Americans are accustomed to violence. But this particular murder was a shock. It was a street crime all right, but an unfamiliar one. This one seems a targeted killing and this time seems the target was a leader. A leader of national repute, the chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest healthcare insurers. The dead man’s name was Brian Thompson, he was 50 years old, a husband and the father of two.
Several things distinguish Thompson’s death from that of other murder victims. I’ll name three. First, his assassination, in front of New York City’s Hilton Hotel, led to a nationwide manhunt that still has not been resolved. Second, his prominence has meant his murder made and continues to make national news. And third, his violent death led to feelings of sadness and dismay – and to ones of fury and frustration. Fury especially not at the killer but at his victim.
The murder was a stunner – and so has been the response. The Wall Street Journal said the “online jubilation” over Thompson’s death was a “new low” in social-media culture. The New York Times headline claimed the “rage and glee” in response to Thompson’s killing was “alarming.” The Financial Times quoted a lecturer at Columbia University who tweeted, “Today we mourn the deaths of 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.” And experts in online threats were said to be “pretty disturbed” by the “glorification of the murder” of Brian Thompson and the “lionization of the shooter.”
What are we to make of this? So far, the explanation for the “rage and glee” at Thompson’s death has been attributed solely to the glaring deficits in America’s healthcare system – exemplified and personified by the nation’s healthcare insurers. Thompson was an industry leader who is presumed to have been assassinated by a furious follower. A follower furious at UnitedHealthcare for denying his claim and ruining his life.
Maybe. But maybe not. Unless and until the killer is caught, we can only speculate, we cannot know. And even then, can we trust the killer to tell us what motivated him? Can any man know what makes him a murderer?
Meantime, large numbers of ordinary people are so angry at what’s gone wrong that for them the murder of a leader is a source of satisfaction. Seems to me though that the anger is less specific than it is general. That the anger is less about the healthcare system than it is about the system generally. About a system in which the few who are very, very, very rich are forever getting richer while many of the rest are struggling to stay afloat. The likelihood is that Brian Thompson was murdered not because of what he did but because of what he stood for.