The images of the most effective human rights leaders have been so whitewashed.
Many of the greats were definitely killers. Nelson Mandela famously founded a "terrorist" organization and for years refused to condemn any partisan violence.
Yes, but simple as -- Nelson Mandela is not Luigi Mangione.
This isn't apartheid. Get a hold on your horses and grow up. You live in a republic. You need to convince other people single payer health care is the right policy.
"People on twitter will really be like "you believe in voting? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, firebombing a Walmart" and then not firebomb a Walmart" [0]
Well, Luigi firebombed a Walmart.
Is that a valid strategy for enacting societal change? Perhaps not. But this republic accepts and engages in war. And as Clusewitz says, ""War is the continuation of policy with other means." [1]
Perhaps Luigi is also pursuing policy change through other means. I have to say that watching American politicians and law enforcement agencies treat the man who at worst committed one murder (alleged; innocent until proven guilty) with the wrath and civil rights abuses previously only reserved for terrorists associated with 9/11 makes me believe that his actions genuinely shocked the system.
>the wrath and civil rights abuses previously only reserved for terrorists associated with 9/11 makes me believe that his actions genuinely shocked the system.
When people responded positively or indifferently to the killing of Thompson, the ruling class took notice. That's REAL power, a new sensation to most Americans. I can hope only good things can come of this realization.
Regardless of whether or not you think it's valid, it's clearly very effective. No major social change for the better has EVER happened in history without such actions.
It seems to go like this:
1. One group calmly demands some sensible thing. They might do some protests.
2. The powers that be say no, because they like the status quo. They might arrest some people for peaceful protesting.
3. A different group does some violence.
4. The powers that be acquiesce to the first group because the alternative is continued violence. The second group has no basis to continue the violence once the first group is acquiesced to.
5. History paints the first group as the ones who caused change and the second group as bad people who shouldn't have done what they did.
It's got to be one of those psychological sales tricks. Door in the face technique?
Anyway, this is the ONLY way that regular people have EVER caused things to change for the better, so take that into consideration. (Whatever counter-example you're thinking of is probably not actually a counter-example)
> Perhaps Luigi is also pursuing policy change through other means.
Luigi, a person with zero history of political activism, with no record of organizing for anything, decides his only open political alternative is to kill the CEO of an insurance company, not registering new voters or organizing his workplace for better health coverage or driving old folks to the polls.
I don't know? That sounds less like rational political activism than a mentally disturbed lone gunman to me.
It sounds like someone who has analyzed the situation and decided that this is the only thing that works, and that it's better if someone without a record does it.
The average American citizen has less influence on politics in their "republic" than a citizen of a dictatorship. Only the will of the financial elite actually has influence. See Gilens and Page 2014.
It really doesn't matter if people are convinced to want single payer or not, it isn't going to happen. There are many, many systems in place to prevent the will of the people from happening if the elite don't want it.
Be careful what you wish for. I live in Canada. We have single payer health care here. The system is collapsing. Practitioners are getting burned out and extremely unhappy. Waiting lists for many common procedures just keep getting longer and longer. Many people don’t have access to a family physician and ER waiting rooms are overcrowded.
>You need to convince other people single payer health care is the right policy.
I think we've effectively already done that. What people actually want does not impact the way in which our government functions, despite popular belief.
The people in this country have absolutely no power and are tired of it. You can't vote out a parasitic system that exists only to extract as much from you as possible. The people who "represent" us only focus on culture war bullshit INTENTIONALLY, to distract from the fact that the one of two preselected candidates we have basically represent the same despicable capitalists and their same interests of stripping us of everything you have so they can have more shit they don't need, while the rest of us are fighting over their droppings.
> What people actually want does not impact the way in which our government functions, despite popular belief.
The US just elected a president despite a years-long coordinated media and legal effort to make him disappear, along with multiple assassination attempts. So, yes, what the people want does actually matter. They just don't happen to want what you think they should want.
> So, yes, what the people want does actually matter.
No, it doesn't. Unless what they want aligns with what the ruling class and interest groups want. [0] The propaganda arm of the ruling class, of course, endeavors to get the public on their side precisely because violence ensues when they push too far without public buy-in.
The ruling class used its propaganda arm to manufacture consent for "I don't like him as a person, but he's good for the economy". I imagine this also represents many of their own views on Trump: what they appear to support is not necessarily what they support. That is, they might very publicly and loudly say they don't like him, but they love to see their decreased tax payment come tax season.
None of this is ideologically binary though. The ruling class is going to support whatever it thinks will allow it to continue to be the ruling class. They're not always in 100% agreement on what that is (or, at least, they want to have that appearance). If they aren't careful (and they haven't been as of late) and continue to whittle away at the populace's material conditions, it will lead to more violence, and possibly violent revolution.
And four years before that they elected a literal corpse because they were so sick of Donald Trump. And yet, somehow, the 2024 election was borderline the same.
Did literally anyone want Trump v Biden v 2.0? No. Literally nobody wanted that.
Did anyone actually want Kamala? No. Literally nobody wanted that.
>coordinated media and legal effort to make him disappear
Donald Trump is the most reported-on person of the past 10 years. This sentence does not make sense.
>along with multiple assassination attempts
You put this in the same sentence to make it seem like his "assassins" were on the same page as the media. They were not. Both of them were highly ineffective and downright cringey with their plans.
You definitely haven't. Lots of Americans would be deeply unhappy if single payer healthcare were implemented tomorrow. Say what you will about whether they should be convinced, but they haven't been.
The majority is convinced. Nearly 70% support Medicare for All across multiple polls and that’s with the leadership of both major parties, corporate interests, and news media aligned against.
>The people in this country have absolutely no power and are tired of it. You can't vote out a parasitic system that exists only to extract as much from you as possible. The people who "represent" us only focus on culture war bullshit INTENTIONALLY, to distract from the fact that the one of two preselected candidates we have basically represent the same despicable capitalists and their same interests of stripping us of everything you have so they can have more shit they don't need, while the rest of us are fighting over their droppings.
I miss old-school conspiracy theorists like Ron Unz who actually have sophisticated arguments for what they believe.
The internet is now full of handwavey conspiratorial BS that's "not even wrong". Who is writing all of this stuff?
At least the 9/11 truthers made specific false claims.
Again, the distinction I'm drawing is: 9/11 conspiracy theorists at least tried to present factual arguments for their claims. You haven't done so, and I don't think you ever will. (Insofar as your "claims" can even be hammered down -- they're incredibly vague.)
It's not a point in your favor that your flavor of conspiratorial thinking is so widespread despite its thin evidence base.
Oh, grow up. Nobody is saying "Murder is ok". They are saying that some killing, sometimes, can be worth it to further a certain political aim, which is obvious to anyone who knows any history.
Are you saying the murder of Brian Thompson is ok, or not?
If it’s ok to murder the CEO of a health insurance company, how about the CTO? How about a director? How about a manager of claims adjusters? How about an adjuster?
How about the CEO of Exxon? How about Twitter? What about a engineering manager of the team who actually implements the parts of these companies you think are evil?
Don’t tell me it can’t happen - if lots of people are on Luigi’s side, there will surely be a lot of diversity among the opinions of his followers. Somebody shot 3 people at the YouTube HQ because the company was biased against veganism.
What’s the limiting principle here? Are you sure you aren’t on the “ok to murder” list?
I suspect the interest in the case comes mainly from the fact that Mangione doesn’t fit the typical “nothing left to lose” profile of most killers, especially outside of the crime-of-passion genre. A man with prospects doing such things may signal a turning of the tides in a way that makes some discontents hopeful. I personally don’t think it’s a good sign, but I can understand where people are coming from.
I mean the polls weren't really wrong re: 2024? But even if they were, wouldn't such polls, if biased re: Trump and law and order Rs, be worse for Mangione?
2024 election polls were wrong. Every single one had it either at a coin-flip odd between the two, or Kamala leading 1 point. It was 2 months ago, this isn't hard to remember.
How it came out, in fact, was Trump winning popular vote with 2 million more votes than kamala, and almost 90 more electoral votes. That's FAR from coin-flip odds, and don't even get me started on the swing state polls, with Trump winning every single one.
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Yeah, the biased nature of most people not wanting to publicly sympathize with an early political vigilante WOULD make polls regarding him worse, despite the fact they do. I completely agree with you.
Trump won the popular vote by 1.5%, which is a few percent off from the polling average. If the polling on Mangione is similarly off by a few percent (within the margin of error), it hardly affects our interpretation of the results.
Give me a break. The polls weren't based on who will get the popular vote. They were based on electoral votes, with swing states polls being that exact toss-up (you can check them again).
He ended up winning every single swing state, muuuch farther than the projections of ANY polls that was getting time-of-day.
Even if you want to die on that purposely misinterpreting hill, it still shows they were inaccurate and unreliable.
Let’s take PA since it’s the tipping point state. Polling average had Harris at a 0.2% lead. Actual result was Trump with 1.7% lead. That’s a 1.9% error.
So, “muuuch farther than the projections of ANY polls” is wrong.
Correlated error between states is expected, and not relevant (ie. if you think Mangione poll is affected by this few % correlated error, again it doesn’t change the interpretation).
Overall, election results tend to come pretty close to the polls. They are often wrong by a little bit, occasionally by a lot, which is what you’d expect based on the theory of polling and statistics. The conclusion is asking a large random sample of people what they think, using the best methodologies the polling industry has developed, is a pretty good way of finding out what most people think (within a few % margin of error), certainly more objective than a vibe check of your personal echo chamber. If your argument depends on completely dismissing polling results, you’re probably wrong.
I thought you were someone else, but now that I know you're not - I want to make something clear: I think that social desirability bias affected the answers of respondents much more [1].
To be clear, that's not the MARGIN of error in those statistics, but rather the difference between predicted and actual. In a five-tier scale, separated between groups, there is already statistical manipulation by having fewer respondents per-category, and therefore a higher margin of error between each. A margin of error even in low single-digit percentages can completely compromise the outcomes of data presented in this fashion.
How wrong do you believe this poll is? Can you use some methodology to come up with a modified margin of error that encompasses what you believe to be more realistic?
"How wrong" is something I can't quantify. It’s tough to pin down a single “modified margin of error,” but I’d say it’s bigger than what the poll shows. Multi-tier questions automatically have smaller sample sizes per option, which inflates the margin of error. Throw in social desirability bias (people not wanting to admit an unpopular opinion) and you get systematic skews on top of random error.
>2024 election polls were wrong. Every single one had it either at a coin-flip odd between the two, or Kamala leading 1 point. It was 2 months ago, this isn't hard to remember.
>How it came out, in fact, was Trump winning popular vote with 2 million more votes than kamala, and almost 90 more electoral votes. That's FAR from coin-flip odds, and don't even get me started on the swing state polls, with Trump winning every single one.
It sounds like the polls were off about the popular vote by a few percentage points at most.
That meant a lot in the US election context, because the candidates were neck-and-neck.
It wouldn't change the basic picture of Mangione's support in the YouGov poll.
Why do I see so many basic reasoning errors like this on Hacker News? I thought this was supposed to be an intelligent forum with intelligent posters.
>"It wouldn't change the basic picture of Mangione's support in the YouGov poll."
My single sentence underneath the horizontal divider in a sub-thread that primarily diverted to discussing the 2024 Election polls, and their accuracy, addresses that. Why didn't you quote that anywhere in your reply?
>"Social desirability concerns can be seen as a special case of the threat of disclosure, involving a specific type of interpersonal consequence of revealing information in a survey—social disapproval. The literature on social desirability is voluminous, and it features divergent conceptualizations and operationalizations of the notion of socially desirable responding (DeMaio, 1984). One fundamental difference among the different approaches lies in whether they treat socially desirable responding as a stable personality characteristic or a temporary social strategy (DeMaio, 1984). The view that socially desirable responding is, at least in part, a personality trait underlies psychologists’ early attempts to develop various social desirability scales. Though some of these efforts (e.g., Edwards, 1957; Philips & Clancy, 1970, 1972) recognize the possibility that social desirability is a property of the items rather than (or as well as) of the respondents, many of them treat socially desirable responding as a stable personality characteristic (e.g., Crowne & Marlowe, 1964; Schuessler, Hittle, & Cardascia, 1978). By contrast, survey researchers have tended to view socially desirable responding as a response strategy reflecting the sensitivity of specific items for specific individuals; thus, Sudman and Bradburn (1974) had interviewers rate the social desirability of potential answers to specific survey questions.
>
>Paulhus’s (2002) work encompasses both viewpoints, making a distinction between socially desirable responding as a response style (a bias that is “consistent across time and questionnaires”; Paulhus, 2002, p. 49) and as a response set (a short-lived bias “attributable to some temporary distraction or motivation”; Paulhus, 2002, p. 49).
>
>A general weakness with scales designed to measure socially desirable responding is that they lack “true” scores, making it difficult or impossible to distinguish among (a) respondents who are actually highly compliant with social norms, (b) those who have a sincere but inflated view of themselves, and (c) those who are deliberately trying to make a favorable impression by falsely reporting positive things about themselves"
Why is it that so much online discussion of Mangione's actions is supportive?
Wouldn't social desirability bias predict that people would be reluctant to support Mangione's actions in any way which might be traced back to them personally?
Hypothetical evil plutocrats would be far more likely to dig up your social media history to get your take on Mangione than somehow obtain your response to a telephone poll.
The supportive online climate suggests that supporting Mangione could even be more socially desirable. There is social pressure to support him.
In any case, your Harris/Trump example suggests that social desirability effects should be on the order of perhaps 2-3 percentage points in a poll. So it wouldn't represent a drastic change to the overall picture.
My theory: Mangione cleaves society along an "extremely online" vs "touch grass" axis.
The passionate social media addicts, who see conspiracies and exploitation everywhere, support Mangione.
The "touch grass" people understand that healthcare is a systemic problem which requires systemic solutions. Political murders undermine the social contract, increase the likelihood of subsequent political murders, and contribute to the unraveling of society.
The "touch grass" people are underrepresented in online arguments, but well-represented in a randomized poll.
>"Wouldn't social desirability bias predict that people would be reluctant to support Mangione's actions in any way which might be traced back to them personally?"
I think you inadvertently answered your question with the preceding question to this one. Because it's harder to trace back a lot (not all) of individuals from their online identities to personal identities, they're probably more willing to show support for Mangione there, than in places that trace back to them directly.
Who are "touch grass" people? What are you talking about?
People under the age of 30, who have never experienced a day of their lives in a broken or failed state which includes political violence as an everyday occurrence, think political violence is a good idea. Because... they like LARPing as downwardly mobile lefties?
Seriously, ask a few asylum seekers from Honduras or El Salvador what they think about political violence. I guarantee you not a one will tell you about how romantic it all is.
Because political violence is obviously something to be scared of, not something to "revere". Like -- we can see it happen elsewhere. We can watch it on the tube every night.
It's not "edgy", Daria. Put down the hair dye and the kitchen sheers. You're too old to play act revolutionary.
Sure, if you diminish and demean absolutely everyone who disagrees with you, then you're left in a bubble where your truth is the only obvious correct one.
I know old white guys who are the same way. The craziest thing is how "open-minded" they imagine themselves to be!
the irony of this entire post ranting about the views of "children" (classified as people under...30?) when presented with evidence contrary to your beliefs.
> Seriously, ask a few asylum seekers from Honduras or El Salvador what they think about political violence.
Why not ask some US citizens ? Or does assasination attempts at a running candidate does not count as political violence ? Or assasination of a president FWIW ?
Sure -- the two ends of the political horseshoe do seem to admire political violence more and more. But I'd take issue with "revered". Perhaps "revered" among the very liberal and very online, all of whom must certainly be mentally ill to revere political violence in the US in this climate.
And to think what will rise from the ashes of lefty political violence will be a lefty utopia? Of course it will be fascism. Of course.
Be careful with this horseshoe theory, as it's been around for more than a century without any real traction in academic research and in fact been very much contradicted by recent studies. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
This has to be one of the goofiest nitpicks because remove the "horseshoe theory" language from above the point and the above point is the still the same.
"Sure -- the two ends of the political spectrum do seem to admire political violence..."
People die when they’re denied affordable healthcare. They see their loved ones be treated like shit by insurance companies. Its another form of extreme injustice to those who experience it, similar to war and civil rights.
Don't you think thats jsut so ironic? It's not a civil rights issue in the USA and that is the exact problem.
The healthcare system in America is completely dysfunctional. Countless people's lives are being ruined and lost. Corporations like UnitedHealthcare are intentionally perpetuating this. The leaders of these companies are conciously complicit in all of this.
There are reforms being proposed constantly because of these incredibly predatory and exploitative Corporations, again conciously lead by these leaders.
These Corporations and the people leading them are evil, they're exploiting innocent sick people for profit and they've managed to convince people like you that it's not a civil rights issue. That is the exact problem here.
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
The UN isn't going to build you a house or grow you any food or really do anything. It doesn't matter what they say. I can write lots of pretty words about how everyone should have a pony and never be sad when I'm not responsible for making it happen.
It's a set of guidelines, not a set of promises from the UN. Countries/societies/communities are who implement policies and systems that support and correlate with these extremely-broadly-agreed-upon guidelines.
My point is that health care is absolutely an element of rights (though perhaps categorized separately from _civil_ rights, though that's getting quite nitpicky).
I don't think the UN is the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not a right. Not that something being a "right" really means anything unless you have a way to enforce it.
At the time of this Universal Declaration of Human Rights being published, the UN had 54 member countries[0]. Not sure what organization in human history is better positioned to author such a declaration.
Further, nitpicking around the definition of "rights", or who is worthy of declaring them has zero relevance to the point I'm making - that health care is traditionally an element of human rights policies and/or has a deep connection to the subject of human rights.
I'm going to quote it right here so it is clear what you're describing.
"Americans are twice as likely to view Luigi Mangione — who was charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson — very or somewhat unfavorably (43%) than favorably (23%).
But adults under 30 are more likely to view Mangione favorably than unfavorably (39% to 30%). Those between the ages of 30 and 44 are evenly divided (28% to 29%)
Liberals are much more likely to view Mangione favorably than are conservatives"
One in four is not "extremely limited". The age group where unfavourable wins clearly is 44+.
This poll report also suffers from the US brain worm that calls everything but the far right "liberal". It's likely most of those that see Mangione's direct action favourably are actually leftists, and some fascists of the kind that follow Ben Shapiro and commented negatively about his coverage.
The US healthcare profiteers have killed many more people than Mangione, likely thousands, since he killed Thompson.
If someone had murdered Hitler I'd support that person. Wouldn't you? Could have saved 11 million lives. But Germany would still have sent him to prison for life because he broke the rules.
If Hitler has been assassinated before he came to power then we wouldn’t have any idea of the significance of that. It’d be hard to say anyone would have supported the assassin besides the most ardent of the Nazi party’s political opponents.
Seriously, I get that the US healthcare system is brutal and terrible, but this is not how you handle it (and I don't think insurance companies are even the root of the problem).
With dysfunctional government and people in power abusing the population, the first step response is unhinged folks doing unhinged things.
> but this is not how you handle it
The problem being that the mechanisms for handling it aren't working (judicial, executive, legislative, regulatory, stockholders, public pressure). The next steps of handling it are unhinged folks doing unhinged things. Several more steps down the road handling it means ordinary folks doing revolutionary things.
This is what long term dysfunctional government not representing the people looks like. This is a result of the politics of fear.
The end of this path looks like a bloodthirsty mob with a guillotine. After the French got disgusted with themselves having executed 30,000 to 50,000 people they overthrew the revolutionaries and were promptly taken over by Napoleon.
The structural problems that lead to this kind of popular support for an unhinged dude assassinating a CEO need to be addressed, and the fix doesn't focus on unhinged dudes or public opinion of them.
