In classic Gen Z fashion, I first heard about the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson through a social media post. It featured screenshots of the comments underneath a recent Ben Shapiro YouTube video about the killing sensationally titled “The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder!” His conservative supporters were not happy with his take on the murder. At all. One comment stood out to me in particular. It said: “I just realized your entire business model requires that us normal folk hate each other.”

Reading that gave me chills. It reminded me of that moment in the Catching Fire movie when Katniss tells Gale that the people in the districts are fighting back. And he lets out a breath and says: “It’s happening. It’s finally happening.” I don’t mean literal fighting in this case of course; I mean the unity of the American people who’ve been brainwashed for far too long into being divided against each other over politics and religion.

Over the next few weeks, I was obsessively keeping up with the news through TikTok and other social media platforms (I’m ashamed to say I redownloaded Twitter for a bit before deleting it again). I watched astrology gurus proclaim this incident and its aftermath as the start of the ‘Pluto in Aquarius’ era, legal experts explain concepts like jury nullification, and women and gay men thirst over the suspected killer, Luigi Mangione. Thankfully I never got so obsessed with it that I couldn’t focus on my work and my personal life, but it was a topic that was consistently on my mind for a while.

But then suddenly I completely lost interest and stopped keeping up with the news. I think it was around the time that I realized that there were certain characteristics about this incident that made it unique, and that it probably wasn’t going to be replicated anytime soon. Its uniqueness meant that it maybe wasn’t the sign of some broader change occurring. (You can’t predict the revolution based on a single incident—sorry TikTok astrology gurus.)

Upon reflecting, there were two main reasons that I became disillusioned.

First, most Americans do not have any reservations about openly hating the health insurance industry because most of them are very negatively impacted by it while also not being responsible for its corruption in the slightest. If you look at other issues that negatively affect Americans, acknowledging and starting to address many of them requires the maturity and humility to accept one’s own role in creating the problem. For example, we all have a carbon footprint and contribute to the climate crisis, even though we don’t have as much of a role in creating that problem as corporations and the super wealthy. We all send our tax dollars to fund the USA war machine murdering innocent children in Gaza, even though we are not personally sending over the bombs. We all have helped the spread of COVID at some point and will likely continue to do so. Because we live in a racist, misogynistic, queerphobic society, we have all been racist, misogynistic, and queerphobic at some point in time, even if we have the identity of the disadvantaged group. (I say this as a queer person who’s dealing with internalized queerphobia.) Unfortunately, it’s really hard to fully come to terms with one’s own guilt, and most people’s brains will simply protect them from ever doing so.

Second, the Brian Thompson assassination was like something out of a Hollywood movie, and indeed, streaming services are already capitalizing on the opportunity to make documentaries about this incident even though the details of the case are still being uncovered. If you’ve grown up watching a lot of action, superhero-style movies (as many Americans have), you’ve been conditioned into thinking and feeling that this assassination was uniquely ‘heroic’ because ‘heroism’ in our culture looks like a hot cis man gunning down a bad guy and then getting a photoshoot while being perp walked after his arrest. But you know what else counts as heroism? Being fired for speaking out about Palestine on your social media. Boycotting harmful corporations. Wearing a mask every time you’re in public even though you may get harassed. Becoming a vegetarian to save the planet. But that’s not sexy, it’s not like something out of a Marvel film, so of course if you do these things you’re not going to be idolized the way Luigi currently is (even though he may not even be ‘guilty’ of killing Brian Thompson).

I want to be wrong about the response to the Brian Thompson killing not being a sign of deeper change in this country. I really want to be wrong. But until I see more evidence that people’s attitudes and beliefs are changing, I remain skeptical.

Loran Vanden Bosch

Loran Vanden Bosch is a Chicago-based writer, tradesperson-in-training, community organizer, and long distance runner who graduated from Calvin in 2021 with an English degree. You can also follow them on Medium @loranvandenbosch.