Thoughts & Prayers for Thoughts & Prayers
What exactly is terrorism?
It feels like 2024 had a plan to try to break us. Whether it was the stomach-churning twists and turns of the election, or the ongoing war Israel is waging on Gaza that has torn apart friends, families, and the Democratic party, 2024 is on one. As if that wasn’t enough, Trump is even Trumpier than before. He is going to tariff the shit out of every country whose name doesn’t start with “The United.” He’s claiming that on day one he will start mass deportations. He also said he’s going to end birthright citizenship. And if he gets his wish, he'll be deporting babies!
USA! USA! USA!
Yup, 2024 wants us on our knees, begging for it to stop, and it isn’t taking the month of December off.
I think the relentlessness of 2024 has a lot to do with the response we’ve seen to the killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. People are over it. They are done. The thoughts-and-prayers era has come to an end. One thing the election has proved is that money, without a doubt, rules this country. It’s true on both sides of the aisle. The will of the people can be drowned out by a few people with lots of money. Brian Thompson has come to represent that in his death.
That might have been true if Brian was just a regular healthcare CEO, but Brian was not a regular healthcare CEO. At least I hope he wasn’t.
Brian’s company is reported to have the highest denial rate of any insurance company. The numbers are disputed because these companies don’t want us to know the truth, but one thing we do know to be true is that UnitedHealthcare is in the top twenty of the most valuable American companies. It is, in fact, the most valuable American health insurance company. (By default, that makes it the most valuable health insurance company in the world, because other countries believe health care is a right, not a privilege.) Because UnitedHealthCare is such a wealthy company, we know they could afford to approve more claims than they do. But they don’t, because they like money more than they like the people who pay them for insurance.
We also know that medical debt is the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy.
USA! USA! USA!
UnitedHealthCare is under investigation by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations—at least under this current version of the Department of Justice. We don’t know what the next administration will do. Want to know more about why the Department of Justice’s antitrust work is critical? Watch this:
Brian, along with other UnitedHealthcare executives, was being sued for fraud and insider trading by a fire fighters’ pension fund. The firefighters believe that once Brian and his UnitedHealthcare coworkers got wind of the DOJ lawsuit, they dumped some of their company’s stock before the news broke. Apparently, Brian sold more than fifteen million dollars of his personal company stock.
According to his family, Thompson was, of course, a good dad and a nice person. I’ll accept that. While I can’t imagine what they must be going through, I can imagine what people whose policies were denied by Thompson’s company are going through. I have mentioned in multiple interviews that I am in therapy. Earlier this year, my insurance company pushed back against reimbursing me for the sessions. They wanted to know if I really, really needed it. They wanted my therapist to write them a letter to assure them that I absolutely needed my therapy sessions. My therapist told me this, and we had a dark laugh about what he would need to include in the letter. Where is the line, exactly, between Kamau really needs therapy and Kamau is the next Charles Manson. CALL THE COPS!? It was incomprehensible to us that simply being a Black man in America isn’t enough to get a lifetime of free insurance coverage for therapy. I have no idea what my therapist put in the letter, but apparently it was enough to get me the coverage this year.
Because of the business I’m in, I have no idea what my insurance situation will be next year. And of course, as important as therapy is for me, it ain’t cancer drugs or a wheelchair or a 24-hour home health care worker for your terminally-ill parent. I’m guessing that you, the person who is reading this right now, has either been denied health insurance coverage for something that you knew you were owed OR you know someone who was denied coverage. Anger about those denials is bubbling to the surface in the public conversation around Brian Thompson’s killing. And I’m not surprised.
Earlier this week, Luigi Mangione, who has confessed to killing Thompson, was charged with terrorism. Charging Mangione with terrorism implies that rich, white men have become some sort of oppressed group of people, or that we need to be worried about more Luigi Mangiones out there targeting rich CEOs. Maybe we do. But jumping to a charge of terrorism when this has happened a grand total of once seems like a reach. More specifically, it seems like a warning shot across the bow, a warning for the people who have openly celebrated Luigi.
Oh, you think Luigi’s cute, huh? Well, take that!
The terrorism charge comes in the wake of reports of wealthy CEOs hiring more personal security. It was leaked that the governor of New York was even considering setting up a hotline for frightened executives. A 911 for rich people! Maybe the police pick up the rich person and whisk them off to a fancy gala where they can feel safe. A terrorism charge is even more confusing when we live in a country where police officers regularly get away with killing Black people for no good reason at all. No one gets charged with terrorism for that. We rarely even get convictions.
Around the same time I learned about the killing of Brian Thompson, I learned about Herman Whitfield III. He was a Black man and a jazz piano player whose family called the police one day in 2022 because Herman was suffering from a mental health crisis. The police killed Herman. They were recently acquitted. A tale as old as time. This is far from the first time this has happened to a Black person suffering a mental health crisis. We even covered a case almost exactly like this on United Shades of America. No terrorism charges for Herman’s killers, though. Ironic, considering how policing in America literally started as a terrorist organization that caught escaped slaves. But you knew that already.
As a nation we have become very comfortable witnessing the suffering of the many while the rich brag about their spoils. America was built on a faulty foundation: the genocide of the Indigenous peoples and the transatlantic slave trade. The foundation was designed to enrich white men. No breaking news there. We all know that to be true, or we spend our lives pretending it isn’t true. Unfortunately for those of us interested in the truth, the white men who decided how to build this country and who then forced Black people, Chinese people, indentured servants, and eventually undocumented immigrants to build our country’s institutions did an incredible job of baking this lack of truth into the very fabric of our country. And that’s a real bummer for the rest of us. For, in fact, most of us.
Over time these white men and their supplicants got cocky. There was a time when people with money didn’t want the poors to know how much money they had. Don’t get me wrong. The rich definitely wanted us to know that they were rich. Afterall, what’s money good for if you can’t rub it in people's faces, sometimes literally? Politely tipping an exotic dancer turned into “making it rain.” In my lifetime, I’ve seen a person's net worth go from being a private fact to public knowledge. Every year, Forbes Magazine publishes lists of rich people broken up by industry and then an ultimate list of the richest people. Weirdly, rich people want to be on that list. That boggles my mind. In fact, some people want to be on the list so badly that they lie about how much they are worth. What creeps those people must be.
When I was reading dozens of articles about the killing of Brian Thompson, I saw countless references to his wealth. I got curious and wondered if I could Google it. I was trying to figure out what “wealth” or “rich” meant in this context. I found a Yahoo article that was clearly created for people like me. The headline read “What Was UHC CEO Brian Thompson’s Net Worth Before Death?” A little on the nose, but perfect for my purposes. I was sort of shocked when I saw his net worth was reportedly “only” 4.3 million dollars. I say “only” because, while I know that’s a ton of money in certain parts of this country, in Northern California that's a nice house. Not a mansion. But also, if you are worth 4.3 million, you don’t spend it all on a house. Maybe you spend half of it on a house. In Northern California, at that price point, you could get a nice house, but now it needs a new roof… and the electrical is old… and that one bathroom is so old that it’s “whites only.”
As I was asking myself, Is that really wealthy?, I refocused my eyes and realized I had inserted a decimal point that wasn’t there. Brian Thompson was worth 43 million dollars. And this was before he allegedly sold his stock for an extra fifteen million dollars. His salary was reportedly ten million dollars a year. Yeah… that’s wealthy.
Yet the media has been shocked by the collective lack of empathy for Brian Thompson. This is the same media that’s doing Trump’s dirty laundry in advance of his presidency. I wonder if they know that many Trumpers also lack empathy for Brian Thompson. Apparently insurance companies don’t ask about your political affiliation before denying your claim. In the wake of Thompson’s killing, Ben Shapiro—the middle aged, right wing bloviator who cosplays as a “young person”—released one of his attempts at searing cultural commentary on YouTube. Ben Shapiro is anti-trans, anti-woke, anti-critical-race-theory (not that he could define it), anti-LGBTQ+, anti-Palestinian, and anti-abortion rights. He’s even come out against women enjoying sex. (Let’s all light a candle for his wife.) Worst of all, Ben seems like a bore of a dinner guest. If you’re going to be an asshole, at least be an entertaining asshole.
Ben noticed the lack of empathy for Thompson, and Ben decided that this lack of empathy was exclusively coming from the left. But when Ben Shapiro blamed “the left,” he immediately ran into a problem: his own audience. His right-wing audience was not buying what he was selling. They made it clear that this is NOT a left vs. right issue. This is the issue that America has needed to deal with since its inception: the haves vs. the have nots. Who knew that class solidarity would start in the YouTube comments?
2024 has been so bad that these YouTube comments are a bright spot. If we can somehow find unity in the most intentionally divisive place ever—the internet comment section—then maybe we can get through 2025 in one piece. But we won’t do it if we continue to let money rule the country. We won’t do it if we continue to let the dividers divide us. And we won’t do it if we let the media dictate the conversation and serve as court stenographers for the wealthy. We have to pull together. If we don’t, then America has my thoughts and prayers.
You’re With Me
I’m Going on Tour
The 2025 Stand-Up Comedy Tour
You asked for it. Or maybe you didn’t, but I’m about to go back on the road to do stand-up. After a 2024 run at The Berkeley Rep and an incredible show in Davis, California, I’m heading out on he road to do stand-up comedy in 2025. These hectic times demand some jokes, written hectically while I’m also trying to raise three kids.
Tickets are now on sale for the first leg of the tour. (The tour doesn’t stop here. I’ll announce more cities soon!)
A Special Holiday Gift for Founding Subscribers
If you’re one of my founding subscribers, check your email! I sent you a message about a little holiday gift to that you for your support this year. If you didn’t get it, drop a note in the comments and we’ll make sure all of the info gets to you.
I’m Competing on Celebrity Jeopardy!
New Season Begins January 8, 9/8c on ABC/Hulu
It’s official, Ma! I’M A CELEBRITY! After years of rejecting this idea, I know have to accept that I’m a celebrity. It was a complete blast. Ken Jennings is super nice and a total pro. I was playing for DonorsChoose, of course. And the woman who did my hair has apparently done Vanna White’s hair for 30 years! My hair has rarely looked better. Seriously!
Tune in. I’ll talk more about it once it comes out. And on the subject of DonorsChoose…
Give the Gift of Better Schools
What do you give the person who has everything? How about the good feeling you get when you know you have really done some good!
Go to my personal list of teacher projects here.
Rest in Power Nikki Giovanni
Check out this clip of us on United Shades of America Season 7, Episode 2
This week poet, scholar, and firecracker Nikki Giovanni passed away.
There are some days on United Shades where I would have paid to be there. The day I got to film with Nikki Giovanni was one of them. So honored to have had Nikki on the show. One of the absolute greatest pleasures of my life. I’m so lucky to have spent time with her on this episode and later while she was promoting her documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. Her legacy will live forever.
Watch the whole episode, “Black in Appalachia,” and her documentary Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project. Both are available on Max.
Thanks for the thinking behind "Thoughts and Prayers" at this time of year when you might like to be just hanging at home with your family. Thanks for your public vulnerability and strength. "What is terrorism" is exactly a question that should be top of mind for both sides of "the aisle". I say this in full agreement and understanding of the historical references in your piece and in your citing the murder of Herman Whitfield III, yet another instance of police extra judicial killing in the USA. I wouldn't be a subscriber if I did not think these things have to be talked about again and again until they break down the resistance of the legions of people and policy makers who will not hear it. Having just visited Cuba ,I too have been thinking about the broad and broken meaning of terrorism as it is interpreted in the USA locally, nationally and internationally. I mean, what is the threat of Cuba to the US today? What is terrorism as applied to cops and prison guards in the USA? Talking about and working for change is never easy, however we approach it. But let's all keep going. Happy Holidays All.
Appreciate all of this Kamau.