If I had a rocket launcher

Here comes UnitedHealthcare
Second time today …

News item: “Police hunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO’s masked killer after ‘brazen, targeted’ attack on NYC street.”

A gunman killed UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on Wednesday in a “brazen, targeted attack” outside a Manhattan hotel where the health insurer was holding its investor conference, police said, setting off a massive search for the fleeing assailant hours before the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting nearby.

Brian Thompson, 50, was shot around 6:45 a.m. as he walked alone to the New York Hilton Midtown from a nearby hotel, police said. The shooter appeared to be “lying in wait for several minutes” before approaching Thompson from behind and opening fire, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. Police had not yet established a motive.

“Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target,” Tisch said, adding that the shooting “does not appear to be a random act of violence.”

No one — not police, not reporters, not the general public — heard about this crime and wondered “Why would anyone want to hurt this man?”

UnitedHealthcare is one of the largest providers of private health insurance in America. It is also notorious for denying coverage — and thereby denying healthcare, denying health, denying care. So much that it stands out among its peers in the uniquely American terrible idea of a for-profit health insurance industry.

Literally millions of Americans know or love someone whose health, wellbeing and livelihood has been harmed by UnitedHealthcare. And nearly everyone in this country has some firsthand experience with their own physical and financial health being threatened or damaged or delayed by this system in general. UnitedHealthcare represents that system. If it had a face, it would be the face of the CEO of that company.

So if the suspect list for this crime is to include everyone with a motive, then there are, roughly, 335 million suspects.

Everyone assumed that was what this must be about. Almost instantly and automatically. Sure, it was possible this “brazen, targeted attack” was prompted by something else — by any of the reasons that anybody ever shoots anybody else here in gun-loving America. Maybe it involved romantic betrayal or high-finance rivalries or some inheritance dispute? That was possible, but we all understood, right away, that it was unlikely in this case. When a for-profit health insurance executive gets shot on the street, it’s not hard to imagine why.

That universal suspicion seems to have been confirmed by evidence left behind by the shooter — shell casings bearing the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose.” That echoes the title of Jay M. Feinman’s book Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It. (I have not read this book but, as I understand it, Feinman’s advice on “what you can do about it” does not recommend lethal violence.)

But we didn’t need that hint from the perpetrator to understand what just happened: One of the millions of people harmed by this guy — or by this guy’s company, or by the industry this guy represents — got pushed past the breaking point. Given the impotence or corrupt complicity of every “proper channel” for seeking redress or justice or restoration here, it’s hardly surprising to see someone resort to other means.

Hence the strange spectacle of the Associated Press’s “Live Updates” breaking-news page on this story. The top headline is “Police search for suspect continues,” but the reporting here ranges far afield from the usual “manhunt for killer” coverage. It includes headlines like “UnitedHealthcare’s history of claim denials” and “What is the criticism of insurers?” and “Anger and vitriol against health insurers filled social media in the wake of Thompson’s killing.”

You don’t need to approve of vigilante violence to understand all of that, or even to feel more sympathy for the criminal here than for the massively harmful, perfectly legal predatory billionaire he targeted.

Marisa Kabas has some thoughtful reflections on the public reaction to Thompson’s death, comparing that reaction to the gleeful celebration of the death of Henry Kissinger. The usual norms or mannered propriety that shapes how we respond to the death of others, she notes, don’t apply to those deemed to have “violated the human contract.” The anger and vitriol and schadenfreude are, in other words, reciprocal, which is to say, fair.

All of this discussion — and the discussion of this discussion — has me thinking back to Bruce Cockburn’s classic song “If I Had a Rocket Launcher.”

That song prompted a great deal of fretful, hand-wringing, thumb-sucking, navel-gazing, bodypart-gerund discourse about the propriety of advocating violence. Most of that came from people who never listened to the song or, perhaps, just couldn’t get past the title.

The song was not a call to supply rocket launchers to the victims of government death squads. It was a call to stop those death squads from killing everybody unable to defend themselves with heavy firepower. Cockburn isn’t advocating or even endorsing violent justice in opposition to violent injustice, he’s just saying he understands it.

That’s true for most people. The more deeply and intimately you understand violent injustice, the more deeply and intimately — and viscerally — you can appreciate the desire for violent justice. It’s apocalyptic, in the original, biblical sense. It’s “the horse and rider are hurled into the sea.”

You can’t live like Pharaoh — enriching yourself by oppressing everyone else — and expect people to respond to your death as though you weren’t Pharaoh. When Pharaohs die, the people sing.