Gratitude Friday 03 21 2025 - A Discourse on Vigilante Justice for All of My 8 Readers

“Hatred is like an acid. It can do more damage to the vessel in which it is stored

as well than to the object on which it is poured” - Ann Landers

This is one of those posts that I started and then set aside. As is common knowledge, On December 4th of 2024 a United Healthcare executive, Brian Thomson was assassinated on the streets of New York City by Luigi Mangione. Thompson was shot in the back as he walked into a shareholders meeting. Mangione essentially confessed through his writings that he did so and the evidence is consistent with him being the shooter, but he has not been found guilty in a court yet. The subtext to this killing in popular culture is our broken health care and care authorization process as the justification for the killing. In popular culture, Mangione has been hailed as a folk hero, particularly with younger generation males.

For the record, I am not a fan of insurance companies. I have personal and professional experience with companies who ignored law and denied care for people who are now dead. The whole system needs reform and as their lobbies are so powerful, almost nothing changes. Yet this man, Brian Thompson had a family and was just a cog in that wheel. Killing people on the streets because of their jobs or views or any other reason is a dark avenue to walk down for our society.

When this story was unfolding, Mangione was on the run and stopped for an Egg McMuffin at a McDonalds in Altoona PA. An attentive customer recognized him, called it to the attention of a worker who notified authorities. This worker who was identifying a murderer faced death threats and required a private security detail. I saw on my own social media feed people expressing support for the assassination. I see examples beyond this one focused on politicians and other industry leaders and it is all quite ugly. This has all stuck with me as disturbing in the months since then. Vigilante justice is the antithesis of a society based on the rule of law. Reflecting on how we got here and how we walk our society back from this precipice is something we should spend time thinking about.

This is a gratitude post, and one of the thin threads of that here is from my perspective, I was raised in a time and place when there was more consensus that not matter how terrible something may be, street justice is not justice at all, it is simply a step into the chasm of chaos. A void to avoid if we want to have a functional society. I agree with Jerome Adams, who was Surgeon General during the first Trump administration when he said that “it signals a profound loss of confidence in structures that are meant to support and protect the public.”

One of the telling details of the poll linked above showing a generational divide in how people viewed the killing for me is that people in my age group were more likely to see it as a favorable thing. From my perspective, people from older generations have more favorable views of our institutions, including the justice system because there was more evidence for their functionality decades ago than there is now. I can cite many examples of where our justice system has failed, but I am at a loss for what may work better. That world view is shaped by the era I grew up in. Similarly, a lot of the institutions are society has been built on do not seem to be working as well as they used to. As in our justice system. I can cite a whole lot of ways our institutions are increasingly failing. Yet as has been famously stated, our system of governance is the worst one excepting all the others.

As the quote above gets to the heart of is so much of these dynamics come out of hatred which is as corrosive as Ann Landers notes above. When toxic hate becomes systemic in a nation, that nation risks dissolution. I do not want that. Anyone with even a casual read of history would be able to see that nothing good comes from that path.

So, what is the gratitude here? It is in the fact we are not there yet. We do know where this story leads us. It is also true that a lot of our politics on the left ride divide have been part of the problem. Hate for the other guy drives up the vote of the base and wins the day. It also loses the nation at the end of the day. We are not there yet.

So for my eight readers, I say we can make a difference. The way we do so is by we are in subtle ways like not hating people we experience difference with and in larger ways as we insist our systems live up to our collective values. This may seem pollyannish to many, but I hold this as my perspective. One I have arrived at as a student of history with one simple truth, we will never take our society where it needs to go by embracing our darkest side. It is only in holding out our better selves that we become a better version of ourselves. This is far from an original idea, it is one laid down in history for generations, and I am grateful for that message from the past for us to consider now in this dark era.

What are you grateful for today?