The UnitedHealthcare assassination and peasant revolts
The conflict between the elites and the public takes a new and dark twist, with worse yet to come.
On 4 December 2024, a masked man shot and killed United Health CEO Brian Thompson on 6th Avenue in downtown Manhattan near the New York Hilton Midtown. The shooter knew which hotel Thompson would be at, and waited for him all night. The gunman then escaped to Central Park, where he presumably changed his clothes and disappeared.
Health Insurance
The American healthcare and health insurance industries are a cesspit of dishonesty, cheating, bureaucracy and lies. UnitedHealthcare, a health insurer, distinguishes itself with particularly awful customer service and frequent denials of legitimate claims, as indicated by numerous reviews and posts on social media. Given the stunning costs of healthcare in the US, a denied health insurance claim may lead to bankruptcy and even suicide.
The company is emblematic of the conflict between the elites and the public: only the poor and the lower middle class would be dependent on such horrible healthcare services. The rich, however, can afford better quality insurance and pay their medical bills.
Despite its awful record, the shareholders of UnitedHealth Group have done well.
Recall that healthcare companies are some of the biggest political donors, and spend an overwhelming amount of money on advertising, buying the media’s support and complicity - most daytime TV ads in America are for healthcare products, and the health insurance industry is downstream from that.
Violence, politics and angry veterans
When an elite becomes degenerate and complacent, as in America and Europe, they forget that the final political arbiter is not courts, votes, or debates, but cannons, swords and guns.
There are underappreciated realities in America: the veterans of the Global War on Terror, of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places, are uniformly hostile to America’s elites. They are angry, they are armed and they are informed. The American soldier is perhaps the smartest soldier on the planet.
The elites sent soldiers to war and profited from it. Congress, the Executive Branch and their donors and lobbyists did not even have the decency to give the veterans good medical care when they returned: the Veterans Affairs Department has a huge budget, but is notoriously inefficient and incompetent, and fully captured by special interests - including insurance companies.
The elites who sent soldiers to war but had no care for them when they returned never sent their own children into harm’s way. When their children served, like Beau Biden, they served as lawyers attached to the army, not combatants. And when they did not serve, like Hunter Biden, they committed so many crimes that they needed blanket pardons from their fathers. The rules never apply to them and they get rich breaking them.
All while the likes of UnitedHealthcare dispute a veteran’s $40 prescription and the healthcare industry pumps him full of highly addictive opioids.
Trump, the Senate and the military
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump claims that he is waging a war against these same elites.
Trump’s current conflict is with the Senate. Senators are so controlled by special interests in the military industrial complex that they refuse to confirm Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defence, Peter Hegseth.
Although Hegseth lacks formal qualifications, he is keen on cutting costs and reducing the influence of large, inefficient corporations by adopting cheaper, more effective combat techniques demonstrated in the Ukrainian and Syrian wars. His top priority, however, is to remove the woke officer corps, as it distracts the American military from pursuing lethality and is an obstacle to meritocracy. The two issues are deeply intertwined.
A military that is corrupted by woke ideology is a complacent military. Its top officers know that they are chosen for docility. And the debate over transgenderism is a key litmus test (as we explained here long ago): are you willing to lie and say that that man is a woman, and degrade yourself by declaring your pronouns? Doing so instantly marks you as lacking honour and courage. It shows that you place obedience above conscience, making you a useful servant for the oligarchic elite.
If you willingly accept the transgender lies, you will most definitely accept payments from the military industrial complex to further their interests. The transgender debate is therefore a useful loyalty and obedience test imposed by the oligarchs. This is how generals who go on to sit on the boards of defence contractors are selected.
For a rotten and complacent elite, a powerful and virile military, with a strong sense of honour and of right and wrong, is an existential threat. Such a military, when put to the test, may pursue the interests of its veterans in the best way it knows how: through the studied and precise exercise of violence.
Therefore, Trump’s attempted transformation of the military through the appointment of Peter Hegseth is a threat to the entire political establishment. They do not want to allow Trump to transform the military into an apolitical force, for fear that the military would rise against them when it sees their decadence. Many republics were ended when the elites became too complacent and a populist general seized power.
Blocking presidential appointments to protect special interests is of course permitted by America’s checks and balances system. However, it now reflects a conflict between the masses and their populist leader on the one side and the establishment on the other. The UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder may be emblematic of this dispute.
Trump supporters believe, correctly, that the appointment of Hegseth is a key test for the administration.
Either change can be achieved through constitutional means, or the political system is too fully captured for peaceful change.
Commercial Implications
What Brian Thompson’s murder shows is that the elite faces either legal weakening through constitutional means at the hands of Trump, or undisciplined, uncontrolled violence at the hands of the betrayed public. And the veterans would side with the public.
Demand for private security will increase, but that carries its own risks, including private security companies being infiltrated by disgruntled veterans.