Who Knew Murdering CEOs Was Bad?

"UnitedHealthcare, in particular, has come under public scrutiny as it dramatically increased care denials for its Medicare Advantage enrollees.

The insurer more than doubled the rate of denials for care following hospital stays between 2020 and 2022 as it implemented machine-assisted technology to automate the process, according to a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation’s report released in October. That far surpassed its competitors, including Humana, whose care denials grew 54% during the same time period." 

A homeless person can kill two or three people in a night, and only gets what are in his victims' pockets.

A white collar CEO can kill thousands in a night, and make millions in the process.

Which is more dangerous?

Obviously, the homeless man. 

Nobody profits from the homeless man's murders but himself, whereas EVERYONE - employees, managers, and especially stockholders - benefits from the murders the CEO commits. That's why so many people applaud the murder of the violent homeless man, while being simultaneously outraged at the CEO's murder. They wanted the law to vet the CEO's murder, to make sure he absolutely had to be killed, and to delay his death enough to close out long positions.

People complain that Mangione embraced the Unabomber. Well, so has Elon Musk. 

"Elon Musk, a businessman who’s building some of the most advanced technology the world has ever seen, suggested the Unabomber may have been right about the rise of tech creating too many problems for humanity. Musk tweeted, “he might not have been wrong,” in response to a tweet about Ted Kaczynski, the 81-year-old terrorist who died in prison on Saturday.  Musk’s comment was made in response to conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who tweeted a quote from Kaczynski on Saturday: "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.""  

So, Mangione was merely parroting Musk. 

Trump is a billionaire who got elected by representing that he felt the pain and stood in the place of the poor and marginalized. Mangione's family was wealthy, but Mangione did exactly what Trump said Trump could do "Shoot someone... and I would not lose voters."

Brian Thompson was being investigated for insider trading.
Brian Thompson's company, under his leadership, was actively impoverishing and killing people. 

Mangione is simply an instantiation of Trump's entire campaign. It is not at all clear why the right embraces Daniel Penny (who was neither attacked by Jordan Neely, nor did he see Jordan Neely attack anyone) while actively distancing themselves from Mangione (who was not treated by United Health Care, nor impoverished by them). 

UPDATE: Apparently doctors were a little miffed with United Healthcare for killing patients.

Mary Did You Know You Are ... Palestinian?

So, the claim is that since Netflix cast the woman who portrays Mary in part because she is Jewish, everything is ok.

But, notice that she is an Ashkenazi Jew. According to DNA testing, while some (but not all, cf. Levite) Ashkenazi Jews can be traced back to the Middle East in the paternal line (Y chromosome), Ashkenazi Jews CANNOT be traced back to the Middle East along the maternal line (mitochondrial chromosomes). 

According to the maternal line, over 80% of Ashkenazi are purely European, with no ties to the Middle East at all. And, of course, rabbinic Talmudic Judaism claims to trace descent by the maternal line, not the paternal line.

So, according to the Ashkenazi's own genetic rules, most Ashkenazi Jews are not actually Jewish. And yes, the Israeli rabbinate is known to do DNA testing to establish Ashkenazi descent.  They test DNA, all the while denying that Judaism is a race or that there is "Jewish DNA." Obviously, given that Hitler argued precisely along these lines, this rabbinate-approved DNA testing is somewhat fraught with controversy. 

And, to be fair, there is NOT such a thing as Jewish DNA. There is no DNA test that proves you are Jewish, no DNA segment that is unique to Jews. The best you can get is "Middle East descent." Which could as easily include Arab Muslims (70% and 82% commonality in the Y chromosome) or Arab Christians (50% commonality). 

Thus, the Palestinians are not entirely wrong when they claim Netflix' casting is not genetically authentic. Indeed, they are correct to point out that, from a genetic perspective, anyone whose ancestors have an unbroken history of residing in the Middle East, such as, say, Palestinians, is much more suited to the role.

But, that's just genetics. When it comes to actual cultural/ethnic practice, any Jew who follows the rabbi-Talmud-synagogue system of authority is not very similar to Mary at all. Mary and her parents participated in the blood sacrifice of live animals at the Temple. They did not recognize the authority of rabbis or the Talmud. Before the destruction of the Second Temple, synagogues were more of a social club than a religious experience. No Jew alive today, no one alive today at all, shares a cultural or ethnic experience that has any real overlap with Temple Judaism. 

Besides which, Christians insist that while Mary may have begun her life as an observant Jew, she became the very first, and greatest, Christian. She was also dirt poor So, from a cultural perspective, the person best suited to the role of Mary would be one of three people, in order of descending preference: (a) an impoverished Palestinian Christian, (b) an impoverished Palestinian Muslim or (c) a 21st-century Jew who had converted to Christianity. 

After all, Muslims are much more aligned to Christian theology than unconverted Jews. Muslims agree that both Jesus and Mary were sinless. Muslims agree that Mary was a virgin and Jesus entered the world via virgin birth. Muslims at least have partial belief in Christian precepts.

Jews, on the other hand, don't agree with any of those things. Given that 21st-century Judaism is almost entirely unlike Temple Judaism, the Jew who converted to Christianity would be converting from an essentially monotheistic paganism to Christianity. As such, a Jew would need to learn to accept both sinlessness and virgin birth, two things which Mary understood from her lifetime of personal experience.

Casting a 21st-century Ashkenazi Jewish woman to play Mary is like casting Elizabeth Warren to play Pocahontas - you could do it based on her claims, but neither the genetics nor the history nor the culture really work to justify the claims.