Keep up the good work - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Because of the way the calendar fell and to give the hard-working staff of The Citizen a well-deserved holiday break, much of what you read in the Jan. 3 issue was, I’m sorry to say, prepared ahead of time. Now that we’re back in real time, let’s catch up.
We’ve missed rightly celebrating some people - or, giving them their flowers, as the kids might say - so let’s not waste any time. 
First, there’s Sebastian Zapeta. The 33-year-old, according to the Associated Press, set a 57-year-old Toms River, New Jersey woman alight on the New York subway as she slept on Dec. 22. The article says that Zapeta allegedly “fanned the flames with a shirt, engulfing her in the blaze, before sitting on a platform bench and watching as she burned.” 

 

As 2024 turned to 2025, there was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who plowed a pick-up truck into a group of people ushering in the new year in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring over 30 others. Jabbar was killed in the resultant shootout with police, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t recognize what he did there.

 

There were also a few incidents in which the perpetrators have yet to be identified and, perhaps more importantly, they didn’t quite get the job done, but I think it’s important that we recognize their efforts. The same article about the woman being burned to death in the New York subways made mention of a 45-year-old man being pushed onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train. The man is now in critical condition and a person of interest has been arrested. Also in New York, this time in Queens, there was a drive-by shooting late on New Year’s Day that left 10 teenagers wounded and police looking for four suspects.

 

I mean, we’re celebrating this stuff now, are we not? Just before Christmas, during the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live, a mere mention of Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man who allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, saw many audience members cheer in delight. But it’s not just happening in liberal, Donald Trump-hating cesspools like New York City and its 30 Rockefeller Plaza, people all over the world are holding rallies and posting on social media to support the killing of Thompson, on a busy street in one of the world’s most populous cities. 

 

Mangione, as most people know by now, had allegedly penned a three-page manifesto about the killing before he is said to have carried it out. His motive is said to be the awful nature of for-profit healthcare in the U.S. and the rise of companies denying care to patients they insure for increasingly complex and callous reasons. UnitedHealthcare and companies like it are, no doubt, responsible for countless deaths and cases of unnecessary suffering. And yet, shooting and killing someone you think is a bad guy is not how a civilized society works.
 

I don’t want to put my lifetime membership in Woke Society in jeopardy, but killing people with whom you disagree isn’t the way forward. Over 18 years in this job, there are more than a few people who don’t think I’m a great guy. To that end, there are more than a few people who I’ve crossed off my Christmas card list over the years. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who have significant transgressions under their belts, say, drunk driving, adultery, theft, fraud and the list goes on, and yet most of us don’t turn into Se7en’s John Doe and start offing people to make the world a better place.

 

The work being done in for-profit healthcare is despicable and needs to be addressed, but celebrating Mangione (and his ilk) opens the door to a future in which no one is safe.