There Will Be 20 Million Luigi Mangiones
Social karma is coming.
It’s the early hours of a cold December morning, and the city that never sleeps is as close to slumber as it gets. That is, until a gunshot echoes outside the New York Hilton Hotel, a body is discovered lifeless on the pavement, and the microcosm of US politics is forever changed. Allegedly, Luigi Mangione had just killed Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare. Why would he do that? Well, because, despite United Healthcare being one of the most profitable companies in the US, Thompson was clamping down on insurance claims even further, systematically denying people vital healthcare on an industrial scale, all to bolster his bottom line. Mangione had seen the effects of this cruel greed and had even experienced the impacts firsthand. So, was this killing justified? After all, Thompson had more blood on his hands than his assassin. A significant portion of the US, both on the left and the right, believed the murder was justified. Sadly though, Thompson’s sorry tale is just an example of foreshadowing.
The Oval Office has been the epicentre for some of the most revolutionary moments of the past 100 years. Truman gave the order to unleash nuclear bombs upon Japan, Nixon resigned, Clinton had an affair, and Bush Jr. addressed the nation after 9/11, all from this one office. On Independence Day, 2025, sitting at the Oval Office desk, Trump signed into law his Big Beautiful Bill — an act just as devastating as Hiroshima and Nagasaki and just as lewd as Clinton.
This bill strips up to 20 million people of their Medicare. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest that 12 million Americans will lose access to Medicare purely so the government can create substantial tax breaks for the top one percent. This is ignoring the fact that wealth inequality in the US is currently worse than it was during the Gilded Age. Unfortunately, these horrific cuts aren’t enough to pay for Trump’s tax breaks, so the US’s deficit is set to explode. In short, Trump isn’t just taking away people’s healthcare; he is bankrupting the country and making it so returning these vital services down the line is near impossible. It’s an easy way to line your and your mates’ pockets with even more billions of dollars.
This bill’s impact on the US’s healthcare system dwarfs Brian Thompson’s history of systemically denying insurance claims, not just in absolute numbers, but in who it attacks. The most vulnerable, such as the disabled and elderly, rely on Medicare to stay alive. Every American will either be horrifically affected by this or love someone who is horrifically affected.
So, the rich are getting richer, while the 99% are forced to face systematic abuse, trauma, grief and death. It took a whole lot less than this to (allegedly) spark Mangione’s actions.
And this brutalisation — this decision to put the profits of oligarchs before the needs of the people — goes even further.
DOGE was supposed to carve the way for this bill by cutting out trillions of dollars’ worth of “waste and fraud” from the government. Inconveniently, it found neither waste nor fraud and instead decided to gut crucial services that keep people alive, all to save an infinitesimal fraction of the annual budget. We are now seeing the impact of that decision.
Over the weekend, Texas experienced a horrific flood that killed at least 28 children, and the death toll has increased to more than 70 people at the time of writing. In modern times, this is an unprecedented death toll for this kind of flood. It turns out that the cuts made to the National Weather Service (NWS) by DOGE severely impacted its ability to provide accurate and timely forecasts. As such, vast numbers of the population were unaware of this impending disaster and were unable to evacuate or take measures to protect themselves.
And it isn’t just the NWS. NOAA, the FAA, and the EPA have also experienced these damaging cuts, which severely impede their ability to protect US citizens from natural and man-made disasters. With climate change beginning to bite and industry deregulation imminent, these threats are going to become more frequent and more deadly.
Again, people, young and old alike, are dying because of thoughtless, devastating decisions made exclusively to give gargantuan tax breaks to the wealthiest.
The microcosm that sparked the most politically paradigm-shifting assassination since Martin Luther King Jr. has now been rolled out nationwide.
Six million people, or 1.7% of the US population, peacefully protested during ‘No Kings’ Day. These were the reasonable people. The people who feel they still have a leg to stand on, who believe the democratic process will enable change before they are forced to enter the pearly gates. With the horrific damage DOGE caused becoming more evident by the day and the Big Beautiful Bill literally ripping tens of millions of Americans’ lifelines away, this isn’t the case anymore. Depravity, trauma and death are about to be brutally imposed upon them and their loved ones. This is enough to turn even the most reasonable people into violent vigilantes and to push the most unreasonable in society to take drastic action.
This is not a threat, nor a call to arms, but a realistic assessment of American society and the direction in which it is headed. Mangione was just the warm-up, a taste of what is to come. Millions more will be carved into his image over the coming months and years. What happens next is anyone’s guess. But what is guaranteed is that the fine line of ethics and morals will be bent and twisted, and things will get messy.
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Sources: USA News Today, BBC, Common Dreams, BBC, BMJ, Will Lockett, Inequality.org, BBC
The US is going to get a lot worse, and it's already a violent society. But whether the violence will be directed against oligarchs or other poor people remains to be soon. Oppression doesn't always produce effective resistance
Medicaid, not Medicare, is being chopped down by the BBB. American health insurance is a quagmire so I can’t fault you for confusing them. Medicare recipients will see reductions in services as rural and inner city hospitals close but it’s the myth of able-bodied Medicaid cheats that gave the Nazis the excuse to take insurance away from poor people on Medicaid.