The wind starts from the tip of the green ripples!
On December 9, local time, Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth Insurance Company, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, was arrested in Pennsylvania.
Subsequently, Luigi Mangione’s personal information was exposed, and his identity labels surprised many Americans (perhaps many people were afraid):
Rich family;
Excellent grades;
“Other people’s good children” served as graduation representatives;
Graduated from Ivy League;
High IQ;
Family “shocked and sad”;
Good career prospects, etc.
For any country, such people are definitely good family children and elites, and are the cornerstones for a country to maintain stability and long-term survival.
I wonder if these personal labels are familiar to everyone?
On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty U.S. Air Force soldier, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in the United States in a global live broadcast to protest Israel’s atrocities in Palestine. At first, Americans thought he was a bewitched extremist. It would have been fine if they hadn’t dug up the information, but once they did, it made Americans in Washington terrified.
Military family;
Air Force elites have good career prospects;
Wealthy family;
Excellent grades;
High IQ;
Family “shocked and saddened”;
Helpful and loving.
Even the American chaebol media, which is good at turning black and white and accusing extremists and mentally ill people, is speechless in the face of such an innocent resume and dares not to accuse them casually. Because in the United States, there is no one who is a better family than Aaron Bushnell.
Not only do the two have almost identical personality labels, but there are also two coincidences that are not coincidences.
The coincidence is:
First, both are top students in computer science.
Aaron Bushnell has been engaged in software development and Linux system management since joining the U.S. Air Force. He is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering and has obtained the CompTIA Security+ certification, which shows that he has the basic skills to perform core security functions and engage in IT security careers.
Luigi Mangione graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science. According to his LinkedIn profile, he majored in artificial intelligence and also minored in mathematics. It is rumored in the social media game circle that this person is a master of game software and has fixed more than 300 bugs in the game Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.
Second, the two are calm, planned, and decisive.
After the surveillance video of Luigi Mangione assassinating Brian Thompson was made public, many people initially thought that it was done by a professional killer because he was too calm, the gun jammed without panic, and after the target of the assassination fell to the ground, he slowly stepped forward to shoot to ensure that he was killed in one shot.
The brief information released after the arrest also shows that Luigi Mangione’s assassination of Brian Thompson was not a spur-of-the-moment action, but an action that was carefully planned, with a plan and a confession written and full preparations made for it.
What about Aaron Bushnell? On the day of the self-immolation, he walked and said to the live camera, “My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active-duty soldier in the US Air Force, and I will no longer participate in genocide. I am about to take extreme protest actions, but this is not extreme at all compared to what the Palestinians are going through.” Then he dressed neatly, doused himself with gasoline and set it on fire, shouting “Free Palestine” in the flames.
It was Aaron Bushnell who explained who I am, what I am going to do, and why I did it before he died, blocking the channels that might throw dirty water on him, so the public opinion was almost one-sided and particularly shocking.
It is not a coincidence. Because in the modern public opinion information environment, the seemingly open knowledge and cultural system is actually a small information cocoon, it is easy to be trapped in your own world and be coerced into cognition. Only people who are as calm as the two “Inners” and have the necessary computer information technology can obtain enough information and touch upon the truth of this world.
The social impact of the two events is extremely strong, even beyond the United States itself.
After Aaron Bushnell’s death, although the US government tried its best to downplay the suppression and even labeled him as a “mental patient in need of assistance”, it still could not stop the American people from mourning him in various forms. Later in late April, a massive protest broke out on American campuses, protesting that the US government was an accomplice and executioner of the Israeli Palestinian massacre.
So much so that the American ruling class panicked, forcing them to have a rare consensus on anti-China, and in less than two weeks, they issued a shocking “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act” in early May.
Although there was not much objection to the characterization of Luigi Mangione’s assassination of the president of the United Insurance Company as a deliberate homicide, the comments under the relevant news in traditional media and the discussion on social media about the incident were all applauded by ordinary American people.
Even many Americans call him “the modern American Robin Hood”. According to the US media NBC, most people responded to the official Facebook post of UnitedHealth Group on Thompson’s death with the “laughing” emoji. Of the approximately 40,000 replies, 35,000 used the “hahaha” emoji and only 2,200 used the “sad” emoji.
Such an outrageous contrast, of course, has its reasons. The United States’ own survey shows that the growth rate of US health insurance costs far exceeds inflation. In 2023, about 81% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with their health insurance costs in the United States, the highest level in 16 years. At the same time, a large number of patients who should have been protected were rejected by health insurance companies, and the rejection rate rose from 10.9% in 2020 to 22.7% in 2022. The UnitedHealth Group, whose CEO was assassinated, is the highest in the industry, with a rate of 32%.
What impact will the assassination of Luigi Mangione have in the future? It is still fermenting. Perhaps, just as the U.S. ruling class timidly and quickly introduced the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act after Aaron Bushnell’s death, the long-standing gun ban in the United States will have some kind of turnaround.
After all, you have to live to spend your money. Now that the American people have guns, they are no longer killing each other, but pointing them at the exploitative ruling class.
Can bad laws and gun bans really stop Americans from awakening?
Self-immolation protests at the beginning of the year and gun counterattacks at the end of the year show that the dissatisfaction of the American people has reached a certain critical value. This is the inevitable result of the U.S. ruling class’s aggressive nature abroad and crazy exploitation of extreme social polarization at home.
On December 13, the Global Times and other media quoted public data saying that thanks to the recent rise in Tesla’s stock price, Musk’s personal wealth exceeded 447 billion U.S. dollars, becoming the first person in history.
What is the concept of 447 billion? Among the more than 190 countries and regions in the world, there will be only 37 countries with a GDP of more than 400 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. According to data released by the International Monetary Fund in April this year, Musk can be ranked 32nd, second only to Norway’s $485.5 billion.
The concept of being rich enough to rival a country has never been so concrete. In the United States, this is not an isolated phenomenon. And these rich people are getting richer and richer. As mentioned above, the UnitedHealth Group’s insurance profit has risen from $12 billion in 2021 to more than $16 billion in 2023.
Where do their profits come from? The 32% rejection rate is the answer. At the same time, these billionaires and dignitaries are still not satisfied. Not only are they insider trading the “per capita stock god” on Capitol Hill, they also take various means to find loopholes to avoid taxes.
For example, the news that Nvidia President Huang Renxun was rumored to have evaded taxes of $8 billion recently has become a hot search on major platforms. And doing this like him is an open secret in the circle of wealthy people in the United States. When reporting on Huang Renxun’s tax evasion, the New York Times also said that Blackstone Group founder Stephen Schwarzman, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and executives of companies such as Google, Coinbase, Eli Lilly, Mastercard, and AMD have all transferred billions of dollars into financial instruments to evade the U.S. federal estate tax.
With such polarization of social wealth, the dissatisfaction of the American people has naturally been going on for a long time. However, this kind of resistance led by the middle-class wealthy elite and good family children and taking such drastic measures is the first time.
And when such a signal appears in a society, it is often like a spark! How far is the United States from revolution?
Of course, this kind of wealth polarization is not unique to the United States. This is also the reason why the two things have caused widespread heated discussions around the world. If a society does not solve the wealth polarization and does not respect the laws of history and society, no matter how powerful or wealthy you are, you cannot be immune.