One assumes David Brooks is already furiously at work on a 1000-word column about how Mangione’s turn to crime is emblematic of the Ivy League’s hollow meritocracy and lack of morals.
A guy whose last address was Honolulu travels to NYC to commit an assassination. All that’s missing from that backpack is The Catcher in the Rye
I had no delusions that he would escape indefinitely, but carrying around the gun and a manifesto just seems confusing. Like he knew he’d get caught. Was he just trying to create a short media frenzy? Was this his plan?
That was fast. He seems to have fumbled a lot, as one tends to do on his first assassination.
You don’t write a manifesto if you’re not interested in publicity. Being on the run for a few days builds interest in the story, hell, he’s a folk hero now. On Reddit, some people were actually writing new lyrics to “The Hero of Canton” about him.
ISTM most plans by amateurs are similar to this set of copyrighted images I won’t link directly to: Google Image Search.
The devil is always in the details.
Social justice doesn’t, but Crusades definitely involve a lot of murder.
Upon further reflection, was this was clearly not a case of Minnesota Nice meets the Aloha Spirit
Or was, in fact, intending to be caught.
He knew that he would get caught eventually but at least he could do a little cat and mouse until then. He was obviously out of fucks to give a long time ago.
Graduate degree in Engineering from an Ivy. From an extremely wealthy and politically Conservative family. Fan of the Unabomber. This is fascinating.
No one ever expects the Sicilian Inquisition.
I wonder how many of them understand the irony of that appellation. But then, I suspect that the inspiration for “Robin Hood”, if one ever existed, started out for his own enrichment and found that promoting himself as a vigilante for the common man proved to be useful ‘branding’.
Stranger
I’m curious to see if the ballistics match. If it’s a ghost gun it might not have a rifled barrel. I don’t know if a non-rifled barrel leaves any kind of consistent markings.
Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
His Twitter is still up and it’s not what I was expecting. It’s full of retweets of Peter Thiel, conspiracy theories about Tiktok and “the CCP”, hand-wringing about the decline in Christian morality, and stuff that Elon Musk would probably reply to with “Big if true!”
He also has a Goodreads account which lists, among his favorite books, the Hunger Games trilogy, the Unabomber Manifesto, and several books about living with chronic back pain, the latter of which probably has something to do with his motive.
Has anyone seen or heard from his brother Mario.
Or his other brother, Chuck?
And the New York Post manages to fit in “True Crime!!!” and beefcake in the same story. Someone there must be happy that they’re hitting their marks.
He may not be a professional hitman, but he’s got the name for it.