December 4, 2024 was an utterly unterrorized day in New York City. No panic was sown, no gripping horror. Even eye witnesses to the shooting of UHC CEO Brian Thompson remained wholly unbothered.
Non-New Yorkers are quick to chock this lack of frenzy up to the seen-it-all-edness of living in NYC. But this was something different. Unlike acquitted vigilante subway murders, random men punching women in Soho, or the NYPD themselves, this shooting posed no threat to the general public and we knew it. The Adjuster had a target. He carried out his plan. He left town. Neither the target nor the alleged shooter were even New Yorkers themselves. In short, it was none of our business.
School shootings have continued to happen, another just this week. That sows terror. That is terrorism. Last January, insurrectionists stormed our capital, murdered police officers, threatened to hang the sitting vice president. Elected officials scrambled through tunnels to escape the assault as we watched domestic terrorism unfold in real time from our living rooms. Daniel Penny murders a man in need of intervention and is found not guilty. That is terrifying.
Children, teachers, churchgoers, peaceful protesters, government workers, our democracy, people just trying to take the train to work. These are the people suffering under forms of terrorism.
A rich man responsible for the pain, suffering, and death of millions via claim denial is shot in midtown Manhattan. The winter sun isn’t up yet. The area is quiet in this lull before the offices buzz with life and activity. I know. I used to work on the next block, at my desk by 7:30am. Just me and the deli guys slinging coffee. Newspaper trucks making their drops. Cabbies waiting for hotel checkouts.
Terror was not the goal, not for the commuters that day, not for the tourists. Terror was not the result, except maybe for CEOs forced to reckon with their own morals and ethics, their own role in harm caused to those less fortunate.
Charging Luigi Mangione with terrorism is laughable when the NYPD opens fire on fare evaders and hate criming church shooters are taken to McDonalds. Laughable when George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse are acquitted. It is positively ridiculous in the same reality where January 6th insurrectionists participating in the most flagrant example of domestic terrorism in recent times avoid the label and charge.
The faux pearl clutching, or perhaps true lack of touch with the common people, on display each night during the news is disingenuous if not ignorant. How nice it must be to not relate to the overwhelming unified response across the populace. They paint us as ghoulish for not empathizing in the face of true ghoulishness and objective evil.
We cannot cry for someone who lines their pockets with our toe tags.
Jen Capra 