Luigi Mangione

This Monday, a fifteen-year-old named Natalie Rupnow murdered Erin M. West, a substitute teacher, and fourteen-year-old Rubi P. Vergara, a fellow student, injuring six others — two critically — at her school in Madison, Wisconsin. Before the police could intervene, Rupnow shot herself. It is not a bold prediction to say that this tragedy will not meaningfully shift our national conversation. These events blur together in the American psyche, like car crashes, their horror dulled by repetition. That Rupnow was female and younger than the median age of school shooters does not disrupt the pattern. It is — to my increasing horror, every time I write an article like this one — another story in our endless churn of violence.

The news that UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, had been killed sent an immediate shockwave across America, prompting quick assumptions about the assassin’s motive. Early chatter on platforms such as BlueSky speculated that the shooter, who is now suspected to be “tech whiz” and UPenn graduate Luigi Mangione, might be some kind of anti-capitalist folk hero. As details emerged, these hypotheses began to fall apart. Mangione, who was taken into custody Monday, was skeptical of “woke” culture, followed several right-libertarian figures online — and curated a GoodReads list heavy on Silicon Valley self-help, futurism, psychedelics and advice on treating chronic back pain.  The tidy ideological script many anticipated did not materialize.