast, Mangione lasted all of five days on the lam, and appears not to have redistributed any of UnitedHealthcare’s revenues. In other ways, though, he comfortably fits into Meyer’s taxonomy of the antihero. The U.S. health-insurance system is both “oppressive” and quintessentially “peculiar” to America, as the only developed nation in the world that does not provide universal health care. It has been widely speculated that Mangione’s alleged descent into violence may have been spurred by a debilitating back injury and subsequent spinal-fusion surgery. A health-care C.E.O. who receives ten million dollars in annual compensation is likely disqualified from membership in a “folk group,” and another note that Mangione reportedly wrote indicated that he did not want to endanger that group. (“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”)

Like Floyd, Mangione may also have a knack for the myth-building flourish. Bullet casings left behind at the murder scene read “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” borrowing from the obstructionist nomenclature of the health-insurance industry—as if its bureaucratic weapons were being turned against one of its own. And, although the manhunt for Mangione came to an ignominious end, early on, he hinted at being a more artful dodger, as when he allegedly left the perfect gag gift for the N.Y.P.D. in Central Park: a backpack stuffed with Monopoly money...

Afascinating artifact of the Mangione affair is the emergence, on TikTok and elsewhere, of the health-insurance murder ballad. (One of the most popular uses “deny, depose, defend” as a refrain.) This nascent subgenre flows directly from Woody Guthrie’s suite of murder ballads, which gave the workingman’s lament an infusion of antihero glamour. The subjects of Guthrie’s songs included Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and Charley Floyd, and it was in a song about Floyd that the bard of the Dust Bowl drew the brightest line between outlaw and oppressor: “Some will rob you with a six-gun / And some with a fountain pen / And as through your life you travel / Yes, as through your life you roam / You won’t never see an outlaw / Drive a family from their home.”

From The New Yorker

If I had to guess, I would imagine that the American, private health insurance, industry, is about as popular as peanut butter on hot dogs. Or giving your kid broccoli for desert. So I'm not saying that it's just the far-left in America, (who've been trying to outlaw health insurance and perhaps private health care, since he 1960s, if not longer) are the only people that currently disapprove of the American health care system. 

But there's only 1 political faction in America that could possibly believe that killing a CEO of a health insurance company, simply because they are a health insurance CEO, and the killer thinks that person is part of the problem... if not a good idea, is perhaps justifiable homicide, or something. 

And there's only 1 political faction in America that would make a murderer of a CEO a pop culture, rockstar, or something, and celebrating this man online and on social media and trying to profit off him with all the videos and the merchandise. And that would be far-left in America, which are made of of some Democratic Socialists, but militant Socialists, the WOKE Left, who believe that progress is never enough. Because it's the system that's the problem itself, who believe that we'll never achieve a "just and fair society", until we take down the system. Or as they would put it: "The Man". 

To the WOKE Left in America, Luigi Mangione is a "totally awesome rockstar", who took a brig strike at "The Man". So they've been celebrating him, at least since he's been the news and they read his manifesto. But for the rest of the country, including people who also don't approve of our health care system, but who believe in the rule of law and who are pro-life in the real sense, (meaning people who believe in protecting innocent lives) Luigi Mangione is just another famous murderer in America. And unfortunately we've had too many famous murderers in America. 

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