I'm waiting for the psychiatric evaluation. Late 20s is prime time for the late onset of schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder or possibly undetected bipolar disorder.
A mental illness is as a health condition that affects a person's thinking, emotions, or behavior, causing distress and difficulties in their daily life. These conditions are often characterized by:
Changes in thinking: such as persistent negative thoughts, difficulty concentrating, or distorted perceptions.
Changes in emotions: such as prolonged sadness, excessive anxiety, or extreme mood swings.
Changes in behavior: such as social withdrawal, impulsivity, or self-harm.
It's important to remember that mental illness exists on a spectrum. Everyone experiences fluctuations in their mood and mental well-being, but a mental illness is when these fluctuations become severe and persistent, significantly impacting a person's ability to function.
Also, I understand why you might see labels as nonsense. It's true that mental health is complex, and we're still learning a lot. However, the idea that all mental health labels are completely meaningless is inaccurate.
Here's why:
Observable and Measurable Symptoms: Mental health diagnoses are based on clusters of observable symptoms that cause significant distress or impairment in a person's life. These aren't just random feelings; they're patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that can be assessed using standardized criteria.
Biological Basis: While the exact causes of many mental illnesses are still being researched, there's growing evidence of biological factors involved, such as genetics, brain chemistry, and neurological differences.
Effective Treatments: Many mental health conditions respond well to specific treatments, including therapy, medication, or a combination of both. This wouldn't be the case if these conditions were simply made up.
Analogy to Physical Health: Consider how we diagnose physical illnesses. We use labels like "diabetes" or "hypertension" to describe patterns of symptoms and underlying physiological issues. Mental health diagnoses serve a similar purpose, helping to identify and address specific conditions.
I wasn't interested in studying the issue. I just wanted to show readers that mental health is such nonsense even its own experts cannot define their subject matter.
Mental health labels are pseudoscientific nonsense, and the quip about the Unabomber being "mentally ill" was an unexpected detour into imbecility that soured an otherwise excellent piece. Diagnosing the subject of one's essay is cringeworthy, and such remarks are vacuous platitudes pretending to be clever insights.
Gnosticism. Capitalism is the demiurge, pollution is sin against Gaia, the sinful world requires Paulo Friere-style revolution to create/restore heaven on earth. Eric Vogelin observed that gnostic movements occur in "ecumenical empires" at the metropolitan center, i.e. it is a First World problem.
Long time fan, we met on occasion, and I had you as a guest on my radio show a long time ago.
I searched "luigi" on substack and was glad to find that you're not only alive, but writing! I knew you wouldn't be a fan of Luigi's decision because you're a fortunate fellow and therefore somewhat libertarian.
But I quit reading just a few sentences in when you wrote"...with his face contorted into hateful anger..." along with your media-approved image of the incident.
Most Americans who watched the video did not see "hateful anger", we saw love. The fact that you failed to see that means that your biases are too strong for you to have anything meaningful to say about the matter.
And that's a shame, because we can use an elder rationalist speaking to this matter. I have no hopes of your joining the revolution (who are we kidding, "starting" the revolution is what's necessary here) but even if you stick with your, "hey, sucks to be you, I've got mine!" mentality, it would have at least been intellectually enjoyable to read your take. But with such propagandistic editorialising framed as an honest description it's obvious that even that won't be forthcoming from you.
At least here.
P.S. I'm sure you know this but the internet being what it is I should unequivocally state that I am not filled with any anger (and certainly not hate) towards you at all, and now that I know you are writing I look forward in about 10 seconds to seeing what else you've written lately, and I most certainly wish you well.
"I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument." But, apparently, still qualified to take it upon himself to murder someone.
What I find extremely frustrating about comments sympathetic to the murderer is the complete lack of understanding of the underlying causes of deficiencies in the medical system.
Mangione checks a lot of the potential boxes for the onset of mental illness, not least of which are his age & convoluted behavior. A rational revolutionary would have used that lead time to escape & kill again, which brings us to... Kaczynski.
I have read the UnaBomber manifesto closely, three times. He is 180 degrees from my own beliefs & ethics, but I wouldn't say his manifesto was rambling or that he was mentally ill. If you accept his evil views as valid, then everything he wrote & did was logically coherent.
How many hundreds of millions of dollars has The Terminator franchise raked in by exploring a very similar tech phobia? If that world were real, Ted would be its hero.
The murderous implementation of his worldview over nearly 20 years was the work of a very clever revolutionary. He was no more mentally ill than the equally evil members of the Weather Underground.
A wild hypothetical: if Ted had gotten a following for his views on social media, then how many followers would he have pulled in and would he have personally needed to become a killer?
I think a good case can be made that the answer is "no."
I just tried to post a comment. Not all of the comment posted. I will try again to post my comment:
To some extent, this essay is a more urbane, erudite version of the boring, sleepy conventional wisdom we have heard for decades: Violence does not solve anything.
Says who.
The gray-suited grafters who run our county tell us that violence does not solve anything. If they really believed it they would disband our armed forces and the police.
Violence does many wonderful things. Violence destroyed the Nazi Reich. Do you think that instead of fighting Nazi Germany we should have had seminars, meditation and other stuff emanating from the precincts of the flakey, crazy, flippant and wholly unserious left. No, serious people, whether they are of the Left or the Right, recognize the pivotal and potent role that violence plays in fomenting change.
About industrial society: Of course, many of its fruits are welcome, and that's an understatement. the polio vaccine, new strains of wheat, Pastuerization, etc. have done wonders for increasing life expectancy.
However, as of late technology has proven to be a titanic threat to human freedom. Our politcal processes are warped by algorithems. People are more apt to receive professional help for emotional problems that ever before, but people are crazier and sicker than ever before: a) life expectancy in the US. has been declining for 15 years, b) the suicide rate is climbing, c) male attendance in colleges and universities is dropping, d) bed-wetting is going up, e) female to male transgenderism is exploding, f) every other day someone shoots up a school
People are surrendering their autonomy to machines and technology at a dizzying speed: a) We are now developing remote control automobiles (A terrorist may soon plant a worm in the technology to make 1000 cars crash into each other ala the brilliant Israeli plot which successfully made thousands of Hezbollah phones explode at the same time), b) AI will destroy our political autonomy (AI designed bogus messages by politcal candidates telling their supporters not to vote in a given race).
More and more people, instead of falling in love, have become isolated computer freaks having "sex" via internet connections.
And we are resorting to violance because politics has proven a failure. We just elected Donald Trump even though a plethora of evidence shows that he is psychotic (his myriad delusions), psychopathic (He has no guilt and cares for no one save himself), and may be a foreign agent. (Most recently, consider his about face on Tik Tok. Formerly, he was a critic of tiktok. Now, because of a contribution from tiktok, he is Tik Tok's most powerful defender.)
To some extent, this essay is a more urbane, erudite version of the boring, sleepy conventional wisdom we have heard for decades: Violence does not solve anything.
Says who.
The gray-suited grafters who run our county tell us that violence does not solve anything. If they really believed it they would disband our armed forces and the police.
Violence does many wonderful things. Violence destroyed the Nazi Reich. Do you think that instead of fighting Nazi Germany we should have had seminars, meditation and other stuff emanating from the precincts of the flakey, crazy, flippant and wholly unserious left. No, serious people, whether they are of the Left or the Right, recognize the pivotal and potent role that violence plays in fomenting change.
About industrial society: Of course, many of its fruits are welcome, and that's an understatement. the polio vaccine, new strains of wheat, Pastuerization, etc. have done wonders for increasing life expectancy.
However, as of late technology has proven to be a titanic threat to human freedom. Our politcal processes are warped by algorithems. People are more apt to receive professional help for emotional problems that ever before, but people are crazier and sicker than ever before: a) life expectancy in the US. has been declining for 15 years, b) the suicide rate is climbing, c) male attendance in colleges and universities is dropping, d) bed-wetting is going up, e) female to male transgenderism is exploding, f) every other day someone shoots up a school
People are surrendering their autonomy to machines and technology at a dizzying speed: a) We are now developing remote control automobiles (A terrorist may soon plant a worm in the technology to make 1000 cars crash into each other ala the brilliant Israeli plot which successfully made thousands of Hezbollah phones explode at the same time), b) AI will destroy our political autonomy (AI designed bogus messages by politcal candidates telling their supporters not to vote in a given race).
More and more people, instead of falling in love, have become isolated computer freaks having "sex" via internet connections.
And we are resorting to violance because politics has proven a failure. We just elected Donald Trump even though a plethora of evidence shows that he is psychotic (his myriad delusions), psychopathic (He has no guilt and cares for no one save himself), and may be a foreign agent. (Most recently, consider his about face on Tik Tok. Formerly, he was a critic of tiktok. Now, because of a contribution from tiktok, he is Tik Tok's most powerful defender.)
What these anti-tech types don’t understand is people were violent and horrible long before tech. They were even worse according to some (Napoleon Chagnon, for example).
A man regarded as ''very intelligent'' decides to kill an executive of an insurance company. He somehow ( how? ) finds out what the target looks like and where he will be at a certain time.
Before going to kill him he posts several rants on social media so the police will have him on a list of suspects. He constructs a homemade gun although he has no criminal record so he could buy a gun easily.
He goes to where he will find the victim and shoots him. He wears a mask but the cameras there can see his face anyway. He loses his cell phone not AT the scene, but nearby, so when the police find a phone in the neighborhood they know right away it was lost by the killer. It has his fingerprints on it so the police can identify him even though he has no criminal record so his prints are not on file.
He tries to get away but someone recognizes him from the photos circulated by the police from the magic cameras that apparently could see through his mask. When they catch him he is still carrying the homemade gun the main purpose of which is that it cannot be traced so it is possible to discard it at the scene without it being traced to the person who owns it.
This story has a lot of holes in it. It looks like some cops wanted to get a law passed against unregistered homemade guns so they found a patsy who had posted some rants on social media against insurance companies, killed an insurace company executive, and set the patsy up. I expect new laws against homemade guns are coming soon.
It’s a pity it doesn’t hold up to how crimes work out - people unhinged enough to murder generally are not in a great mental state, and while doing this and getting away cleanly would be difficult for someone with training and a good mental state, it’s even less likely for someone disturbed.
Reality is interesting and messy enough that you don’t need to bust out the fanfic instinct around real world events.
The FBI searched for 17 years for the person who supposedly mailed letter bombs to several high-profile individuals who were targeted because they were harning the environment or helping develop survailance methods for the police. They called the unknown bomber the "Unabomber".
Several people were killed by letter bombs. At least one more was injured. One of the killed was a public relations hack for the timber industry who was campaigning for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act. Half the population of Northern California stood up and cheered when he got killed.
Then, after massive publicity of the unsolved case. someone claiming to be the Unabomber sent a long Anarchist / environmentalist essay, a brilliant critique of industrial civilization, to the New York Times and the Washingtom Post, offering to stop his killing people if they would print it. After a public debate on the ethics of doing that, they caved and printed it.
Soon after that, a man contacted the FBI and said he recognized the essay, some of it word-for-word from letters written by his brother several years ago. The brother, Dr. Theodore Kaczinski, a former math professor at the University of California at Berkeley, regarded as a genius in his field, was living in a remote cabin in the mountains in Montana. The FBI arrested him and searched his cabin. They found two draft manuscripts of the Unabomber essay, and that was enough evidence to show he wrote the essay, but not that he actually sent any bombs.
His cabin had no electricity, but some of the bomb componants had been hand-crafted in a machine shop, which they never found or could explain how he had access to. The bombs were of different kinds, sent by different methods, to different types of targets, in different parts of the country, over a period of 17 years. There was no real evidence that there ever was any single Unabomber. It looked like the FBI had spun several unrelated unsolved bombing cases together and thought they were all related and Dr. Kaczinski had taken advantage of the publicity to get the media to publish his work, a brilliant critique of civilization, by claiming to be the famous bomber.
I think the FBI screwed up. They really thought there was a single super-bomber on the loose and spent 17 years hunting for a phantom who did not exist. They had to save face by finding him.
A good lawyer should have been able to get him off since the evidence only showed he wrote the essay, not that he actually sent the bombs, but he was denied a trial and forced to plead guilty by the threat of being found insane if he insisted on his right to a trial.
The judge was obviously bought by the FBI. He refused permission for Kaczinski to represent himself despite his obviously having the intelligence and education to do so, refused to allow well-known defense lawyers who had offered to take the case pro bono to represent him, and demanded that he be represented by the public defender's office, which insisted on a defense of mental illness, which would have meant his writings, his intellectual legacy, would be dismissed as the ravings of a madman, something intolerable to an academic.
So faced with the choice between being held ( and probably drugged ) in a mental institution for the rest of his life, or in a prison, where at least his work would still have the respect of that of a sane person, he pled guilty and was given a sentence of life without parole. The plea bargin included that he had to give up the right to appeal, which is fundamental to the American court system.
He wrote a book while in prison, but was not allowed to publish it.
During the time between his arrest and sentencing no anarchist publication came out in support of him, though if any publication had brought up the lack of real evidence that there even was such a single bomber, he might have been exonerated. Later, after sentencing, when it was too late to help him, several of them began to publish his prison address and declare him a ''political prisoner''.
His brother, who had turned him in, got the $2,000,000 reward for solving the case.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farwell to Arms
Well, I'm sorry his manifesto did not have educational things we all should know and discuss, like the victim likely had many corpses he killed in his closet from the choices and policies he did or supported, for a few dollars in many cases, and because he and those other killers did it for and within the corporate legal immunity shied, they will not be (or ever be) held personally responsible.
Same for the owners - of course. A person might consider removing those that raised or influenced and profited by so many serial killers in so many corporations, from so many families! Maybe all the older adults in their families should be removed also. Would that be Just?
And when such corp-murderers are beyond the law, and endlessly killing, till retired or repented .. so, what isn't Just about a public execution?
How many of these white-collar killers, in how many commercial fields around the West and World, that maybe should die,.. until Corporate Law is changed?
Everyone with any corp deaths, using corporation immunities as cost-or-profits, should be the answer.
All we need is to force The Haves into a public good faith, friendly conversation.
Thompson wasn't a monster and his death is a tragedy.
But thus far nobody has been able to get the oligarchs and otherwise-fortunate into a public revolutionary conversation that will benefit us ALL -- including them.
If it takes a bullet to do that then the shot was a righteous necessity.
If however it does not do that, then it was a tragic and misguided murder.
The choice is up to us.
I'm a rabbi and did a series on the 10 commandments a few months ago.
Thou Shalt Not Murder required some elucidation so I introduced with a few sentences on substack to frame the concept. I hope you find it meaningful. It may take some consideration to grok.
You have it completely wrong. The increase in denials is a direct result of Obamacare and other regulations on the industry. Legislators think they can ignore economic realities and change them by laws and regulations. The actual result is to make things worse.
I'm waiting for the psychiatric evaluation. Late 20s is prime time for the late onset of schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder or possibly undetected bipolar disorder.
A mental illness is as a health condition that affects a person's thinking, emotions, or behavior, causing distress and difficulties in their daily life. These conditions are often characterized by:
Changes in thinking: such as persistent negative thoughts, difficulty concentrating, or distorted perceptions.
Changes in emotions: such as prolonged sadness, excessive anxiety, or extreme mood swings.
Changes in behavior: such as social withdrawal, impulsivity, or self-harm.
It's important to remember that mental illness exists on a spectrum. Everyone experiences fluctuations in their mood and mental well-being, but a mental illness is when these fluctuations become severe and persistent, significantly impacting a person's ability to function.
Also, I understand why you might see labels as nonsense. It's true that mental health is complex, and we're still learning a lot. However, the idea that all mental health labels are completely meaningless is inaccurate.
Here's why:
Observable and Measurable Symptoms: Mental health diagnoses are based on clusters of observable symptoms that cause significant distress or impairment in a person's life. These aren't just random feelings; they're patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that can be assessed using standardized criteria.
Biological Basis: While the exact causes of many mental illnesses are still being researched, there's growing evidence of biological factors involved, such as genetics, brain chemistry, and neurological differences.
Effective Treatments: Many mental health conditions respond well to specific treatments, including therapy, medication, or a combination of both. This wouldn't be the case if these conditions were simply made up.
Analogy to Physical Health: Consider how we diagnose physical illnesses. We use labels like "diabetes" or "hypertension" to describe patterns of symptoms and underlying physiological issues. Mental health diagnoses serve a similar purpose, helping to identify and address specific conditions.
ChatGPT?
The logic is sound regardless. I can give you some resources if you’d like to study the issue in more detail.
I wasn't interested in studying the issue. I just wanted to show readers that mental health is such nonsense even its own experts cannot define their subject matter.
I would recommend Jonathan Stea’s Mind The Science to address pseudo-science in mental health. https://books.google.com/books/about/Mind_the_Science.html?id=ztcSEQAAQBAJ
Mental health labels are pseudoscientific nonsense, and the quip about the Unabomber being "mentally ill" was an unexpected detour into imbecility that soured an otherwise excellent piece. Diagnosing the subject of one's essay is cringeworthy, and such remarks are vacuous platitudes pretending to be clever insights.
So you’re an expert on mental illness? Not all labels are nonsense. That idea is nonsense.
Define mental illness.
Gnosticism. Capitalism is the demiurge, pollution is sin against Gaia, the sinful world requires Paulo Friere-style revolution to create/restore heaven on earth. Eric Vogelin observed that gnostic movements occur in "ecumenical empires" at the metropolitan center, i.e. it is a First World problem.
Oof.
Long time fan, we met on occasion, and I had you as a guest on my radio show a long time ago.
I searched "luigi" on substack and was glad to find that you're not only alive, but writing! I knew you wouldn't be a fan of Luigi's decision because you're a fortunate fellow and therefore somewhat libertarian.
But I quit reading just a few sentences in when you wrote"...with his face contorted into hateful anger..." along with your media-approved image of the incident.
Most Americans who watched the video did not see "hateful anger", we saw love. The fact that you failed to see that means that your biases are too strong for you to have anything meaningful to say about the matter.
And that's a shame, because we can use an elder rationalist speaking to this matter. I have no hopes of your joining the revolution (who are we kidding, "starting" the revolution is what's necessary here) but even if you stick with your, "hey, sucks to be you, I've got mine!" mentality, it would have at least been intellectually enjoyable to read your take. But with such propagandistic editorialising framed as an honest description it's obvious that even that won't be forthcoming from you.
At least here.
P.S. I'm sure you know this but the internet being what it is I should unequivocally state that I am not filled with any anger (and certainly not hate) towards you at all, and now that I know you are writing I look forward in about 10 seconds to seeing what else you've written lately, and I most certainly wish you well.
If your would-be revolution sees love in vigilante murderers, it’s a revolution that we’ll have to make sure is stillborn.
LOL.
A. You are an anonymous coward, you ain't gonna "make sure" anything.
B. Most Americans are as cowardly as you are so you needn't get your panties in a wad.
Have you considered growing up? It’s quite fun.
Anyway Luigi is gonna have fun in prison. He’s pretty. I hear the pretty skinny ones do well in prison lawl.
"I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument." But, apparently, still qualified to take it upon himself to murder someone.
What I find extremely frustrating about comments sympathetic to the murderer is the complete lack of understanding of the underlying causes of deficiencies in the medical system.
Mangione checks a lot of the potential boxes for the onset of mental illness, not least of which are his age & convoluted behavior. A rational revolutionary would have used that lead time to escape & kill again, which brings us to... Kaczynski.
I have read the UnaBomber manifesto closely, three times. He is 180 degrees from my own beliefs & ethics, but I wouldn't say his manifesto was rambling or that he was mentally ill. If you accept his evil views as valid, then everything he wrote & did was logically coherent.
How many hundreds of millions of dollars has The Terminator franchise raked in by exploring a very similar tech phobia? If that world were real, Ted would be its hero.
The murderous implementation of his worldview over nearly 20 years was the work of a very clever revolutionary. He was no more mentally ill than the equally evil members of the Weather Underground.
A wild hypothetical: if Ted had gotten a following for his views on social media, then how many followers would he have pulled in and would he have personally needed to become a killer?
I think a good case can be made that the answer is "no."
I just tried to post a comment. Not all of the comment posted. I will try again to post my comment:
To some extent, this essay is a more urbane, erudite version of the boring, sleepy conventional wisdom we have heard for decades: Violence does not solve anything.
Says who.
The gray-suited grafters who run our county tell us that violence does not solve anything. If they really believed it they would disband our armed forces and the police.
Violence does many wonderful things. Violence destroyed the Nazi Reich. Do you think that instead of fighting Nazi Germany we should have had seminars, meditation and other stuff emanating from the precincts of the flakey, crazy, flippant and wholly unserious left. No, serious people, whether they are of the Left or the Right, recognize the pivotal and potent role that violence plays in fomenting change.
About industrial society: Of course, many of its fruits are welcome, and that's an understatement. the polio vaccine, new strains of wheat, Pastuerization, etc. have done wonders for increasing life expectancy.
However, as of late technology has proven to be a titanic threat to human freedom. Our politcal processes are warped by algorithems. People are more apt to receive professional help for emotional problems that ever before, but people are crazier and sicker than ever before: a) life expectancy in the US. has been declining for 15 years, b) the suicide rate is climbing, c) male attendance in colleges and universities is dropping, d) bed-wetting is going up, e) female to male transgenderism is exploding, f) every other day someone shoots up a school
People are surrendering their autonomy to machines and technology at a dizzying speed: a) We are now developing remote control automobiles (A terrorist may soon plant a worm in the technology to make 1000 cars crash into each other ala the brilliant Israeli plot which successfully made thousands of Hezbollah phones explode at the same time), b) AI will destroy our political autonomy (AI designed bogus messages by politcal candidates telling their supporters not to vote in a given race).
More and more people, instead of falling in love, have become isolated computer freaks having "sex" via internet connections.
And we are resorting to violance because politics has proven a failure. We just elected Donald Trump even though a plethora of evidence shows that he is psychotic (his myriad delusions), psychopathic (He has no guilt and cares for no one save himself), and may be a foreign agent. (Most recently, consider his about face on Tik Tok. Formerly, he was a critic of tiktok. Now, because of a contribution from tiktok, he is Tik Tok's most powerful defender.)
See some of my thoughts on this issue https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/decapitate-and-dethrone
To some extent, this essay is a more urbane, erudite version of the boring, sleepy conventional wisdom we have heard for decades: Violence does not solve anything.
Says who.
The gray-suited grafters who run our county tell us that violence does not solve anything. If they really believed it they would disband our armed forces and the police.
Violence does many wonderful things. Violence destroyed the Nazi Reich. Do you think that instead of fighting Nazi Germany we should have had seminars, meditation and other stuff emanating from the precincts of the flakey, crazy, flippant and wholly unserious left. No, serious people, whether they are of the Left or the Right, recognize the pivotal and potent role that violence plays in fomenting change.
About industrial society: Of course, many of its fruits are welcome, and that's an understatement. the polio vaccine, new strains of wheat, Pastuerization, etc. have done wonders for increasing life expectancy.
However, as of late technology has proven to be a titanic threat to human freedom. Our politcal processes are warped by algorithems. People are more apt to receive professional help for emotional problems that ever before, but people are crazier and sicker than ever before: a) life expectancy in the US. has been declining for 15 years, b) the suicide rate is climbing, c) male attendance in colleges and universities is dropping, d) bed-wetting is going up, e) female to male transgenderism is exploding, f) every other day someone shoots up a school
People are surrendering their autonomy to machines and technology at a dizzying speed: a) We are now developing remote control automobiles (A terrorist may soon plant a worm in the technology to make 1000 cars crash into each other ala the brilliant Israeli plot which successfully made thousands of Hezbollah phones explode at the same time), b) AI will destroy our political autonomy (AI designed bogus messages by politcal candidates telling their supporters not to vote in a given race).
More and more people, instead of falling in love, have become isolated computer freaks having "sex" via internet connections.
And we are resorting to violance because politics has proven a failure. We just elected Donald Trump even though a plethora of evidence shows that he is psychotic (his myriad delusions), psychopathic (He has no guilt and cares for no one save himself), and may be a foreign agent. (Most recently, consider his about face on Tik Tok. Formerly, he was a critic of tiktok. Now, because of a contribution from tiktok, he is Tik Tok's most powerful defender.)
See some of my thoughts on this issue https://davidgottfried.substack.com/p/decapitate-and-dethrone
That's ridiculous to the point of parody. One of them created a manifesto and lived up to it. The other wrote a complaint and lived up to it.
What these anti-tech types don’t understand is people were violent and horrible long before tech. They were even worse according to some (Napoleon Chagnon, for example).
Let's see..............
A man regarded as ''very intelligent'' decides to kill an executive of an insurance company. He somehow ( how? ) finds out what the target looks like and where he will be at a certain time.
Before going to kill him he posts several rants on social media so the police will have him on a list of suspects. He constructs a homemade gun although he has no criminal record so he could buy a gun easily.
He goes to where he will find the victim and shoots him. He wears a mask but the cameras there can see his face anyway. He loses his cell phone not AT the scene, but nearby, so when the police find a phone in the neighborhood they know right away it was lost by the killer. It has his fingerprints on it so the police can identify him even though he has no criminal record so his prints are not on file.
He tries to get away but someone recognizes him from the photos circulated by the police from the magic cameras that apparently could see through his mask. When they catch him he is still carrying the homemade gun the main purpose of which is that it cannot be traced so it is possible to discard it at the scene without it being traced to the person who owns it.
This story has a lot of holes in it. It looks like some cops wanted to get a law passed against unregistered homemade guns so they found a patsy who had posted some rants on social media against insurance companies, killed an insurace company executive, and set the patsy up. I expect new laws against homemade guns are coming soon.
Fun conspiracy theory you have there.
It’s a pity it doesn’t hold up to how crimes work out - people unhinged enough to murder generally are not in a great mental state, and while doing this and getting away cleanly would be difficult for someone with training and a good mental state, it’s even less likely for someone disturbed.
Reality is interesting and messy enough that you don’t need to bust out the fanfic instinct around real world events.
The FBI searched for 17 years for the person who supposedly mailed letter bombs to several high-profile individuals who were targeted because they were harning the environment or helping develop survailance methods for the police. They called the unknown bomber the "Unabomber".
Several people were killed by letter bombs. At least one more was injured. One of the killed was a public relations hack for the timber industry who was campaigning for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act. Half the population of Northern California stood up and cheered when he got killed.
Then, after massive publicity of the unsolved case. someone claiming to be the Unabomber sent a long Anarchist / environmentalist essay, a brilliant critique of industrial civilization, to the New York Times and the Washingtom Post, offering to stop his killing people if they would print it. After a public debate on the ethics of doing that, they caved and printed it.
https://www.josharcher.uk/tags/unabomber-manifesto-pdf/
Soon after that, a man contacted the FBI and said he recognized the essay, some of it word-for-word from letters written by his brother several years ago. The brother, Dr. Theodore Kaczinski, a former math professor at the University of California at Berkeley, regarded as a genius in his field, was living in a remote cabin in the mountains in Montana. The FBI arrested him and searched his cabin. They found two draft manuscripts of the Unabomber essay, and that was enough evidence to show he wrote the essay, but not that he actually sent any bombs.
His cabin had no electricity, but some of the bomb componants had been hand-crafted in a machine shop, which they never found or could explain how he had access to. The bombs were of different kinds, sent by different methods, to different types of targets, in different parts of the country, over a period of 17 years. There was no real evidence that there ever was any single Unabomber. It looked like the FBI had spun several unrelated unsolved bombing cases together and thought they were all related and Dr. Kaczinski had taken advantage of the publicity to get the media to publish his work, a brilliant critique of civilization, by claiming to be the famous bomber.
I think the FBI screwed up. They really thought there was a single super-bomber on the loose and spent 17 years hunting for a phantom who did not exist. They had to save face by finding him.
A good lawyer should have been able to get him off since the evidence only showed he wrote the essay, not that he actually sent the bombs, but he was denied a trial and forced to plead guilty by the threat of being found insane if he insisted on his right to a trial.
The judge was obviously bought by the FBI. He refused permission for Kaczinski to represent himself despite his obviously having the intelligence and education to do so, refused to allow well-known defense lawyers who had offered to take the case pro bono to represent him, and demanded that he be represented by the public defender's office, which insisted on a defense of mental illness, which would have meant his writings, his intellectual legacy, would be dismissed as the ravings of a madman, something intolerable to an academic.
So faced with the choice between being held ( and probably drugged ) in a mental institution for the rest of his life, or in a prison, where at least his work would still have the respect of that of a sane person, he pled guilty and was given a sentence of life without parole. The plea bargin included that he had to give up the right to appeal, which is fundamental to the American court system.
He wrote a book while in prison, but was not allowed to publish it.
During the time between his arrest and sentencing no anarchist publication came out in support of him, though if any publication had brought up the lack of real evidence that there even was such a single bomber, he might have been exonerated. Later, after sentencing, when it was too late to help him, several of them began to publish his prison address and declare him a ''political prisoner''.
His brother, who had turned him in, got the $2,000,000 reward for solving the case.
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Farwell to Arms
Well, I'm sorry his manifesto did not have educational things we all should know and discuss, like the victim likely had many corpses he killed in his closet from the choices and policies he did or supported, for a few dollars in many cases, and because he and those other killers did it for and within the corporate legal immunity shied, they will not be (or ever be) held personally responsible.
Same for the owners - of course. A person might consider removing those that raised or influenced and profited by so many serial killers in so many corporations, from so many families! Maybe all the older adults in their families should be removed also. Would that be Just?
And when such corp-murderers are beyond the law, and endlessly killing, till retired or repented .. so, what isn't Just about a public execution?
How many of these white-collar killers, in how many commercial fields around the West and World, that maybe should die,.. until Corporate Law is changed?
Everyone with any corp deaths, using corporation immunities as cost-or-profits, should be the answer.
God Bless., Steve
All we need is to force The Haves into a public good faith, friendly conversation.
Thompson wasn't a monster and his death is a tragedy.
But thus far nobody has been able to get the oligarchs and otherwise-fortunate into a public revolutionary conversation that will benefit us ALL -- including them.
If it takes a bullet to do that then the shot was a righteous necessity.
If however it does not do that, then it was a tragic and misguided murder.
The choice is up to us.
I'm a rabbi and did a series on the 10 commandments a few months ago.
Thou Shalt Not Murder required some elucidation so I introduced with a few sentences on substack to frame the concept. I hope you find it meaningful. It may take some consideration to grok.
https://ydydy.substack.com/p/brotherhood-or-the-sword-the-only
You have it completely wrong. The increase in denials is a direct result of Obamacare and other regulations on the industry. Legislators think they can ignore economic realities and change them by laws and regulations. The actual result is to make things worse.