When your morals meet a match.
It wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card to invite an alleged murderer to the Pissed off and Purposeful podcast, but Luigi Mangione has stretched me into a new level of fertilizing discomfort.
If “Grief + Rage + Love = Raging Inspiration for Purposeful Change” what can this crime teach us?
Like much of the nation I find myself social media scrolling for the next devastating and hilariously accurate post about the murder of a United States Citizen in broad daylight. In a way nothing else has quite proven to do, much of the nation feels united in our mixed feelings about this violent crime. In addition to prompting countless heartbreaking stories about bad health insurance, it’s exposed our ability to love across party lines. We really do all want the same things- to feel seen and cared for at our most vulnerable time. To not be steered by greed.
Sadly our nation has become numb to seemingly unprovoked crime. Innocent children gunned down by mentally deranged strangers. Religious congregations, and concert goers taking bullets out of the blue. The gun violence we’ve become accustomed to isn’t as targeted as this was. There was something clarifying about the focus of this attack that struck a different nerve.
In the closing month of 2024 we are a nation of raw and ravaged people. Many who voted for our president elect are starting to question their decision, and people who didn’t are watching their worst nightmares unfold.
Grieving, angry, and wanting nothing more than to be able to care for ourselves and the people we love, the political divide got oddly blurry when a silent gun fired three thoughtfully engraved bullets: deny, defend, depose.
We don’t know for sure yet, but let’s just say Luigi was in fact the man who murdered Brian. None of us needed to know who Luigi was for our rage to be unveiled, we didn’t need to know his politics or his ideals to see him as a man who boldly stood up for something he felt passionate about.
Following the crime grieving parents told stories of their children being denied care, stressed out children told stories of their parents being denied care. People’s lives have been turned upside down by insurance harm, and in this common injustice we found a platform to unite.
I’m not going to claim that 3D printing a gun and stealing life from a fellow human is moral behavior. But this whole thing is challenging me to wonder what does it mean to MAMA (Make America Moral ALREADY) and what will it take for us to get there? What lives might be lost? What underbellies might be exposed? What injustices might turn out to bring justice after all?
I’ve come to no conclusions, but I’ll leave you to ponder someone else’s words with me “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution. […] These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?”
