Recently, certain segments of our society have elevated two murderers to the status of champions of their causes. Daniel Penny killed a homeless, mentally ill man with a choke hold and Luigi Mangione killed an executive of a health insurance company.
This occurs in the context of polls taken over the last few years finding that large percentages of Americans say that violence may be justified and necessary to achieve their political goals. More Republicans than Democrats and Independents agree, none in the majority but enough to be significant.
Penny is idolized as an icon of masculinity by Fox News and deserving of the Congressional Gold Medal in legislation introduced by 10 House Republicans (HR 10330). Mangione is idolized as a messenger for those angry at the negligence and profiteering of private health insurance companies.
Those propagating such adulation are, in effect, not only distracting from our undone work on homelessness, mental illness, and health care, but also legitimizing dangerous and ineffective reactions to them.
Those who are working against the stigmatization of the homeless and mentally ill and for providing shelter and psychological care as human rights, and against the extractive capitalist model of health insurance and for our collective commitment to health care as a human right, e.g., Medicare for All, are showing the way to a more peaceful, secure, satisfying, and robust future.
It’s time to reject reactionary propaganda and bear down on our demands for justice, compassion, and rationality.
David Broadwater
Atascadero
This article appears in Jan 2-12, 2025.
Comparing Penny, who was protecting people from a far from someone who happened to be homeless, to Mangione, who planned and executed a murder, is an incredible leap of logic. All homeless individuals are not the passive, benign individuals that this author would have us believe. Drugs and mental illness, sepaarately, or in combination, can produce dangerous behavior, like shoving people onto train tracks and lighting them on fire.