On November 28, 2024, Netflix dropped a TV show whose creators appear to own something like a crystal ball. Watch and see for yourself. Though the series, called The Madness, began pre-production in early 2023, it managed to see with eerie accuracy where the United States would be after the reelection of Donald Trump on Nov 5, 2024.
The plot: A black CNN contributor, Muncie Daniels (Colman Domingo), is wrongly accused of killing a very popular neo-Nazi influencer Mark Simon (Battlestar Galactica’s Tahmoh Penikett). But a good portion of the public actually think the murder is not at all a bad thing. What’s wrong with killing a social media hatemonger, a man who promotes the “final solution” for all races who are not white?
Meanwhile, Daniels is visiting New York City when he realizes he’s a wanted man. He has a record of supporting radical causes on CNN, and the murder has been pinned on him. He buys a baseball cap, glasses, a hoodie, and gets out of town on a Greyhound-looking bus. Any of this ringing a bell? He only lacks a backpack when he enters a bus filled with working-class people.
Well, it turns out that people involved in some conspiracy related to the murder are billionaires with a white nationalist agenda. Indeed, one even made his money in the tech industry. They own the media. They own politicians. They own America.
The show, which has 8 episodes, has its ups and downs. And this is to be expected as its story is built like a roller coaster. But The Madness does capture the fantasy at the heart of the events that followed Luigi Mangione’s much celebrated murder, according to charges, of the UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson: No one would snitch on him while he was on the run. Of course, this happened. It was a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
In The Madness, Daniels escapes to a Philadelphia hood for cover. Here, we see what many hoped would happen to Mangione: no snitching. In fact, the neighborhoods throw a barbecue for the fugitive. How are you going to turn a brother in for killing a rabidly racist white man? Not happening here, where we are brutalized on the regular by the police. Throw some more ribs on the fire. Pop open a Bud. Sit back and relax. We are all your friends here.
Is this not what many fantasized, hoped, prayed would happen to Mangione? He shows up in, say, Seattle. He is instantly recognized, he is quickly secreted to a comfy basement apartment in Columbia City. Neighbors who learn about his hiding place bring needed supplies: burner phones, fake passports, dark sunglasses, weed, chapbooks filled with revolutionary poetry, Hokas. And in the shadows of the night, he (disguised) takes a ferry to a remote island with lots of old hippies and no snitches. There, he lives happily ever after as a farmer whose produce is mysteriously popular at farmer’s markets around Seattle.
The fantasy captured by The Madness is about something that many Americans hoped the murder of the healthcare CEO would finally provide: common ground for all wage-earning Americans.
This dipshit kid is a murderer. I’d be wary of celebrating that, because someone out there probably would cheer your murder, too.
alleged murder, no?
@1 “someone out there probably would cheer your murder, too”
I think the lesson is to live your life so as to avoid this, say by NOT making millions using AI algorithms to deny people necessary medical treatment. Basically don’t be a capitalist ghoul if you don’t want your violent death celebrated. Seems easy enough to me.
@3: In the U.S., we ration health care based upon price. In the U.K., they use another method. It’s still rationing, because healthcare resources remain expensive. (I started my engineering career at Pfizer, loving those paychecks.)
Americans in particular believe that obesity is an acceptable way of life, so long as triple-bypass surgery exists. (Ounce of prevention…)
Celebrated murder? What a poor choice of words. I was disgusted then and more disgusted by the thought of anyone celebrating murder, it’s subhuman. It reminds me of those celebrating the twin towers attack.
@5 how’d you feel when they killed Bin Laden?
About the same as when I hear about an ex-husband killing an ex-wife. Murder begets murder, it’s all the same, it’s barbaric and the lowest form of intelligence. Gang war, guerilla warfare, bullying, territory pissing.
@6, Be careful who’s murder you celebrate, this is a path we really don’t want to go down. celebrating the targeting of brutal military operatives (Bin Laden) is another thing…
@8 you see how “murder” is a political construct? When the people in power kill someone they just call it something else, like you did here with Bin Laden. I say this was just the “targeting of a brutal healthcare denial operative.”
when
multimillionaires’re
paid jillions for denying
Life-Saving medical care
to enrichen Shareholders
(and Themselves!) there’re
those out there who see only
Justice when the former’re expired.
larceny
or ‘murder’
(thru denial of
Care) are oodles more
‘Palatable’ when done w/a pen
was it
UnitedHealthcare*
who, post-‘the Adjuster’
decided to RE-THINK their
Decision to LIMIT their Patients’
ANESTHESIA in all Future Operations?
for a Minute
there, it seemed,
The Adjuster was winning.
*Health “care”?
don’t make
us Laff
‘What if Luigi
Got Away?’
would
he cause
the Profiteers
to rethink their Values?
or B..
spend
More on
their Fences?
Thedonold Knows:
make Palestine’s open-
AIr concentration camp*
seem like a walk in the Park
when he Finishes Off America
*now a
Death Camp
@13
or C: jury
nullification
and TADJ skates
that’d
make Corps
Good for
Them I
Say!
Ameirkkkan nervous
& they don’t Appreciate
nervousness in Themselves
if
he’s
a ‘terrorist’
they’ll be able to
S T R E T C H all their
definiions means & Methods
and Root-Out
even Discussion
of any such Nonsense
apologies — !gnore @13
@12
or C: jury
nullification
and TADJ skates
that’d
make Corps
Ameirkkkan nervous
& they don’t Appreciate
nervousness in Themselves
if
he’s
a ‘terrorist’
they’ll be able to
S T R E T C H all their
definiions means & Methods
and Root-Out
even Discussion
of any such Nonsense
Good for
Them I
Say!
He’s gay, definitely needs to get his eyebrows fixed, and most likely will be killed in prison.
And I meant killed by a fellow prisoner.
Luigi’s Not a
Savior to those
Millions* taking it up
the Backside whilst CEOs whisk
themselves & their famblies all over
the Planet and have thee Finest
Healthcare available on
Planet Earth?
*Whole Families
Wiped Out cuz United-
“healthcare” just said “no”?
and/or kept them on the
phone as if their Time
had Zero Value to
Them forever
they
Wear you
Down they
Wear you Out and’d
Prefer it if you’d just Give Up
and die.
hey — it’s
Nothing Personal ~
It’s Just Fucking Business.
and we
Tolerate
it because
It’s funny that the folks here at The Stranger have published articles against vigilantism but are so supportive of Luigi.
Granted, Brian Thompson seems like a Grade A jackass, but did he deserve to be shot in cold blood? If you think he did, what is the threshold for deserving that?
I think a person breaking into my house in the middle the night putting my family in danger deserves a trip to the morgue, but I’ve been told that makes me a bad person.
Where is that line?
Well at least we know whose basement to search first should Luigi escape. Moreover, upon reflection, the joke would be Luigi. After being captive to endless insufferable Marxist diatribes by his fetishizing host, Luigi would likely turn himself him.
@4 The NHS in Britain rations care by medical necessity, likelihood of success. There is also a parallel private system for those affluent enough to buy private insurance to cover elective procedures and skip the NHS wait. The key difference is that poor folks get far better care there than here, especially preventative care.
@15,16 While I know you dream of his prison rape, he is apparently a hero to his fellow prisoners. In fact, it was the prisoner run prison barber shop that gave him the glow-up he had at his arraignment.
we
Cannot
‘afford’ Heathcare
in thee Richest Country in
the KNOWN UNIVERSE (so far)!
[we think] but we Can afford to have
people living Rough in our streets & parks
they Allow us to
survive as long as
They get to harvest
our Earthly carcasses
who’s
terrorizing
whom?
10, don’t blame the stockholders. United Healthcare pays one of the lowest dividends among “health” insurers. The crop of executives suck up huge salaries.
@8 – How is Bin Laden “another thing”? Brian Thompson was responsible for a lot more death than Bin Laden ever was.