It’s striking that corporate executives are only now—in the wake of the killing of a United Healthcare chief executive officer—wondering how they got such a bad rap. Certainly the difficulty the now-widely celebrated (indeed, so much so that prosecutors may have difficulty weeding out sympathetic jurors[1]) murder suspect, Luigi Mangione, experienced obtaining spinal surgery to relieve severe pain is an example of unhappiness with the health care system,[2] including, we might note, Obamacare, which sacrificed the possibility of a single-payer healthcare system for, mostly, a bailout of the health insurance industry that didn’t even need it, on top of bailouts for the banking sector while underwater homeowners[3] and unemployed workers[4] were left to twist on the vine following the financial crisis of 2008.
It certainly doesn’t help that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare to pay for more tax cuts for the rich.[5] Or that minimum wage is insufficient to pay rent in any state in the Union.[6] Or that corporations are widely believed, perhaps unfairly,[7] to have engaged in price-gouging, driving up inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
All this while billionaires flaunt their wealth with massive mansions, expensive penthouses, and megayachts and ordinary people struggle to make ends meet.
In a true meritocracy, which we clearly do not have,[8] none of this would be the least bit difficult to grasp. But the elites of the Amerikkkan Revolution and its aftermath chose a constitutional oligarchy, rigged to protect the property of wealthy landholders,[9] often slaveholders. This now devolves into an aconstitutional broligarchy of high technology billionaires[10] who are famous for doubting the value of an education.
We are allegedly homo sapiens—the wise hominids—yet we choose anti-intellectualism. We see it with the climate crisis, pandemics, and myriad other self-induced existential threats to our survival as a species. We choose stupidity.
It doesn’t work and while a few oligarchs may get shot, we will all pay the price.
[1] Sean O'Driscoll, “Luigi Mangione Prosecutors Have a Jury Problem: ‘So Much Sympathy,” Newsweek, December 18, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/luigi-mangione-jury-sympathy-former-prosecutor-alvin-bragg-terrorism-new-york-brian-thompson-2002626
[2] David Gardner, “How a Freak Accident Turned Luigi Mangione Into a Vengeful Murder Suspect,” Daily Beast, December 10, 2024, https://apple.news/AS_3HRBJ_Tji-_zWblZznqw; Daniel Gilbert, “Severe pain shaped UnitedHealth CEO murder suspect’s view of health system,” Washington Post, December 11, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/12/11/luigi-mangione-back-pain-healthcare-shooting/
[3] Neil Barofsky, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street (New York: Free Press, 2012).
[4] Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President on Job Creation and Economic Growth,” National Archives, December 8, 2009, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-job-creation-and-economic-growth
[5] Lindsay Owens, “Elon Musk Wants to Pay for His Tax Cuts With Your Social Security and Medicare,” Rolling Stone, December 20, 2024, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/elon-musk-vivek-trump-tax-cuts-social-security-medicare-1235212608/
[6] Statista, “Hourly wages needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment in the United States in 2024, by state,” August 23, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/203384/us-two-bedroom-housing-wage-by-state/
[7] Rob Handfield, “Are Food Retailers Price Gouging?” North Carolina State University, October 2, 2024, https://poole.ncsu.edu/thought-leadership/article/are-food-retailers-price-gouging/
[8] Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Crown, 2012).
[9] James Madison, "Federalist No. 10," in Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (1982; repr., New York: Bantam, 2003).
[10] Gil Duran, “How the 'Broligarchs' plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/