Perp Walk 101: Don’t Make the Guy Look Amazing
A depiction of Mangione as a Christ figure with the Sacred Heart, as seen hanging in a pizzeria near his hometown of Towson, Maryland – Public Domain
It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that the ruling class failed in their attempt to make CEO Shooter Luigi Mangione look terrifying in that failed Perp Walk. I’m sure you all saw it: the man was thronged with everything and everyone that could be utilized to make him look wildly dangerous, at least in the eyes of those who genuinely do not understand the pulsing discontent everyday Americans have. I don’t think a moment like this could have happened even 10 years ago. The fact that everyday individuals feel so powerless that a murder is being celebrated by many in this nation shows that it is ultimately a time for national self-reflection by those in power. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. Instead, the decision seems to be to double down rather than take some hard looks in the mirror to realize that the no-safety net viciousness of our system will most certainly breed violent acts. It’s as if our ruling class is a bunch of raging alcoholics at the proverbial rock bottom and they have decided to bring alcohol into their system with a continuous IV drip rather than think about maybe stopping the booze. It’s being in a hole and continuing to dig, all of those sayings that exist for a reason—cautionary tales of what not to do if you want to avoid catastrophe.
The outrageous overreach continues as they seem hell-bent on going for federal and state charges against the guy, probably looking to execute him and actively looking for jurors who have never protested anything and do not have physical disabilities (they wouldn’t want someone who has been ravaged by the healthcare system to have a say in this one). I am sure the only jurors they will find acceptable will be the peers of…..the CEO.
If they indeed had any sanity guiding their behavior, they would have treated this as a plain old murder. No drama, no moving the guy like he’s a Pablo Escobar or a bin Laden. Standard murder charges, not charging the guy with everything, including the Lindbergh baby death and the axe murder of pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna. Their flop sweat is showing.
They couldn’t have made the man look more serene in the midst of overkill if they tried. The overreach is truly comical. It did not go unnoticed that school shooters, serial killers—they don’t have this kind of police presence when they are transported. They couldn’t make it any more clear that they consider the wealthy to be more valuable than even our children in schools. Then the media reports on how scared the CEOs are to go to work– without any self-awareness of what kids have to contend with in this gun-soaked nation when they hear about school shootings with a much greater frequency. The kids are subjected to terrifying active shooter drills, told that maybe they need to bring bulletproof backpacks to school, yet we hear they might need a hotline for CEOs to call due to their nervousness. It’s an incredible fuck you in the face to everyone deemed less than worthy by this system, and by that, I mean anyone with a net worth less than 50 million.
It’s time for universal healthcare, for decency across the board. Even the most brainwashed Americans know they have an inherent value; they aren’t just commodities and a link in the chain to provide profits for the already obscenely rich. The leaders can’t understand that even though the masses may not have studied the term in college, they damn well understand the concept of “social murder.” They understand that the actions of those in certain lines of unsavory work (CEOs) cause the death of untold numbers of Americans because their only responsibility is to the shareholder, not to basic decency. You can’t be shocked by the blowback of such callousness.
And back to optics—hell, the guy even came out of prison looking hotter than he did when he went in! Some say that fellow prisoners may have assisted him with a better haircut and eyebrow management so they could send a message that he is cared for by the general population. They were yelling out the windows about his poor treatment in previous days. It seems he has allies with those fellow incarcerated men. Men, who, by the way, are often used as basically slave labor for corporations wanting discount bodies to do their work. Stereotypes are falling by the wayside. Like minds are found in unusual places.
Yet they continue to try so hard to manage the messaging—if they were in the right, it wouldn’t be so damn difficult. Truth and decency come much more easily. Trying to bottle the aspirations of so many citizens who are feeling hopeless is a big task and takes a pretty substantial dam. We all know what happens when the dam gives way. This is the time that measures could be taken to improve the lives of everyday Americans and this would prevent this sort of thing from happening, but I think the oligarchs would rather get caught up in the flood rather than give an inch. It’s instructive because it shows that just because they have power and wealth, they truly don’t seem to be all that bright.
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