The recent shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO and ongoing senseless school shootings are inescapable testimony to the fact that radicalization is alive and well.

Leftist cultural influences have created a recipe for the radicalization of our youth.  Under normal circumstances, it is difficult enough for children and adults to grow out of their primal self-serving instincts and adapt to societal norms — to become socialized and civilized.  That becomes even more difficult when traditional social norms — patriotism, family values, religious tenets, gender roles — undergo progressive assault, leaving the young identity seeker without frame of reference or purpose.

If America is a racist, white supremacist, xenophobic nation built on stolen lands, if the family structure is patriarchal, if religions are oppressive, if toxic masculinity and misogyny prevail, why strive to mold one’s character into conformity with such social mores?

Stir in permissive parenting.  Coddling and indulgent parents, for fear of repressing their offspring’s individualism, leave them with none, confounding their abandonment.  A cadre of rudderless, dissident, self-immersed, anxious, and depressed identity seekers results.  They seek identity in social media, aggravating their emotional angst.  They can become snowflakes, interpreting environmental stimuli as trigger warnings, microaggressions, and hate speech.  They can become rebels without a cause, demonstrating for the destruction of Israel by Hamas, knowing little or nothing about either.

Or they can become apex radicals like the slayer of Brian Thompson, whose actions undoubtedly stemmed from a pathological degree of hatred and vengeance channeled against, in this case, the health care system.  Overt radicalism reflects the dark underbelly of leftist ideology.  It is fed by the highest degree of self-righteousness, moral certitude, and revenge seeking — basic elements of leftist motivation.  He almost certainly felt not only morally justified, but morally obligated to wreak revenge on the health insurance industry, arbitrarily attributing to it healthcare’s skyrocketing costs and access issues.

The irony of the slayer’s assault lies in the fact that health insurance company policies, though aggravating, are not the root cause of either.  They do not set costs.  Health care consumes 17% of GDP, at $4.5 trillion.  Health care debt amounts to $220 billion.  Health care is so expensive that no one can afford to pay for it — not the government, not private health insurers, and certainly not individual consumers.  If health insurers were to cover all healthcare costs, premiums would be unaffordable.  If they were to redirect their $28B annual profit into claim payments, it would avail each of America’s private insurance subscribers  ~223 million ) an additional $125 to pay bills — hardly a solution to the problem.

Yet 41% of Americans ages 18–29 find Thompson’s slaying acceptable, in Emerson College Polling.  Media pundits think it’s OK, too.  A “Go Fund Me” site for his accused slayer was established.  The slayer’s vigilantism and use of lethal force, driven by hatred and vengeance, directed against a designated greedy capitalist oppressor, is laudable for many on the left.  By contrast, driven by threats to life and limb, Daniel Penny’s vigilantism and use of deadly force against a palpable oppressor is seen as an act of racism and murder by the left.  Leftist perception of radical behavior is truly radical.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.