A dangerous mindset is spread in America today: if you have done your injustice, you will get your own rules. That is how we have reached the point on which some people greet a man accused of murder as a hero, simply because his violence was fed by a complaint.
The case of Luigi Mangione, accused of killing the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the name of a complaint, is a horrifying example. It is the kind of head that attracts attention, but thinking behind it is not limited to extreme cases.
In my two decades as a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, DC, I saw the same logic at work in quieter, everyday forms. Whether the action is violent or apparently small, the script is the same: I am wrong, that’s why I have the right to break the rules.
Luigi Mangione appears on December 23, 2024 in the Supreme Court of Manhattan in New York City. (Curtis means for DailyMail/Pool)
Recently a female patient has admitted sho theft from a neighborhood store. Her reasoning: “They can afford it, they still charge and probably pay for their employees.” I’m not a priest. She doesn’t know. She was justified. She believed she was right.
Luigi Mangione Musical is sold out in San Francisco, producers Eye National Tour Na Smash Debut
This mentality is part of a broader national collapse of resilience. We increase and reward a fragile way of thinking that mistakes discomfort for danger, complaints for identity and emotional reactivity for truth. New polling clearly shows the gap: 45% of the liberals report poor mental health, compared to only 19% of the conservatives.
This is not about politics. It’s about how we are taught to face adversity. One approach builds up resilience. The other conditions people to see themselves as eternal victims, ready to interpret every setback as injustice and any discomfort as damage.
Victimization has become a currency and complaints is a license to break the law. Once there was a time when personal responsibility was the standard. You could get injustice and you are still expected to act with integrity.
Now, the more unjust you feel, the more moral license you think you should act outside the rules. That is why some people went beyond the apologize of Mangione’s alleged conspiracy to celebrate.
Support for social media for accused murderers Luigi Mangione, Elias Rodriguez an ‘exceptionally bad sign’: expert
In certain angles of social media, Mangione is elevated to a kind of folk hero, depicted as a man who “stood up” against powerful enemies. That fantasy reached absurd heights in San Francisco, the liberal bastion where a tongue-in-cheek stage production “Luigi: The Musical” sold out. Imagine: a man who was accused of cold -blooded murder turned into a singing, dance symbol of ‘resistance’, welcomed by an audience that treats him as a rebel icon. If it was satire, it might be funny. It is not.
This mentality did not appear from one day to the next. Therapiers culture has been feeding it for years. Too many therapists have stopped challenging their patients and began to engage them. I have seen patients say that after just a week they had to stop a new job because it “activated them”, and others advised to cut an entire family without any attempted reconciliation. No conversation. No problem solution. Retrait and self -justification.
When therapy validates complaints instead of dismantling it, the mentality spreads. It appears in schools, workplaces, politics and the streets. Social media then strengthens it, rewarding indignation, increasing minds and creating ultrasound rooms where complaints are not only validated, it is armed.
Click here for more the opinion of Fox News
The more personal and emotional the complaint is, the more followers it attracts. And when people see their own frustrations reflecting in someone like Mangione, they project their anger on him and reinterpret his alleged actions as justice.
The danger is clear. When complaints are increased about morality, the threshold for acceptable behavior collapses. The harm of others becomes a legitimate response to feel wrong. Public safety erodes. Shared standards disappear. And in the vacuum each person decides which rules apply to them and which do not.
We cannot keep pretending that this is harmless. The glorification of Mangione shows how far the complaint culture went. If we do not reverse the course, we will see more alleged criminals converted into symbols, more mobs fed by indignation and more ordinary people convinced that their anger is a license to harm.
Click here to get the Fox News app
The way back is simple: recovery resilience and personal responsibility as cultural values. Therapists must stop feeding victim stories and start teaching coping skills. Schools must teach grit alongside empathy. Politicians must reject policy -based policy -making. And each of us must resist the temptation to apologize bad behavior, simply because we relate to the complaint behind it.
The alleged crime of Mangione can be shocking, but its celebration is worse. It shows that the mentality that excuses and sometimes cheers is already lawlessness. Unless we push back, this culture continues to make the folk heroes of criminals, and unraveling America will continue one “justified” action at the same time.
Click here by Jonathan Alpert
