Muddy the waters is a nice way to put it. Y’all keep trying to parse this politically, but Mangione warnt even into his big boy pants before he killed a guy so stop flattering him. Could barely eke out three pages of ooh manifesto ooh and so far it sounds like Patty Hearst circa Symbionese Liberation Army. He is 26 years old, and his experience of the world encompasses private school, hikes in Hawaii, and computer games. When the police cornered him he reacted with the Moro Reflex. And minutes ago baby had a BIG tantrum.
I grant that he is radically handsome with the bright set of chompers you’d expect of his demographic, but killing someone in NYC (in itself a banality) and completing a pre-writing exercise falls short of Antonio Gramsci. Better to understand him with a typically bogus but let’s go with it anyway psychiatric diagnosis: Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder. Onset was when he tried to take a surfing class but his bad back screwed it up. Since then his chronic pain has him gunning for the American health care industry.
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The writer and cultural historian Mark Harris, posting on Bluesky, described Mr. Mangione as “a very recognizable type of young male ideology tourist” — a “This Explains Everything addict” untethered to a coherent belief system.