The Health of Nations

Killing the truth.

Revolutions happen when there is a temporary alignment of the elites and the masses. Signally the suicide of the media, the Luigi Mangione vs. UnitedHealth story yielded precisely such a moment, in that both the right and the left suddenly came to lose faith in the media all at the same time. Up to this point the media had only lost rightists and independents.

Source: Gallup

One achievement, until recently, not believed to be possible by great minds and scientists alike is the possibility that trust in the press and politicians could converge. That dream is, just now, on the verge of reality: since 2018 faith in the media has been on an uninterrupted six year slide. Trust in the government continues to hover at around 20% - rock bottom. It won’t be long.

The run of misses over that losing stretch has been unreal, literally. It started with “credible” information of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Robert Mueller was empaneled as a special prosecutor. A tearful Adam Schiff made his case before the Senate about the tyranny and the treachery. But, after all that digging, there was precisely nothing in the report.

And, then, they just walked away. Well, they walked away, and the Clinton campaign was issued a small slap on the wrist for misappropriating funds to its law firm of record. Of course, we now know, the backbone of the whole witch hunt — encompassing both a special prosecutor and a whole slew of violations by FBI in Operation Crossfire Hurricane — was the Steele Dossier, a hatchet job surreptitiously funded by that extra money the Clinton campaign had illegally slipped her law firm. Her campaign, then, knowingly leaked it to a press corps they also knew would turn a critical eye to none of it.

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Note: you’ve read 260 words at this point (you’ll need that later)

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Next up, only the biggest story of the millennium: COVID. The pandemic left behind two thoroughly abandoned landfills full of fiction. First, the idea that the germ was leaked from a lab was steadfastly derided (and censored) as a conspiracy theory. Now, to the best guess of scientists, that’s exactly what happened. Second, untested and likely harmful (but ineffective) vaccines were rammed on the public by threats and coercion. Big Pharma, meanwhile, carried away all the money in wheelbarrows. And - poof - ever since, silence on both topics.

Cranking up it from there, the 2020 election assaulted the public with a 3-piece onslaught of falsehood. First, the laptop linking President Biden, via his son, to foreign adversaries and agents was spiked as Russian disinformation until, two years later, NYT, Washington Post, et al backtracked and verified its authenticity and contents - only about 24 months too late to matter during the election.

In a final insult to public trust, but in a refreshingly overt display of disrespect for the law, Biden granted his son a blanket pardon for any crime he may have committed during an entire one decade span. This to obviate the need to dig into the laptop’s black box of treasonous self-enrichment schemes ever again. The reliable ruse here: Trump is so very, very bad, he will throw Hunter in jail forever, just because the poor little drug addict made a few mistakes. The fact that Hunter is a crackhead with a big cock is the single best thing that ever happened to Joe Biden, just after the fact that Trump is a big enough prick that quite plausibly he could have done all the many things they have falsely accused him of.

There was, of course, also the whopper put out there by the media during the 2020 election that Biden was competent to sit office. That ballon full of crap popped, horrifyingly, on live TV.

The 15 million mysterious votes that magically appeared in 2020, implying Joe Biden is somehow more popular than Barack Obama, which then disappeared again in 2024 is another one. Even I voted for Obama.

Those are the biggies, I will stop there. Actually, there is one more. We know everything - down to the flavor of mochi ice cream he enjoys and his appreciation of Cardi B - about UnitedHeath shooter, Luigi Mangione, yet, somehow, nothing about Thomas Crooks, and it’s not just because one kid looks like he got hit by a bus and the other looks like a GQ model.

Or, maybe, it is? The uproar of support for the UnitedHealth shooter has, no doubt, been boosted by his looks. Gay Twitter, in particular, has been thirstier than Death Valley.

But the tsunami of love for the shooter reached criticality well before Luigi was outted for his handsomeness. Quite possibly, then, the public’s attitude registers facts like this one:

Also quite possibly this kid did something illegal, violent and objectionable in reaction to these facts. For example, the US has, by an outrageous margin, the most expensive health system in the world and, yet, for life expectancy, we fall right between Panama and Estonia. Yes, opiates and suicides are, in part, to blame, but going that path only pushes the disease to one of mental health. Or, one must ask, why are we killing ourselves?

So upset were our fathers in the media that the public, by their groundswell support for the shooter, has not accepted their hardline against violence, that a new grand whitewash has been launched. CEO Brian Thompson’s life has been airbrushed to one of nobility - this in an effort to draw a more stark black and white between right (peacefulness) and wrong (violence). It was omitted that the CEO got a DUI a couple years ago. Not a big deal - who hasn’t? I caught a DUI and Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance. That he lived apart from his wife was suppressed. Again, this only makes him more human. I lived on the couch for the final seven years of my marriage. It is claimed that he was “well liked” at work when, it should come as no surprise, there is a huge morale problem at UnitedHeath. But, again, all this - and none of it surprising - was stuffed to deify Brian Thompson in an effort to guide public opinion to the desired destination.

Another issue confronting the media: Luigi is so hot it’s causing people to loose their minds. Or, so, apparently, the New York Times thinks, which has now gone so astray of the truth that among the most interesting journalism comes from independent reporters reporting on the reporters not doing their reporting. Ken Klippenstein, who has dominated this story, leaked that the NYT does’t want their reporters getting their readers any more sprung with Luigi money shots.

New York Times management: “the news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing … dial back"

I mean, other than for what has been omitted, there is no news value to this story anyway. They cannot even get the sensationalism straight without censorship anymore.

All outlets, evidently, have prohibited publishing the shooter’s handwritten explanation - the so called “manifesto” - leaving open a void as to what could have motivated such a successful, dashing young man to kill such a wonderful CEO which the media has been all too eager to fill with fiction: he’s a spoiled rich kid whose back pain drove him crazy. Quoting selectively, of course, from his banned “manifesto” we learn he also hates corporate greed. Guns are bad is also a sub-narrative often woven into the story.

It is bad enough that his handsomeness has increased popular sympathy, but it would be even worse if his motive was known and the masses agreed. But, maybe, this groundswell says people already agree based on their own experiences, and cheer him even though they wouldn't repeat it themselves. Maybe the media reporting falsehoods, sustaining them as the truth for months, and then flipping the script without apology or expatiation is precisely what gives flight to conspiracy theories, such as the idea that this happened to cover up Israel's entry into Syria, or that Nancy Pelosi ordered Thompson whacked to block him from testifying as to her insider trading. When conspiracy theories become the truth too often, too often conspiracy theories look like the truth.

His manifesto makes it entirely clear why he did it. The real conversation isn’t why he did it or whether it is right or wrong to kill someone. Both are known. The real question is why the media doesn’t want you to know why he did it, and what conversation might have to happen if you knew and agreed why?

It was 1,130 words ago that you hit the 260 word point. Below is the 260 word handwritten note found on Luigi Mangione when he was captured, in full (again, this from Ken Klippenstein):

“To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Now you know why he did it. And, actually, he’s wrong about one thing: the US ranks #48 in life-expectancy not #42.

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