Crossing The Rubicon

I think we have crossed the Rubicon as a world.  History is beginning to repeat itself in very unpleasant ways.

The UnitedHealthcare CEO was murdered on a New York street in plain daylight as he was leaving his hotel.  The bullet casings had deny, defend, and depose written on them indicating that the perpetrator has some revenge in mind for an insurance company’s alleged policies to deny claims, defend itself through legal means, and depose policyholders, witnesses, and experts.  My family and I have had, unfortunately, a number of unpleasant encounters with health insurance procedures to save them from paying for things the doctor has ordered.  So, yeah, it is incredibly scary, irritating, and infuriating.

So Brian Thompson was murdered.  The accused comes from a wealthy Baltimore family, was valedictorian of his class at a private high school, and graduated from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. And so far I have read this guy comes off as a privileged prick who no one ever thought would be violent. I guess they were wrong. Moreover, it now appears that when you are unhappy or irritated, or even enraged, the go-to answer is murdering people in order to alleviate your anger.

Americans across the spectrum took to social media (with literally tens of thousands of tweets, posts, comments, etc.) celebrating the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.  Why?  Because we don’t like health insurers and therefore it is okay to murder their executives?  I mean they must deserve it, right?  That professor at UPenn seemed to think so….the murder made her “proud.”  Elizabeth Warren thought so, you know, “you can only push people so far.”  I wonder what she considers to be “the push” in this case?  Combined with some other recent events, it looks like the progressive left is OK with murder when it is for “their side.”  What hypocrisy.

This is apparently the new normal.  Kyle Rittenhouse was celebrated when he shot and murdered two Black men at a protest against the Kenosha police shooting and killing of Jacob Blake.  The then 17-year-old joined a group of armed men who came to Kenosha to “protect businesses.”  Kyle was charged and later acquitted of murder, manslaughter, gun charges….everything.  And Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump and hundreds of thousands of other Americans celebrated not only his acquittal, but his actions.  Funny that those same people are now trumpeting the idea of accusing the Capitol policeman of murder for killed one of the Jan 6 insurrectionists while they were breaking into the House and attacking him.  What hypocrisy.

Daniel Penny put a schizophrenic Jordan Neely, a Black man yelling threats on a subway in a choke hold for many minutes and Neely died.  Was Neely threatening?  Yes.  Was he an actual threat?  Tough question, but it would certainly appear possible.  Did he deserve to die and was there any alternative?  That’s the question along with the question of whether Daniel Penny wanted him to die.  I do not know.  I do know that a trained Marine like Penny would know when he had incapacitated someone before the subject died.  Did Daniel Penny need to choke Jordan Neely that long?  Another tough question.  The point is that Daniel Penny was acquitted, resulting in a mixture of public celebration and condemnation.  That’s to be expected in such a “fine line” case.  What was not expected (at least by me) was that many people celebrated Jordan Neely’s death.  Like Jordan Neely deserved to die.

Jonathan V. Last (of the Substack blog “The Triad”) makes the point that if the victim had been a different CEO  for a different company other than the derided and reviled UnitedHealthcare, there would have been much less celebration and much less sympathy for the murderer (who was, by many, assumed to have been “wronged” by the company, which appears now not be the case).   As Last said, “No one hates logistics companies.”  Interestingly, initial indications are that the murderer, now identified ,had a beef with the practices of UnitedHealthcare but as of now, no personal involvement.

Last goes on to say that the cases of OJ Simpson, or Bernie Goetz, or even the Kyle Rittenhouse were minor dangers to the rule of law because there were legitimate differences of opinion about “outcomes and facts rather than fundamental questions about society’s interests.”

Last’s musing considers the question of what if the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was more about class and less about ideology.  He goes on to say that he believes that class-based societal conflict in inherently more dangerous. 

I believe Last’s point rings true for the Daniel Penny case and I would argue for the Kyle Rittenhouse case as well. Bernie Goetz may also qualify.

And that is scary.  Last asks about what happens when we “get to a place where there’s disagreement about whose side “The People” should be on…where questions about the entire system – when whether from economics to politics to the law itself are up for grabs?”

Last labels this as “crossing into dangerous territory” and I must agree.  He goes on to say that the dangerous territory “somewhere [in there] there is a Marie Antoinette joking about starving people eating cake and a Madame Defarge sitting in a corner knitting” as the guillotine comes rattling down.  Guillotine today?  (maybe you have not seen the old movie)

Jonathan Last doesn’t think we are there yet and this is where I disagree.

I think we are absolutely there.   I think the left’s pushing of “identity politics” , the progressive left’s view of the world, and the right’s demands for a “Christian” country as well as a hollowed out middle class and a billionaire class being able and willing to buy elections as well as the ongoing culture wars and wealth inequality have driven us to that place.  Nick Hanauer wrote about this in a 2014 article entitled, “The Pitchforks are Coming…..for us Plutocrats” and it is still worth reading 10 years later….because we have done nothing to really address the issues.

If the recent election demonstrates one thing it is that we are a terribly divided country and at the base of that divide is a real schism about whose side “The People” should be on.  Because really, our system of economics is being questioned by both ends of the spectrum, our institutions are similarly being questioned (or reviled), our politics are up for grabs in the sense that right now neither of our two major parties are a) what they used to be and b) sure where they are going.  As to the law itself – on a whole variety of topics – it application reeks of class and racial bias.

Ultimately, class and racial warfare will engulf all of us if we stay on this path.  We need to stop well short of the Rubicon.  Time to take a new path. For all of us.