Murder Ballads
What the brutal murder of CEO Brian Thompson says about America
Jesse was a man, a friend to the poor,
He'd never rob a mother or a child,
There never was a man with the law in his hand,
That could take Jesse James alive.
Jesse was a man, a friend to the poor,
He'd never see a man suffer pain,
And with his brother Frank, he robbed the Chicago bank,
And stopped the Glendale train.
-Ballad of Jesse James
Let’s start with two truths: Americans love an outlaw and hate our healthcare system. So, even without the Internet and meme culture, Luigi Mangione probably would have become a folk hero.
I’ve been thinking all week about the Ballad of Jesse James, a song that many country and folk singers have recorded. Woody Gutherie’s version is the most well-known. It portrays Jesse James as an American Robin Hood and celebrates law enforcement’s inability to capture him. The ballad’s story bears no resemblance to James’ actual life or the horrific crimes he committed, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Magione had developed a cheering section online before we knew who he was (or that he was an attractive person). There was no ambiguity about what Mangione had done: assassinated the CEO of a healthcare company in broad daylight. But an uncomfortable number of Americans seemed to think this particular murder was something to celebrate. Or at the very least, that the victim, Brian Thompson, deserved his fate because of the pain his industry has caused.
The modern-day version of celebrating outlaws online is bleak and personally tests my faith in humanity every time I wade in. On forums like 4chan and 8kun, mass shooters have been glorified for years with memes, manifestos, and bootleg streams of some of their shootings. A new report from the Network Contagion Research Institute says that the enthusiasm around this shooting mimics that glorification, giving this crime the most mainstream audience this type of content has ever seen. The internet is currently flooded with pro-Mangione tweets, memes, merch, and, yes, outlaw ballads.
This is objectively not a good thing. Research shows that the glorification of mass shooters inspires copycat crimes, and the copycat effect on sensational coverage of crimes inspiring more crimes has been studied widely. Glorifying the murder of Brian Thompson and turning his murderer into a modern-day hero makes us all less safe.
Still, I get it. As a friend pointed out to me this week, spend any time on GoFundMe, and you’ll see how broken our healthcare system is and how many lives have been destroyed by it. Anyone who has ever argued with their insurance company over coverage or had to pay crippling medical bills out-of-pocket understands the underlying anger. There’s no denying that the healthcare system is broken and that systems all around us are broken and breaking down further. There’s no justification for murder, but the anger and desperation people feel is real.
There’s a connective tissue here. As I’ve written before, the violence is a feature rather than a bug. Support for the use of political violence remains high among voters in the US, and polling from earlier this year shows that 1 in 5 Americans believe violence might be necessary to solve our political differences. We just elected a president who campaigned as an outlaw, flouting his criminal conviction and turning his mugshot into campaign merch. There were two assassination attempts on Trump’s life this year, and threats of violence against elected officials, media figures, and anyone with a public profile are now so common we’re practically numb to it.
Violence and celebrating violence is part of our culture, something outlaw songs like The Ballad of Jesse James remind us of. America is a violent nation, and I expect political violence will only increase as our democracy further erodes. We shouldn’t have to live like this, but we do. Some of us are in more danger than others, but we’re all vulnerable.
ICYMI
Trump’s FBI Pick Co-Hosted a Show for a Conspiracy-filled, Far-Right Media Organization (NBC News)
Kash Patel spent years creating content for the Epoch Times, a far-right propaganda outlet.
Holiday Hoaxes Unwrapped: Fake Trees, Freebies, & Shopping Sprees (Graphika)
A handy guide of holiday-related scams to avoid (and help your relatives avoid!) this holiday season.
She Joined Facebook to Fight Terror. Now She’s Convinced We Need to Fight Facebook. (The Intercept)
“Today, she is convinced her former employer cannot be trusted with power so vast, and that the systems she helped build should be dismantled. For the first time, Byrne shares her story with The Intercept, and why the public should be as disturbed by her work as she came to be.”
Study: Republicans Respond to Political Polarization by Spreading Misinformation, Democrats Don't (America Marketing Association)
“To summarize, Republicans react to political polarization by putting out partisan misinformation. This can have a deleterious effect on the state of democratic institutions and processes.”
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Coda
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Brian L. Thompson has killed hundreds of thousands, and there is gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands and he becomes a martyr.
Luigi kills one and he is villanized as a vigilante and an outlaw.
Stalin was right kill one and it is murder, kill thousands and it is a statistic.
Corporations have killed millions and nothing happens not to the CEO's, the officers, the people who carry out the orders, nor to the corporation. Until the Charter wars in the early 20th century corporations had a death sentence, usually about 50 yeas, and to get it renewed they had to prove that they operated in the public interest. That all died with Dodge v Ford Motors in 1919, and the charter wars that John Davidson Rockefeller started when he declared that he would move his corporation to the state that produced the most favorable corporation charter law, NJ won, and we had Standard Oil of NJ, other states got the hint and Delaware came up with one better and thus 600 corporations, most of them financial are chartered in DE. Ohio got in on the act and we have SOHIO.
Union Carbide killed thousands of Indians in Bhopal, it filed bankruptcy was bought by DOW, and a corrupt Indian Supreme Court, let it off the hook for damages.
Every day United Health Care, Anthem, Regence all of hem kill people, after taking their money, and there is not a moan or a whisper of even discontent from pundits, editors, or substack authors.
Since Trump has managed to create a double standard for himself regarding the law, he may ultimately become the victim of the lawlessness that he has created. And that may just be the only way he will ever get the justice that he so rightly deserves. You reap what you sow!