Snorting the Samsara
UnitedHealthcare CEO assassination speaks to the festering wounds of human misery and the imperative to aim better. Field notes on human belonging.
SAMSARA [saṃ-sā-ra]
(noun) : the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma
It’s the biggest story of 2024 in terms of engagement: UnitedHealthcare CEO Assassinated on Manhattan Sidewalk.
And sure, most people are getting a good laugh from the comments to this story. Most people find their well of sympathy is completely parched from years of exhaustion in navigating a broken healthcare system, among other epic systemic failures. The peak of these domestic failures is the horror of watching our government send billions to the war chest of foreign states like Israel and Ukraine, while Americans suffering from natural disasters get a poxy $750. The financial guillotine that Americans are placed under is underscored by the madness of shifting morality, like a compass that decides where north is based on what is most convenient for it at the time. It’s nothing short of schizophrenic.
And yet, that is the status quo for leadership, whether we’re talking about the public or private sector. That is what we are being force-fed like a tortured prisoner in a gulag whose inquisitor believes his delusions because he speaks politely. It is the more egregious vile erosion of collective reality, an abomination of human dignity. It is also the note I end my first book on, The Song of the Human Heart — a complex story I’m mapping out in detail as I piece together the sequel, The Song of the Mystery. The latter takes a sharp aim at the festering wound of human misery.
“It’s time to become the fall of Night, to become the hunter that sees sharply in the dark. It’s time to go in for the kill. It’s time to stir from sleep the erotic power of death and become of Death so we may discern what needs to be killed and where it hides.
It’s time to become a huntress.”
— Shireen Qudosi, The Song of the Human Heart
In an earlier substack titled A Most Lethal Order, I shared how we’re locked into a mechanical frame of mind where the value of life is based on its utility. I called the inability to see the individual as a cataract of the human heart. It’s a description that fits systems that claim they exist to improve the quality of human life, including the healthcare system.
So, can you blame anyone for not caring that a greedy executive in a blood-sucking industry that feeds off people’s misery — an executive who was being investigated for insider trading of 15 million dollars ahead of his DOJ investigation — is anyone going to shed a tear that this guy got taken out Punisher-style? Not really.
And you can’t blame them. We’ve spent the last year being collectively gaslit over the war in Gaza and the ruling class's authoritarian response to domestic protests over it. We’ve seen children and seniors beaten up over protesting a brutal annihilation campaign against Palestinians that extended to anyone who dared to express their alliance. I remember Republicans jesting that Americans couldn’t have free health care because we had to bomb the Houthis in Yemen for daring to place pressure on international trade in response to Israel’s genocide.
And we’ve been subject to the ridiculous spectacle of the 2024 election. There was Biden’s blatant cognitive decline, Kamala Harris’ “I am speaking” moment, paired with Donald Trump’s rhetoric of “the enemy within” that feasts on the right-wing’s fever dreams of a coming second civil war. And, of course, Donald Trump won his re-election. The same Donald Trump who said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters.” He was celebrated for it.
So, finally, someone did. With impeccable planning and focus, an unknown man decided it was time for the American people to have their “I am speaking” moment. Deviating from the pattern of other shooter incidents, there was no manifesto, nothing that points to an egoic need to be seen. Instead — and this is significant — his manifesto was written on the bullet he used to kill the UnitedHealthCare CEO: “deny, defend, depose.”
When the compass points north in different directions at any hour of the day, and the only one with the power to move the needle is an agent of distortion, someone will inevitably do something.
I can’t help but notice that the same people condemning the shooter were happy to celebrate the politicians and celebrities writing messages on Israeli weapons aimed broadly at a neighboring Arab population. Remember Nikki Haley writing “finish them!” on IDF artillery shells just this year? Writer Omar D. Foda noted the irony, pointing out that, “The Day the UHC CEO was shot, a quadcopter filled a boy in a wheelchair full, of bullet-holes and all those concerned with cold-blooded murder said nothing.”
There is no discernment among the ruling class in the rule of law and morality, something longtime human rights advocate Jeffrey Imm spoke to me about in 2018. A rare voice of temperance with the long-range vision needed for restoring dignity in civic society, Imm shared that there could be no rule of law without a shared reality. Since 2016, hasn’t that rule of law been steadily breaking down like a winning game of Tetris, block by block, row by row? Except this isn’t a game, and no one is winning.
Deny, Defend, Depose. Three words mirror the insurance giant's common phrase to skirt around coverage. As one social media user shared, “Deny, Defend, Depose,” is about to become the “Live, Love, Laugh” of the revolution.
Since my formal entry into the counter-extremism space in 2018, I’ve been studying the escalating rate of language that anticipates or even calls for a second civil war. Pundits and political influencers first warned of it, only to later jump on the tribal bandwagon calling for it, determining that we need to finish this tug-of-war between the political right and the political left, divide the United States and be done with it. There was even a movie recently called Civil War (worth watching, by the way) that portrayed a possible future scenario where we do turn on each other. Some of these pundits are pretty big players in the political game, working behind the scenes advising policy and politicians. The theme of us vs. them is amplified in every election, making the CEO assassination response much more significant than what we’ve been told for years.
For years, we’ve been told that the enemy is the other — a person with another ideology, skin color, faith, or political party. This pattern of othering is as old as the ongoing wars in the Holy Land. As I map out in my second book, The Song of the Mystery: The Foundation for Human Belonging, it is a primordial battle.
The flood of support and cheers for the UnitedHealthCare CEO shooter collapses the narrative that our neighbors are our enemies. We’re not. The enemy is much more concentrated.
“We’re less and less led by individuals authentically interested in servant leadership; we’re led by sinistership…a nesting doll of disease.”
— Shireen Qudosi, A Most Lethal Order