Could this American exception for elite safety be changing? Could we see a wave of violence against elites who are deemed unsympathetic? Maybe.
Mark Zuckerberg is a student of history. He studies ancient Roman history. He must know something. Zuck is spending something like eight times more than every other CEO on his security. This could explain his recent MMA obsession. It isn’t about fun. It’s practical.
Just a few months before the murder of Brian Thompson, Donald Trump was almost assassinated by another Generation Z shooter. While we have had numerous presidential assassinations throughout history, I think it is odd that these two events happened so close together.
Is this new generation breaching the old norms of American society? Is it because they grew up completely different from other generations?
Who Was Luigi Mangione?
Mangione wasn’t just another follower of mine. He read my tweets, subscribed to my newsletter, and even commented on one of my articles. I don’t consider myself an extreme writer. I’m not the type to provoke or polarize. Twitter is full of people trying to make you angry, trying to keep you stimulated. That’s not me. I juxtapose the modern with the past, trying to figure out what we’ve lost—or what the trade-offs were. So why was this high school valedictorian and Ivy League computer science graduate drawn to my work?
I started digging. His ideology didn’t fit anywhere neat. It wasn’t Democratic or Republican. It was this strange fusion, a mix of left and right. Skepticism about technology dominated. He’d even recommended the Unabomber manifesto. He was young, smart, curious about the world. Skeptical but thoughtful.
He was into self-improvement too. Reading books about grit, willpower, better habits. Mainstream stuff you’d find at any airport bookstore. He liked Peter Thiel and the rationalist view of humanity.
He was physically fit, disciplined. He was trying to do everything, embodying that modern masculine archetype the internet sells to young men. But he wasn’t an Andrew Tate disciple or some crypto bro chasing clout. His manifesto zeroed in on health care, how broken it is, how corporations dominate, how unhealthy America has become. It felt like a traditional leftist critique.
Mangione wasn’t easy to pin down. He’d pulled from everywhere, cobbling together pieces of knowledge and ideas that didn’t fit into a single box. It was a reflection of the world he grew up in, where the marketplace of ideas is seemingly endless.
Generation Z and the Assault of Infinite Ideas
Mangione reflects a generation raised in a fragmented world where the internet floods them with ideas from every direction. There’s no shared narrative, no clear boundaries. Leftist critiques of corporate greed mix with hypermasculine self-help; tech skepticism overlaps with startup worship. Profound truths blur with absurd distractions, leaving Gen Z to navigate contradictions and assemble meaning for themselves.
Mangione’s worldview was a chaotic mix: tech skepticism, self-improvement, health care critiques, and personal fitness. He embodied the generation’s struggle to create coherence in a fractured cultural landscape.