A society that begins to excuse political violence should not be surprised when political violence multiplies.
Once you create a moral framework in which violence is not merely understandable but righteous — once you argue that certain institutions are so corrupt, so “murderous,” that the people who participate in them deserve to be killed — you are no longer condemning violence. You are licensing it.
And when that cultural permission structure meets a criminal justice system increasingly designed to favor perpetrators over victims, the results are predictable: more criminals walking free, more public cynicism and more people tempted to believe that vigilantism is the only remaining form of accountability.
Consider the case of Luigi Mangione, accused in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A New York judge ruled this week that while the murder weapon will be admissible at trial, several other pieces of evidence seized during Mangione’s arrest will be suppressed.
The admissible items include a gun, a 3D-printed silencer and a red notebook reportedly filled with incriminating writing. But the judge excluded other evidence found in Mangione’s backpack: his phone, passport, gun magazine, wallet and a computer chip.
The rationale is the kind of procedural hair-splitting that leaves normal Americans wondering whether the system has lost its mind. The defense argued that the backpack was searched unconstitutionally because it had been moved away from Mangione’s immediate reach before officers searched it. The judge agreed.
What makes it stranger is that the search occurred in Pennsylvania — inside a McDonald’s — yet the judge ruled that New York law governs suppression issues because Mangione is being tried in New York. In other words, a police officer in Pennsylvania is apparently expected to know the intricate procedural rules of New York criminal law while making an arrest in real time.