Hometown girl eulogizes murdered friend

Maddy McGarry worries that our country is experiencing “moral desensitization.” The regularity of posts and comments celebrating the killer is dispiriting, a stain on the American character. I agree.

Dear Maddy McGarry,

I read your fine piece in the

Des Moines Brewster

. I do have a couple comments. First, I have been to Jewell many times—to South Hamilton HS. I was the teacher rep for ISEA in the ‘70s and ‘80s. But that’s about 40 years ago. I remember fine, veteran teachers, but no names hang with me. I’ve been retired for a while. I imagine many of them are too.

If we strip away the biographies of Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione and consider only the facts, as reported in the media: a man (Mangione) stalked another man (Thompson) and shot and killed him, hence, the alleged murder is cut and dried.

That Thompson was an insurance exec from small-town Iowa is interesting but not relevant at trial. Same for Mangione‘s bio, unless his lawyers raise an insanity defense, trying to say the sticks and stones of his life had driven him to extreme distraction amounting to mental illness that drove him to act in a felonious manner. I doubt that’d stick.

That Thompson was from Jewell, a tight-knit town, as you say, of “idyllic charm (with a) Main Street and tranquil disposition (that) can make anyone feel at home after weathering the political storms of Washington” is interesting, but relevant only to you and we on-lookers who want to remember him well. It increases our sympathy for one (Thompson) and our distain for the other (Mangione), but not especially relevant in court.

But I really like your worry that our country is experiencing “moral desensitization,” which (as you say) is shared by many. This is a theme I’d like you to explore. I agree that we as a people have become too immune to harsh talk, accusations, and rude online backtalk, the kind you’d never hear in the grocery store checkout line. I have some guilt here, but not in heroizing villains. Your examples of moral desensitization are chilling.

“I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers,” jeered someone in an X post. In Seattle, a digital street sign was tampered with the words “One less CEO, many more to go.” In an interview with Piers Morgan, commentator Taylor Lorenz proclaimed, “I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy," following Brian’s death. You can find a plethora of other brazen comments that are frankly unfit to repeat.

And yes, people who make it to the top of the mountain are often characterized as the villain, regardless of their path. This is particularly true in politics, as you may have found working for Senator Ernst.

Reportedly, Senator Romney had to hire private security at $5000 per day after he spoke out about the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. I suggest McKay Coppins’s piece in The Atlantic (September 13, 2023) about Romney’s struggles with life in the U.S. Senate after his vote to convict Donald Trump in his first impeachment.

News reporters, not in the financial category of CEOs, are criticized, sometimes with threatened violence, as are the newspapers they work for. The Des Moines Register is regularly criticized for a “liberal” bent when a news story doesn’t meet with approval.

How does “hate” rise to the level of violence? Or why are acts of hate-based violence celebrated is some circles?

Murders like these bring to mind Lincoln’s assassination where John Wilkes Booth planned and conspired with others to act on their shared hatred, probably thinking themselves heroic in their deeds. Booth was shot while escaping and his conspirators hung. The victim, a great man, otherwise heroic and well deserving of a night off with his wife at a local theater. In the South, raw from the ravages of a Civil War, a commentator might easily claim to feel “joy” on hearing of Lincoln’s death.

As you put it so well, “The public’s rejection of basic moral principles is damning.”

Yet, despite their respective biographies, had Booth been tried in a court of law, the question for the prosecutor would have been simply, “Did this man kill this other man by premeditation.” Had the trial been in Atlanta, finding a jury willing to forego their distain for the Union would have been an essential problem.

Which brings me to the separate issue: Maybe corporate America is “completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people,” as Mangione allegedly said. As you say, the statement is worth unpacking.

But, for me, “unpacking” means an examination of the practices of corporate health insurers. This is regardless of Thompson’s reputation as a high-performing academic and star athlete who was destined to be a leader.

As you rightly say. “Like many CEOs and corporate leaders, Brian Thompson found himself at the helm of a ship caught in troubled waters. He was unilaterally blamed for systemic issues within an industry, issues that had far more to do with broader practices than one sole individual’s decisions.” I do wonder, and you don’t say, had Thompson been threatened before?

Before unpacking those troubled waters, let’s take Thompson out of the equation. Corporations that promise much but deliver little or are corrupt or unfair need to be held to account, if indeed (as you say), “ … the suffering of millions of Americans who have been denied insurance coverage is indisputable.”

If, in the unpacking, the CEO of United HealthCare Medicare & Retirement, only for example, or his company, is found to have wrongly denied coverage or, as some claim, routinely denied claims, then people, not only abstract companies, should be held to account.

I like your closing paragraph, or at least the first half.

We owe it to Brian to not only restore our civility but redeem basic morality. Or else we might as well tell every small-town kid that their hopes and dreams may very well be shot down.

We, as Americans, must restore civility and redeem basic morality. Our in-coming president has shown to have a shortage of both civility and morality. He has work to do on both. But whether or not the president turns his back on lying, indiscretion, or infidelity, we should not, should never, tell kids that their own personal hopes and dreams are for naught. That would be a disservice to the valdictoran of the 1993 class of South Hamilton High School in Jewell, Iowa.

Sincerely,

Gerald Ott, Ankeny