I guess I should talk about the UHC CEO murder
This isn’t going to be long. We all know what happened, but for clarification, here’s the briefest of overviews.
On December 4th, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed by a masked assailant outside the New York Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan. The shell casings found at the scene had the words ‘deny’, ‘depose’, and ‘defend’, engraved on them. This is believed to have been a targeted attack as the three words are similar to the title of a book that is critical of the health insurance industry called Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
The assailant fled the scene on an e-bike, which he ditched in Central Park. He left his backpack in the park, but was still able to evade capture. At last report, the suspect is believed to have fled New York City by bus.
Now, I’m reading that the backpack contained a jacket and some Monopoly money. I would imagine that was probably intended for another statement.
New York City authorities even believe they have identified the suspect, but have not released his name at the time I’m writing this on late Sunday afternoon.
Now, normally, I don’t celebrate murderers. However, in a morbid way, you almost have to admire what he pulled off. While murder is never the answer, the crime he executed (poor choice of words, I know) was virtually flawless.
There’s a phrase I occasionally flaunt that I picked up in my youth. I forget if got it from one of my teachers, or if it came from a movie. I don’t even remember if I’m saying it right. But the phrase goes something like, “There are a hundred things that go wrong with any crime. If you can think of a dozen, you’re a genius.”
This guy must have thought of tons of things that could go wrong and compensated for them. The only place where he messed up was the one time he allowed his face to be seen. Otherwise, I don’t remember a crime that was planned this meticulously that caught the public’s attention like this.
I mean, he was able to slip in and out of the city with the country’s supposedly best police force on his trail. They look like a bunch of chumps now.
Do I think he’s the next D. B. Cooper, where he will evade authorities for decades? No, I don’t think it will even be close. We have too many security cameras and people with smartphones who are constantly recording something. He will eventually be spotted somewhere. As a matter of fact, I’m trying to rush this blog post out before he gets caught.
Then there’s the matter of ‘internet sleuths’. Some of them say they’re going to help catch the gunman, while others say they won’t. I have a terrible disdain for these so-called sleuths. They’re too quick to make accusations where an online lynch mob can turn into real life vigilantes, and then an innocent person gets hurt.
There’s only one sleuth whose opinion matters to me, and he knows who he is. He’s been doing it for two decades, and he’s a professional. The rest of you, get off of TikTok, put your phone down, and go back to watching Dateline.
A meme circulating online poses the question whether CEO shootings could become as common as school shootings, and whether such events might finally lead to meaningful changes in gun control laws. I’m guilty of sharing this meme as well.
I think the answer to both of those questions is no. There will be future attempts on the lives of CEOs in my opinion. Whenever there is a major crime like this, there is almost inevitably a series of copycats. But the difference between CEOs and schools is CEOs can afford to beef up their security while schools have to fight and scratch for every penny they need just for supplies and materials, while the misinformed parents waste schools’ time and money over CRT and things being too woke.
As far as gun control goes, the 2nd Amendment crowd is too entrenched in our society right now, especially with the new Trump administration coming in. The only way there will be gun control is if it somehow oppresses already marginalized groups. But you never know. In the next four years, we might see legislation passed that prohibits people of color and the LGBTQ+ community from owning firearms.
I do think, in the next four years, we will see an increase in left-wing political violence not seen since the 1960s and 70s, such as the Weather Underground bombings.
So, I guess the million-dollar question is, would I notify the authorities if I happened to run into the suspect? Well, the odds of that happening are slim, but it’s not impossible. To be honest, I don’t know. I know it sounds like a cop out, but I guess it’s one of those things you won’t know until it happens.
