Is there anything “folksy” about UPenn? Is there anything “radical” about enjoying Atomic Habits and The Huberman Lab? Is there anything “relatable” about your family owning a country club? Does any of that even matter?

 

People have been struggling to make sense of how Luigi Mangione, the man who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, could possibly be who he is: a well off, center-right, Ivy League graduate.

 

The internet initially operated under a seemingly unilateral assumption that a CEO-killer must fit some nebulous profile of a disgruntled working-class hero, giving way to a slew of speculations that Mangione was some sort of leftist vigilante. But the confusion and commotion around the uncovering of Mangione’s upbringing, beliefs, and identity reveals a far greater issue with how eager we are to impose a narrative rooted solely in one’s identity.

 

The fact that Mangione defied assumptions of the “kind” of person that would do this should be seen as a win for those seeking to highlight the cruelties and disastrous consequences of the American healthcare system; the system is so broken that it is capable of breaking even the most privileged citizens. And the fact that it was a conservative-leaning white man also shows what a deeply bipartisan issue this is—one that transcends the traditional divisions seen in other national crises. Despite all the privilege and access one might have, the healthcare machine has been expertly designed to mow down all who stand in its path.

 

Therefore, Mangione’s identity should not be read as an undermining of the larger message of his act and manifesto, but rather as a key element in understanding the expansive severity of the American healthcare crisis. The tragic reality of illnesses and accidents is that they can—and do—happen to anyone, regardless of identity. There is not a single American who doesn’t know someone who has suffered immensely at the hands of one of these insurance companies. Many have a story of their own. So, months after an election that highlighted intense division amongst Americans, it is crucial to be honest about the subjects that affect everyone in the United States—especially those rare ones where almost everyone agrees with the complaints raised against it.

 

And yet, for some, Mangione doesn’t measure up to the vigilante they imagined him to be.

 

Confusion and disappointment have rolled in on both the Right and the Left. But it has become clear why Mangione poses such a threat to pundits and politicians across the board, especially conservatives: he undermines the Right’s extensive reliance on fearmongering through myths of identity roles. However, it should also give so-called progressives pause to fall for these same traps set by identity-based narratives and stereotyping.

 

This might be predictable par for the course amongst politicians and the like. But the more surprising agents of identity discourse as a means to distract an increasingly disgruntled public  from Mangione’s motive are journalists and writers.  Suddenly, an explicitly stated motive has become clouded by a never-ending stream of projected narratives. But the story at hand is interesting as it stands, so why do those covering and discussing it feel the need to embellish with speculation and projection?

 

While Mangione’s individual identity has become a central focus for much of the case’s coverage, these same articles have all missed the crucial point where identity does play an inextricable role in the healthcare crisis: access to, and quality of care. Despite race and income determining quality of medical treatment and likelihood of receiving coverage in the United States, articles written from an “identity-focused” point of view have entirely ignored this critical aspect. As of 2021, “The combined effect of income and race on insurance coverage was devastating as low-income minorities with bad health had 68% less odds of being insured instead of uninsured or insured for part of the year than high-income whites with good health” in the United States. Even for those with healthcare, the process is brutalising. For those without it, it could be a death sentence.

 

Outcry over Mangione’s individual privilege then begins to fall embarrassingly flat when contrasted with the complete indifference of those same authors towards the healthcare system’s egregious exploitation of Americans. In an article for The Guardian, one journalist wrote that “coverage of Mangione has been interpreted as a result of Thompson’s status as a healthcare industry executive in a country where many people are frustrated about rising healthcare costs and lack of insurance coverage. But the acceptance of that explanation itself reflects a racist double standard… the empathetic media coverage [of Mangione] is a symptom of ‘white male privilege’”. This is, however, the piece’s first and final discussion of —or rather reference to—healthcare inequality. The glaring privileges of white men in terms of health care access, quality of treatment, and accuracy of diagnoses are never once addressed in the article, thus entirely avoiding the most relevant impact of identity within the root issue. Additionally, the author’s sweeping dismissal of how widespread American outrage at the healthcare system really is is a massive blunder that fails to accurately depict the nation’s current reality. Thus, articles such as this employ a deceptively progressive tone to reinforce divisive narratives while refusing to actually address the root cause of the inequalities that are merely invoked but never analysed, salting the earth in an

 

attempt to stunt or all together kill off the seeds of actionable class consciousness before they can grow.

 

Identity can be enlightening in cases like this, but only if we fit all of the pieces together.

 

Additionally, comparisons of Mangione to figures such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny on the grounds of all three being white male murderers creates a false equivalency between an act of retaliation against the United States healthcare system, and racially motivated murders. The refusal to acknowledge the true motive behind an historic act, instead loosely throwing it in with other violent acts and calling it a day sets a grim precedent. By eliminating any distinction between these men, we eliminate any possibility for nuanced analysis of current events. Slipping into a factually inaccurate reframing of the motivations behind acts of political violence based solely on common identity markers bodes poorly for the future of accurate, objective reporting and journalistic integrity.

 

Thus, the shallow nature of this kind of coverage begins to reveal itself; there is no attempt to meaningfully understand what motivates an act like this. The opportunity for an international journalistic conversation about the most bipartisan struggle in the U.S. was passed over for all-too-familiar editorialising, vague generalisations, and half-baked conclusions.

 

I might argue that in many ways this comes from a culture of an increasingly murky but long-standing relationship between entertainment and news in the United States. Americans on both the Left and Right have progressively grown more and more accustomed to receiving their news from talk-show hosts and social media personalities. This has led to a gradual acceptance of receiving news through subjective quips or rants, all of them easily digestible pieces that follow traditional entertainment formulas from setup and punchline to exposition, climax, and resolution . But at its core, breaking news and ongoing coverage often cannot exist within these structures because of their inherently  chaotic and constantly evolving nature. And why do we feel the need for a narrative arc or entertainment value in news coverage? Why aren’t the facts enough anymore? Is news reporting not at its core about trying to suspend one’s own opinion in favor of delivering the truth?

 

The increasingly hostile attitude towards both accuracy and nuance when covering breaking news portends a bleak future for not only journalism, but the broader principles of truth and progress. We cannot enact any change to a system this large, this corrupt, by simply formulating a “better” narrative when we don’t like the reality at hand. The urge to produce easy answers and reduce individuals to a character sketch is gnawing away at our ability to arrive at and come to terms with the truth. Writing think pieces that verge on fiction leads us down a dangerous path; we cannot continue to fight over fantasy and expect this to be useful in the real world.

 

To address the story of Luigi Mangione and the murder of Brian Thompson head-on, with full acceptance of the facts, would reveal the scope of the issue, not undermine it. To be a man who was set up for success in every area of life only to be broken down and driven to the brink by the American healthcare system is such a perfectly damning illustration of the healthcare crisis that it truly needs no flourish or spin. Mangione’s identity is not a contradiction, it is a reality.∎

 

Words by Mary Lawrence Ware. Image courtesy of Free Malaysia Today.