The shooting of the healthcare CEO and our war on institutions

Why so many Americans didn't want Luigi Mangione to be caught, what that says about our relationship with institutions, and where it might be heading

Hello! This week I’ve been consumed by the murder of the healthcare CEO, and whether it might be some kind of a harbinger, some early shot in a war by individuals on institutions. And so while this is usually a newsletter about nonfiction storytelling, I want to try and write about that instead.

Just as Luigi Mangione was being arrested I was on the phone to a friend in Missouri, one of the main characters in my next book. He’s a very regular middle class midwesterner. He said to me, “90% of people I know, people who live around here, don’t want him to be caught.”

Vast numbers of regular Americans were wanting a man who summarily executed a CEO to get away with it. I mean: America still turned him in. So they weren’t THAT serious about it. But it was kind of a dream people had - that there might be a different way to live.