There’s been substantial overlap between the left and the right in terms of support for Luigi Mangione, and I thought it would be a good idea to make it abundantly clear why that is the case, and also explain the limits of that overlap.

First, a refresher on what it means to be a conservative:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

~ Frank Wilhoit

Any desire for a more egalitarian society is what conservatives call “confusion” — i.e., a wrong thought. While each conservative will have a slightly different model of what the correct hierarchy looks like, they all agree that there is a single hierarchy that is correct, and they see freedom as the freedom to comply with that hierarchy. While the in-group/out-group dynamic certainly has something to do with where a person falls in the hierarchy, with a person at the top of the hierarchy being relatively “in” while a person at the bottom of the hierarchy is relatively “out”, the real in/out dynamic happens when someone opposes the hierarchy. Being opposed to the hierarchy makes a person maximally “out” and deserving of death.

People on the left tend to support Luigi Mangione because they see CEO’s in general as vultures enriching themselves through the pain, suffering and death of working class people. While some CEO’s are more clearly evil, with a more obvious death toll, the left’s criticism of CEO’s as a class (specifically, they are the upper minions of the capitalist class) is a criticism of all of them. It’s easy to see why people on the left, then, might support Mangione.

Generally, people tend to believe that conservatives support capitalism, and conservatives tend to support the idea that they support capitalism, but they also don’t understand the meaning of the word. In fact, conservatives only support capitalism when it supports them; when it is harmful to them, they oppose it, and they call it “socialism”. Nothing is more harmful to them, from their viewpoint, than opposing their preferred hierarchy. From a conservative viewpoint, socialism is any economic system that opposes the correct hierarchy. They would literally rather starve than allow their preferred hierarchy to be upended, but they also believe wholeheartedly that failure to uphold the correct hierarchy will result in starvation. Moreover, they believe that if they are starving, it is because someone, somewhere is violating the preferred hierarchy.

American conservatives believe in a socioeconomic system that is a form of modernized feudalism. Within this modernized feudalism, there is necessarily a single legitimate king, but there are also various tiers of noblemen, each with their own spheres of influence. It’s my personal opinion that this form of society is the lowest-energy society for the human animal, which is to say that a better, more egalitarian society (e.g., real socialism) requires more energy to maintain, but a less organized, chaotic society also requires more energy to maintain (typically, in the form of destruction perpetrated by an outside entity). However, being “lowest-energy” does not at all mean “correct” or “good”.

In this modernized feudalism, components of society may be “legitimate” or “illegitimate”. If the top tier (the king) is legitimate, then the king decides whether the tier below him (and its separate elements) is legitimate or not. The king may also declare other components of society to be legitimate or not as he sees fit. In addition, conservatives will make assumptions about which parts of society are legitimate or not (i.e., which are the in-groups and which are the out-groups), and of course, anyone that opposes the legitimate hierarchy explicitly (e.g., any member of the left) is clearly part of the way-out group and deserves death.

In the specific context of United Health Care, Brian Thompson was like a Marquess within the Dukedom of United Health Group, whose Duke is Andrew Witty. From the conservative view, each leader is supposed to demand complete compliance with the hierarchy, but is also supposed to provide a kind of service to his subjects. Failure of the leader to provide for his subjects is a violation of the hierarchy. While the lives of people at the bottom of the hierarchy (in this case, customers) are less valuable than the life of the person at the top of the hierarchy (in this case, Thompson), there’s a point where the leader’s failures become egregious enough that the leader must be replaced, and if the hierarchy doesn’t replace him itself, it is acceptable (from the conservative view) to remove that leader with violence because the leader has opposed the hierarchy.

I’ve been watching the TV series Leverage lately, and it completely supports this view. It doesn’t oppose the hierarchy of capitalism, but rather posits that a bad leader is harmful to the functioning of the system and must be excised from it. Such a leader is opposing an otherwise good system. Similarly, the old story of Robin Hood (from somewhere in the 1200’s) isn’t about opposing the king, but rather opposing the bad king — the illegitimate King John who is a tyrant in the story. Similarly, if you look at RoboCop (1987), a film often presumed to be anti-capitalist, the villain isn’t capitalism — rather, it is a few bad actors within the Dukedom of the Omni Consumer Products corporation. In short, this conservative idea of how society should be structured, and how bad actors at the top of hierarchies should be managed, permeates all of Western society, but especially American culture. This narrative is rarely countered, but a great example is the end of the Hunger Games series, where the protagonist rejects the new king after ending the previous king, making the Hunger Games about as explicitly leftist as you’re going to get.

Regarding wealth inequality, the conservative mind does not get why this is a problem. The king is supposed to be rich; his riches reflect the prosperity of his kingdom as a whole. When you show a conservative a picture of one of Trump’s gold toilets, the conservative is pleased; the opulent shitter in the photo reflects on Trump, which reflects on Trump’s kingdom, which reflects on his subjects. When conservatives find Trump lacking, they try to kill him; they don’t try to get rid of presidents in general.

This should explain why conservatives so viscerally hated both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — they were illegitimate kings. And since both of those Presidents supported an economic system that inherently could not support the correct hierarchy (since it was headed by an illegitimate king), then the economic system was socialism. From a conservative viewpoint, socialism is any economic system that opposes the correct hierarchy. An illegitimate king isn’t just opposed to the conservative’s ideal hierarchy, he is opposed to God himself.

So those are the limits to conservatives agreeing with leftists. The conservatives will never give up their multi-faceted hierarchy, and the left will never accept it. However, they’re both willing to agree that a particular bad leader needs to go — unlike liberals whose reactions to the Brian Thompson murder were truly fascinating. Faced with a government that is in the pocket of huge corporations (and the oligarchs who own them), forced to use whatever shitty insurance their employer has selected (more often than not it will be United Health Care), and presented with the facts of the often lethal policies that United Health Care has adopted, the liberal will simply tell you to vote harder. Compared to that, the conservative narrative makes a lot of sense.

In related news, a bunch of liberals online are currently very mad at Protonmail for openly stating the fact that the Republican Party is currently better than the Democratic Party in terms of antitrust enforcement. We, on the other hand, are not angry when someone states the facts.