This Week / December 13, 2024

I really don’t care do U?

Meatball heroes.

Steve Brodner

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, shares sudden folk-herodome this week with Daniel Penny, killer of the mentally ill Jordan Neely. In America heroic compassion won’t get you anything like the devotion for killing someone who is a member of an “out group”. Jordan Neely’s group: untreated mental patients, is a ubiquitous group in NY. They are our biggest product. They are a loud, flailing, urinating indictment of the rest of us, who often turn away in fear and indifference. We just want to get through the day, free of exposure to their tortured humanity. We prefer to devote our money to things other than emergency health care. New York is essentially an enterprise of finance, real estate, and related services supporting those projects. Most of us are in this service. And we hardly think about the poor. Or the untreated mentally ill ground up in a broken medical system. Jordan Neely didn’t exist to make subway riders feel threatened. He just existed. He was a neglected man who somehow adapted to the neglect … and became a glaring billboard for our negligence. And as a society we find it a relief to be rid of that reminder of ourselves and the culture we tolerate or even choose. And so celebrate Daniel Penny.

His co-celebrant, Mangione, also gets some ticker tape for killing a man. It is not hard for us to understand Mangione’s suffering. Our identification with him, another privileged young white man, now identified on social media as “hot”, is unrestrained. Although, he is really the Neely of his story, a person also tortured by a crushing system of profit over people. But in his case, opposed to that of Neely, his situation and looks make him worthy of our compassion. The celebrity media system now crashes into the criminal justice system, taking the truth about this poor wretch, and all the others, even further away from our consideration than before.

Steve Brodner

Steve Brodner is an award-winning graphic artist/journalist and the winner of the 2024 Herb Block Prize for editorial cartooning.

More from The Nation

A protest in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, New York, on Saturday, March 29, 2025.

You Don’t Get Trump Without Gaza You Don’t Get Trump Without Gaza

Fascism doesn’t just appear. It must be invited in—and the bipartisan repression of the anti-genocide movement did just that.

Ben Ehrenreich

Senator Cory Booker speaks on the Senate floor on April 1, 2025. The New Jersey senator broke the record for the longest Senate floor speech by holding the floor for more than 25 hours.

Cory Booker Makes History. Donald Trump Will Never Erase It. Cory Booker Makes History. Donald Trump Will Never Erase It.

The New Jersey senator broke Strom Thurmond’s record for speaking on the Senate floor. May Booker break the back of the neo-segregationism that Trump represents.

Joan Walsh

Danger!

Danger! Danger!

Activism for life.

OppArt / Alessandra Mondolfi

Susan Crawford accepts victory in her race for Wisconsin Supreme Court justice on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Democracy 1, Elon Musk 0 Democracy 1, Elon Musk 0

The richest man in the world attempted to buy an election in Wisconsin. His effort crashed and burned, establishing a model for the fight against Trumpism.

John Nichols

US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (C), alongside Minister of Justice and Public Security Gustavo Villatoro (R), tours the Terrorist Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025.

How Trump Is Outsourcing His Mass Deportation Agenda How Trump Is Outsourcing His Mass Deportation Agenda

The government is enlisting—or coercing—other countries into joining its efforts to purge immigrants from the United States.

Felipe de la Hoz

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., wears a cheese head hat during an America PAC town hall ahead of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election at the KI Convention Center in Green Bay, Wisconsin, US, on Sunday, March 30, 2025.

The World’s Richest Man Wants Wisconsin to Give Up on Democracy The World’s Richest Man Wants Wisconsin to Give Up on Democracy

Elon Musk is spending tens of millions of dollars to block free and fair elections in the battleground state.

John Nichols