If you like vigilante justice, you’ll love what happens next

What will happen once we run out of CEOs?

There is a soft spot in the American psyche for vigilantes.

Turn on any basic network television crime procedural show, and maybe two to three times per season, there will be a storyline about a victim taking justice into their own hands. Often at the end of these episodes, you can hear the cops tell each other in a winking tone, “It sounded like self-defense to me!”

Cold Case, one of my favorites, struck a remarkably preachy tone. Almost every episode dealt with some sort of hate crime. I have no idea who the writers on this show thought they were writing for. If the average viewer was anything like my parents, they probably spent most of the show tut-tutting, shaking their heads, and commenting on how despicable it is to kill someone because they are gay.

In reality, the Cold Case writer’s room probably never presented an episode that resulted in a productive discussion about race, gender, or sexual orientation. But they did give a sympathetic audience an entertaining hour of television to feel proud of themselves for meeting the bare minimum requirements of not being a bigot.

Real life isn’t TV, and murder by any other name is still murder

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been shocked at the number of people I know who have spent time justifying the CEO of United Healthcare Brian Thompson’s murder — even to the point of cheering on his killer.

He was the head of an evil company.
He was part of a system that caused pain and suffering.
His death saved lives. (I still don’t understand the logic of this one).
This will help us start the conversation that changes healthcare.

The last one strikes me as the most absurd.

I’ve heard people say things like, “I guess murder is bad, but at least we’re talking about the healthcare system now, and finally things will change.” If several decades of school shootings have taught us anything, it’s that we can talk about gun control and mental health until we are blue in the face, but we will never have a meaningful conversation that leads to change. What usually happens is that both camps double down in the face of having their egos attacked.

Listen — I have four personal injury attorneys in my family, and I will be among the first to admit that I hate insurance companies¹. They’re adversarial and will fight you over some of the most illogical policies. I will also admit that while I hate that we have an insurance-based healthcare system, it doesn’t look like any other country has gotten it right, either².

Mark my words, no meaningful conversation about our healthcare system will come from Thompson’s murder. If I were a betting woman, I would put money on this event making insurance companies less transparent, more difficult, and less likely to take any financial risks³. The poorest consumers will take the brunt of it.

No one actually wants to follow this to its logical conclusion

When people think of the French Revolution, they tend to think of it in terms of the French peasantry and working class rising up to get rid of a monarchy and embrace democracy. Don’t mind the King and Queen and their children losing their lives because you have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.

In reality, the people who suffered the most were the poor. As historian Donald Greer put it, “… more carters than princes were executed, more day labourers than dukes and marquises, three or four times as many servants than parliamentarians. The Terror swept French society from base to comb; its victims form a complete cross section of the social order of the Ancien régime.”

In fact, Greer estimated that 70% of the victims of the Reign of Terror belonged to the lower middle class and below, and only 8.25% were part of the nobility. To put it succinctly, when the angry mobs ran out of kings and queens and princes and barons, they turned on each other.

Likewise, those who are cheering on Luigi Mangione who stands accused of killing Thompson might find they are in for a surprise if vigilante violence like this continues.

Let’s say — for the sake of the argument — that Thompson⁴ was, indeed, a bad person who deserved to die. Do we really want someone like Mangione anointing themselves judge, jury and executioner?

And before you say yes, consider that without any kind of institution bestowing authority on the individual, anyone — yes, anyone — can appoint themselves to this position. This might feel fine if it is an attractive young man whose politics you agree with, but without a system or institution, the role can be filled by anyone at any time with any intention.

We have authorized judges, juries and executioners for a reason. We have an entire political and legal system in place — however imperfect and utterly tangled as it is — to handle injustices. Thompson was already under investigation for insider trading. Insurance is already a highly regulated industry, and could probably bear more regulation in my opinion. Kafkaesque as it may seem, there is room and a framework for justice.

You can’t fix a system by working outside of it

Early in human history, we settled disputes with our fists. Whenever there was a real or perceived slight, whoever had the biggest stick won. At some point, we realized we needed a system if we wanted to have a peaceful society that accommodated billions of people and favored who was in the right (and not just who had the best right hook).

We evolved to develop judges, magistrates, rulers, courts, priests, councils and juries, and we assigned them authority and a specific purview to settle our conflicts. These systems were far from perfect, but they did create a society in which we didn’t have to live in constant fear of our neighbor.

It made us civilized and has the power to make the mouse equal to the lion.

My lawyer family raised me to respect the law and have a reverence for the entire legal system. Because of this, I also know how the heartbreak of the system failing. I’ve comforted friends whose sexual assaults were met with skepticism, even hostility. I’ve seen civil rights plaintiffs not get justice simply because a jury didn’t want to hamstring the police.

I get it — it hurts when the system fails. But that’s not an excuse to work outside of it because it only works when it’s a muscle we actually use.

As fully formed human beings, we have agency. Despite what Sen. Elizabeth Warren said about people only being able to be pushed so far, most humans possess the capability to make choices between right and wrong.

Additionally, our systems are built upon trial and error and the rigorous pursuit of truth. This means that institutions will occasionally fail, but we will learn from and strengthen them as we go. It also means that victims of crimes or unethical policies will undergo excruciating rounds of questioning, but it helps us get one step closer to a more perfect society.

The system works

Lest you have read this and still feel hopeless about The System™️, let me draw your attention to a recent story of it working: Gisele Pelicot.

To summarize the story, Gisele Pelicot discovered after years of marriage her husband was drugging her and letting dozens of strangers come to their house to rape her while she was unconscious. Last week, the French court found her husband and 50 other men guilty and sentenced them to a combined total of 428 years in prison⁵.

Pelicot showed remarkable bravery by waiving her right to anonymity in order to look her abusers in the eye and have this trial out in the open. After the judgment, she said, “I now have confidence in our capacity to find a better future where everyone — women and men alike — can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding.”

What happened to Pelicot can never be undone. If she had taken justice into her own hands and killed her husband, I doubt anyone would have blamed her. But she chose to put her trust in our institutions. She strengthened it. It brought dozens of people to justice, making all the difference.

---

Correction: In an earlier version of this, I failed to mention that Mangione allegedly killed Thompson. The evidence seems overwhelming, but we’ll see what the courts have to say.

1. Especially since I’m fighting a $400 routine blood test bill right now.

2. I don’t want this piece to be a thesis on why healthcare isn’t working and why other countries are also struggling, but suffice it to say, there are a lot of reasons why healthcare is so expensive in the US beyond the insurance system. Doctors have VERY expensive training, we’re not as healthy as we used to be, and we bear the brunt of the medical research here.

Additionally, wait times in socialized countries are absurd (unless you have private health insurance), and Canada is effectively encouraging people who are too expensive to cover to use physician-assisted suicide, so I don’t think the grass is greener on the other side.

3. United Healthcare’s stock plummeted after the murder, they have a ton of jobs to try and protect, and I can’t imagine they are going to be super generous after this.

4. I want to make clear that I don’t think this. He seemed complicated at worst, and I am always hesitant to argue someone deserves to die. (Talk to me on my views about the death penalty sometime.)

5. Some of this was counted as time served. I should note that the family wanted to see some harsher sentences.