Notes from the edge of civilization: December 22, 2024
The Luigi Mangione ‘fan club’; the 'evil car' distraction; the right to be fat; and in conclusion.
It’s apparently never been a better time to be a murderer — especially if you’re young and handsome. Starstruck fans can’t get enough of suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO vigilante, Luigi Mangione. While holed up for 10 days at Huntingdon State Correctional in Pennsylvania, Mangione racked up 54 emails, 87 letters, and 163 cash deposits into his commissary account.
A handful of lovelorn admirers took to TikTok to gush over the 26-year-old, calling him “fine as f–k” and offering companionship, support, and who knows what else. One superfan even mailed him photos of her birthday party and gushed about the “thrill” of posting a physical letter to her new “bad boy” pen pal.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Get this — nearly half the people in his age group actually approve of Mangione’s actions, demanding that he be treated with “dignity” and urging others to consider the “trauma” that must have led to his actions. A recent Emerson College poll found that a staggering 41% of Americans aged 18-29 believe the shooting he is accused of was either “somewhat” or “completely” acceptable.
Compare that to just 23% of those in their 30s, 13% of those in their 40s, and a mere 8% in their 50s who deem the murder acceptable, and you really start to wonder what our future is going to look like. In a society where the moral compass is created by Disney and Marvel Comics, and where everything boils down to a binary narrative, revenge is suddenly righteous and all corporate leaders are mustache-twirling villains.
Headlines covering a terror attack at a Christmas market in Germany are getting flak for seeming to attribute blame to the car instead of the person behind the wheel. Commenters on X are mockingly asking: “Why do these evil cars keep doing this?”
Media framing isn’t just an innocent style choice — it’s a powerful and deliberate force that conditions us to accept a certain perspective as the only perspective. Saying “Car drives into crowd” instead of “Doctor drives into crowd” not only shifts blame away from the driver, but also dulls our sense that any single person is responsible.
Those small linguistic choices accumulate over time, molding public sentiment and fogging up reality. Overlooking who actually did what, and why, puts our focus on inanimate objects or trivial details at the expense of accountability. It’s like blaming forks for making you gain weight. This is how narratives get spun and how, eventually, our entire understanding of a situation can shift without us even noticing.
Stay alert, folks. If you don’t watch the language, the language will watch you.
Speaking of forks… San Francisco’s Department of Public Health has tapped Virgie Tovar — a self-styled “fat positivity” advocate — to consult on the city’s approach to “weight stigma and weight neutrality.”
Instead of putting $12,000 into cleaning up the syringes and human feces that clutter the city’s sidewalks, San Francisco — which has one of the lowest rates of obesity in the country — has decided it will invest in challenging conventional health metrics, attacking the idea that losing weight makes you healthy, and ensuring that workplaces become “no-go zones” for any chatter that even hints at body size or diet.
According to The New York Post:
In July, Tovar posted that she conducted a weight bias training for unidentified government workers, sharing four tips she taught to help decrease “stigma around food and bodies at work.”
“1. Talk less or not at all about how you and others eat at work,” she wrote. “2. Talk less or not at all about you or others’ bodies at work. 3. Talk less or not at all about exercise at work. 4. Don’t presume that food, weight, body size or exercise are safe or comfortable topics to discuss at work for everyone.”
In 2022, she told an interviewer that “No one has to be healthy. No one owes anybody that.” So, where was she when they were forcing jabs on us and telling us it was to protect Grandma?
With the holidays so close, we can taste the stuffing, gravy, and sweet potato pie.
And, it is easy to be lulled into a swingin’ Rat Pack Christmas, all saccharine and Normal Rockwell-like. We don’t suggest it, though.
Yes, be in the moment with your loved ones. Yes, recognize the immense blessings you enjoy. Definitely avoid politics at the table for the sake of harmony. But remember that the forces at work — we will even say satanic forces — never, ever rest. They are working 24/7 and this past week shows it. The Collapse Life team hopes this isn’t a foreboding for the year ahead, and yet we think it’s worth reminding ourselves (if no one else): do not let your guard down.
“And know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.”
— Matthew 24:43
Warmest Seasons Greetings from Collapse Life.
That's a good portrayal of misguided and flawed beliefs driving non productive behavior. It illustrates how a whole generation has been misled or indoctrinated in an increasingly complex and confusing world. So many young people are getting their news and views from the propaganda media, and have no idea how it's designed to manipulate and indoctrinate. They seem to lack critical thinking skills and even morality in favor of peer acceptance and popularity. They are victims but also perpetrators of deception and unaware of the danger we all face from the erosion of freedom and the decent into tyranny.
This Virgie Tovar is exactly the type that keeps the insanity rolling. That college poll you quoted really makes you wonder about the younger generations. I guess that's what stage the empire is at this point. Pretty scary man.