Some Other America, One I Do Not Know

Some people are very upset about the public reaction to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The killing has generated horror, but also mocking memes, a wave of hostility towards the healthcare industry, and rhetoric that stops barely short of calling the murder justified.

 The Washington Post calls it a “sickness,” saying “those who excuse or celebrate Mr. Thompson’s killing reveal an ends-justify-the-means sentiment that is flatly inconsistent with stable democracy” and that “most Americans probably reject this kind of thinking.” The Yale School of Management calls it “very un-American.” My friend David French says that online “activism is attracting some of the most cruel and self-righteous people in America. There’s a remarkable lack of grace and compassion.”

With the greatest respect to these worthies — well, at least to David — I am not familiar with the America they’re talking about.

America is largely aspirational. We talk big and then, more or less, sometimes strive towards goals like justice, equality, decency. Many people are willing to put their shoulder to the wheel of those aspirations even in the face of the many ways America falls short. I’ve written about a formative experience I had as a young lawyer: attending a naturalization ceremony for Filipino World War II veterans who still exulted to become Americans even after America had betrayed them for decades. Those men still believed in the promise of America despite so many years of broken promises. Many of our greatest citizens have worked to better this country even as it has treated them as less than full Americans or even less than human.

But hope should not be blindness. We can hope that America will be kinder, more graceful, more compassionate, more sincerely devoted to all people being created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the truth is that celebrating the death of other human beings because we hate them or what we think they stand for is absolutely American. To ignore that is fantasy, not aspiration. America remains the country that proclaimed that all men are equal while enshrining slavery, that enacted the First Amendment and the Alien and Sedition Acts in the same decade.

Let’s start hard, not soft. America is a country where lynching was a family pastime:

America is a country where we’re not squeamish about killing people. Americans have always made killers into folk heroes, from the outlaws of the American West to the bank robbers of the Great Depression. Sometimes it’s about recognizing them as icons of independence and self-determination. But just as often it’s about killing who needs to be killed — killing people we don’t recognize as human. The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley sold a million records celebrating the murderousness of a war criminal; only 11% of Americans approved of holding him accountable for his crimes. Half a century later more than 40% approved of pardoning more modern war criminals. Our heroes have included Jesse James and John Dillinger, but also Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. Americans don’t only celebrate killers; they hate and revile anyone who objects:

America is a place where two citizens beat a homeless man with a metal pipe because “all these illegals need to be deported” in the name of soon-to-be-president Donald Trump. The homeless man had, in fact, been a lawful resident for ten years. Trump’s first response was to say “the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country, they want the country to be great again.” That was not seen as insulting to his followers; it was rather qualifying. Nine years later Trump presided over a convention where Americans joyously waved signs that said “mass deportation now,” and traded entirely invented stories about immigrants eating pets.

America is also a place where Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, embraced the support of former GOP Representative Liz Cheney, who decried Trump as violating American values. You might have remembered Liz Cheney from a decade earlier when she referred to Justice Department lawyers as the “al-Qaddafi seven” because they had provided advocacy or representation for Guantanamo Bay detainees, asking that they be granted some sort of rights or process. “What values do they share?” Cheney asked. The value of due process pales before the value of hating the other.

America is the place where people will drive 200 miles to urinate on a plaque commemorating a camp where we interned American citizens based on their ethnicity — not to protest the internment, but to protest its recognition.

America is a place that indulged in mob violence against religious minorities for not being sufficiently patriotic during a war to save freedom.

America isn’t the worst place ever. Humans treat each other inhumanely all the time and always have. But Americans like to see themselves as somehow above condoning violence and we’re absolutely not. Violence against people we’ve decided to hate doesn’t break norms. It is the norm.

The killing of Brian Thompson was the act of an apparent madman whose confused ideology defies social media ambitions to make him some kind of hero. In my view much of the celebration of the killing is self-indulgence. I doubt it accomplishes anything. But treating it as an aberration is self-delusion. It’s as American as cherry pie.

Why is it important to say so? Because the delusion “we’re better than this” stops us from trying to do better. Pretending that cheering Brian Thompson’s death is un-American is giving ourselves permission to ignore the many ways it’s not.

I would like to live in an America where it’s un-American and unprecedented to celebrate the killing of someone from a reviled group. But that’s some other America, not mine. It sounds like a nice place to visit.