Radicalization.

Luigi and more.

This Luigi case (UnitedHealth CEO) seems interesting on face, because we don’t always associate people from privileged families with violent events. (The affluent prefer their violence to be corporate, naturally.) In fact, while the UnitedHealth case was not a mass casualty event, the only “rich person” we ever had on a mass shooting was the Las Vegas shooter, who I think had something like $3.4M in the bank and was a “whale” to many casinos out there. We normally associate violence and radicalization with “the working poor” or “the huddled masses.” Not in this case.

If you read anything about Luigi, it is pretty easy to understand the radicalization in his case — he had a back surgery that was a mess, and even though his family was affluent, the payments were a mess, and apparently his mom was also sick. He seemed to cut off from society around June 2024, to the point that his family filed a missing persons report on him sometime in November. I would assume he was spending that time reading, going down rabbit holes, formulating a plan, etc, etc.

His radicalization was around health and the apparent dichotomy of “how we should live” vs. “how we do live,” which seemed to dawn for him when he was randomly living in Japan. He got laid off from TrueCar or some “tech” company and that probably pushed the needle even further. Maybe there was a girl involved too; we’ll know eventually.

Each radicalization experience seems unique, although what we can seemingly agree upon is that: