Dastardly deed being used as excuse to promote single-payer health care

OPINION:

Recent polling shows liberal voters are sympathetic toward the young man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood. Luigi Mangione awaits extradition to New York on first-degree murder charges.

According to a YouGov poll released Wednesday, 47% of people who classify themselves as “very liberal” have a favorable opinion of Mr. Mangione. By comparison, less than 8% of “very conservative” respondents were fans of shooting an unarmed man in the back for ideological reasons.

Emerson College arrived at a similar result. It found that 41% of voters under the age of 29 saying the killer’s actions were completely or somewhat acceptable.

Politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont independent, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, condemn the violence while finding the need to add a “but” clause to their comments. They hope to leverage the slaying to advance their dream of single-payer health care.

“But I think anyone who is confused, shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them. … We need to understand that extreme levels of inequality in the United States yield high degrees of social instability,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said.

It’s as if liberals forget they’re the ones who hijacked the medical industry with the Affordable Care Act in 2010. They refuse to take ownership of the shortcomings their own policies introduced.

Mr. Mangione shares their cognitive dissonance. Born to a wealthy Baltimore family, he started life with every advantage. He was valedictorian at the Gilman School, a $40,000-a-year private institution. He finished his education with a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

If prosecutors are right, this is the Ivy League graduate who wrote a 262-word manifesto describing UnitedHealthcare’s “immense profit” as justification for the execution of its CEO.

Mr. Mangione appears to have suffered from a debilitating back problem, but authorities say the young man was never a customer of UnitedHealthcare, so it never denied his insurance claim. Even if it had, it would not have been a real issue.

One phone call to his parents would have remedied the situation. The suspect’s grandmother Mary C. Mangione, who died last year, was among the top benefactors to Greater Baltimore Medical Center, with donations in excess of $1 million. No member of Mr. Mangione’s family would be turned away.

It seems more likely that Mr. Mangione, as accused, took inspiration from radicals of the past.

In the late 1970s, another child of privilege left the Ivy League to become an agent of chaos. Susan Rosenberg planned the bombing of the U.S. Capitol as a leader of the Weather Underground. The then-29-year-old’s rampage ended in 1984 when she was arrested with guns and fake ID cards while loading 740 pounds of dynamite into a storage locker.

Mr. Mangione was arrested earlier this month at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania with a silenced pistol and a fake ID card. His backpack allegedly contained a notebook describing early plans to kill Thompson by setting off a bomb — just like the Weather Underground.

If this is accurate, this killing wasn’t self-defense against an “act of violence.” It was the act of a narcissist who sought to draw meaning from his life by taking the life of another. Instead of applying his talents to overcome his physical malady and build something positive, the purported killer sought fleeting fame and infamy.

Let a jury sort out fact from fiction so that justice may be done.