Man of the Year: the Assassin

The assassin dominated 2024 as a harbinger of altruism

Three assassins dominate the year. One gained disproportionate attention in the press (my media excluded). The other two—for now, at least two—tried to assassinate the 45th president of the United States before he was elected president. Others, including the Moslem who attempted to assassinate Salman Rushdie in 2022, also come to mind.

This week, so does 15 year-old Natalie (aka “Samantha”) Rupnow, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound after Madison, Wisconsin police say she opened fire in a classroom at a religious school. A Washington Post review of court records shows that Rupnow, whose parents married, divorced and re-married, then divorced again, spent “two days with her father, two with her mother, then three more with her father, before reversing the schedule the following week.” The Post reports that, by 2021, Rupnow’s parents were petitioning for a third divorce. Rupnow murdered 14 year-old student Rubi Vergara and 42 year-old teacher Erin West.

This year’s assassins include Israel, which dispatched pager bombs targeting Islamic terrorists as well as Ukraine’s assassination this week of Russia’s nuclear weapons chief in Moscow. Perhaps you can think of others; if so, please comment.

Primarily, Trump’s two attempted assassins (whom I wrote about in a detailed report here) and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s assassin merit this article’s title.

Let me define man of the year. This phrase denotes one human—an individual or abstraction—who defines the year with news which most profoundly affects the life of the individual. This definition owes to (and stems from) Time magazine’s designation. Several persons could qualify for meeting this criteria in 2024. For example:

• Donald Trump, who decisively won the 2024 election, changed America’s electorate, activating young men, as well as more latino, gay and black voters than in 2020, to vote for him. Trump won every swing state and will, if he takes the oath of office, be the oldest—and first convicted felon—President in U.S. history. Trump’s victory’s made possible by a more policy-focused campaign. Credit goes to his son, Barron, too, for suggesting a podcasting strategy, and, singularly, Elon Musk for donating and enthusiastically campaigning for Trump’s election. A Pennsylvania McDonald’s publicity stunt solidified his support, though what closed the deal is Trump’s response to the July 13 assassination attempt in Western Pennsylvania. Though grazed by an assassin’s bullet, Trump saved himself—the Secret Service failed to protect the president and bystanders—when he ducked during the siege. Then, Trump stood up. While finally being corralled by the Secret Service, not knowing whether the siege would continue, he defied the assassin and whomever may have sponsored or ordered the assassination, such as Iran, solemnly turning to the bloodied rally and calling out “fight—fight—fight.” This expression galvanized the patriotic American voter to support electing Trump as president again. Defiance, as I wrote here on the day Donald Trump left the White House in 2021, is Trump’s best characteristic: he’s not one of the pod people. As Ayn Rand wrote: “Defiance, not obedience, is the American's answer to overbearing authority.” While being targeted for assassination, he did not obey, yield or cower—he defied the assassin, he rose and he rallied the people. The people noticed; defiance is the essence of Trump’s appeal to Americans.

• Elon Musk, businessman and the world’s wealthiest man (according to Forbes), whom I named as 2021’s Man of the Year, continues to innovate. Besides being a crucial factor in electing Trump as President—Musk’s effort and donations, including visits to the Keytone state and Pittsburgh, proved effective—the SpaceX boss is revolutionizing private space travel. The Tesla CEO’s making electric vehicles more commercial. Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter, which I forecast and urged, rebranded last year as X, continues to confound his detractors, who’ve predicted his demise for decades. The President-elect announced that Musk will lead a new commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (an awful name and ideal, as I wrote today on LinkedIn), intended to cut Big Government down. Today, he’s being touted as a potential Speaker of the House.

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for defending Israel.

• J.K. Rowling for defending her right to exercise free speech and reality.

• Podcaster Joe Rogan—hosting the top podcast on Spotify in 2024 for the fifth consecutive year—for conducting a three-hour interview with Trump, whom Democrat Rogan later endorsed.

• Javier Milei because he’s leading Argentina toward capitalism and showing Trump an important example. According to the Financial Times, Argentina emerged from a severe recession in the third quarter, making progress “to end the country’s long-running economic crisis…The rebound comes as Milei marks one year in office, during which time he has unleashed brutal spending cuts and a fierce deregulation drive. [Milei’s program] has brought down the country’s triple-digit annual inflation … winning glowing endorsements from the likes of US President-elect Donald Trump and one of his closest advisers, billionaire Elon Musk. Argentina’s sovereign bonds climbed on Monday, with the premium over U.S. Treasuries that investors demand to hold its debt falling 4.4 per cent to 677 basis points, down from more than 2,000 when Milei took office.”

• Daniel Penny, because the United States Marine acted as a hero on New York City’s beleaguered subway. For doing this, he was persecuted by Alvin Bragg, New York City’s woke prosecutor. Mr. Penny defended passengers against a death threat at great personal risk to his own life. He deserves praise, not condemnation.

• Taylor Swift because she’s an artist with courage who takes professional and personal risks including creating a 31-song album about deep and profound romantic loss and grief without the standard pop dance hooks that made this 34 year-old pop star a commercial success. Swift, who continues to challenge herself, her fans and her detractors with biting, glorious and vulnerable works of art, embodies the virtue of selfishness, which I contend she practiced with her romantic partner at the Super Bowl. Incidentally, I named Swift as last year’s Woman of the Year.

• Elton John, 77, who retired from touring this year, for his wholeness as an artist, husband and father. Disney streaming debuted a new movie about his life.

• Mike Tyson because he seized the opportunity to prove that age matters less than grit. Whatever the veracity of his fighting contest—I suspect the bout’s corrupt—Tyson astonishes. As a convicted rapist with a foul past, in his own crude and vulgar way, Tyson strives to be his best. I think Mike Tyson could’ve floored his opponent without expending serious effort. That he remains a top contender in America’s gladiatorial culture—sadly, Americans worship muscle more than the mind—is a credit to the fact that Mike Tyson thinks for himself. From the ancient Greeks to Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and Michael Jordan, the outstanding athlete begins his athleticism with thinking.

• Shawn Mendes because the talented singer, songwriter and pop star, whose music is worth exploring, refuses to deny his ignorance or his sexuality. If you’re reading this, you know that, to paraphrase Ayn Rand in her article about witnessing the Apollo 11 rocket launch to the moon, confusion is the leitmotif of our times. Mr. Mendes deserves credit for admitting that he’s confused about his sexual orientation. Acknowledging what you don’t know can be a crucial and wise disclosure. Refusing to be one of Victor Hugo’s Comprachicos is the first step to clarity, knowledge and happiness. On his new album, particularly on this introspective song, Shawn Mendes sings of a desire to “put me first.” If he’s reading this, I want Shawn to know that exhibiting the virtue of selfishness means aligning your own health and life with your actions; doing not what you “gotta” do—properly practiced, it’s not about pleasing Others—but what you want to do for your own sake. Mendes, like Adele, Swift, Elton John, Olivia Newton-John and Tina Turner, demonstrates on the new album an ability to exercise self-restraint while being vulnerable. This strength is admirable.

• Hunter Biden because this pathetic figure, who has become a millionaire for the notoriety of being related by blood to a lousy president and for being an addict, aptly represents the depraved in our culture. That he was pardoned by his own father—one of over 8,000 pardons so far by this disgraceful American president—is a kind of imprisonment and punishment to whatever extent the humiliated Biden child is trying to live a clean, sober and rational life.

• Barron Trump because he embodies the potential for integrating the best (and rejecting the worst) characteristics of his father, 47th president Donald Trump.

• The businessman for continuing to be the nation’s primary producer and singular embodiment of capitalism, individualism and progress.

• The bureaucrat—the government or quasi-government official—for continuing to hasten and spread statism, altruism, collectivism and death.

• The medical scientist and the drug company because he and it made progress on what’s being touted as 2024’s breakthrough drug. Read about the pharmaceutical drug lenacapavir, already used for HIV treatment and now with promise for HIV prevention, which could eradicate a human immunodeficiency disease, here. The editors of the journal Science praise Gilead Science’s development of lenacapavir for cashing in on years of “research into the structure and function of HIV's capsid protein, which shields the virus’s genetic material. Lenacapavir's remarkable ability to block HIV transmission is based on its ability to rigidify this protein, blocking key stages of viral replication.” Ethel Weld, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, describes this year’s twin trial results as “a thrilling game changer for HIV prevention.”

The Assassin as Man of the Year

What makes the assassin the year’s foremost type of individual is his impact on your life. The assassin’s name’s less important than his mission to assassinate everyone from a president to a health boss to a band of savages terrorizing the West. In the case of assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, as I recently wrote in a preliminary report which puts me at odds with prevailing viewpoints, the assassin catapulted health policy to the forefront of today’s discourse. This can be constructive if the crime, trial and punishment lead to a serious examination of the monstrosity enacted almost 15 years ago known as ObamaCare.

This law incalculably destroys fortunes, livelihoods, property, the individual’s personal health and untold years, even decades, of medical and scientific progress and life. I forecast this debacle in several articles on my now-disabled blog, and in an essay I wrote for the Washington Times on one of ObamaCare’s marked dates of enactment.

The case against the alleged assassin of the health boss—Brian Thompson is best regarded as boss of a major corporation in what redounds to a cartel under ObamaCare—can foster debate about whether America has capitalism in medicine. In fact, America does not have a medical profession, as Leonard Peikoff argued in Boston in the mid-1980s with his outstanding series, later adapted as an article in The Objectivist Forum, “Medicine: the Death of a Profession.” Let alone capitalism.

I’ve been forecasting and forewarning against government control of so-called health care for nearly four decades. Brian Thompson’s assassination affords an opportunity to inform and persuade the rational person that ObamaCare—in principle, all government intervention in medicine—destroys one’s health and medical progress and ought to be abolished and replaced with capitalism. Whatever crimes the young alleged assassin is guilty of, whatever his mental health, that ObamaCare is law is crucial to the context of Brian Thompson’s assassination.

I know mine is not a popular point of view. I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is. Ayn Rand, who coined the phrases the virtue of selfishness and the fascist new frontier, defied the prevailing and predominant views. I affirm my position on principle.

You’re going to hear about the evil of the young assassin. I do not equivocate about the heinousness of his crime. You’re also going to hear about the evil of America’s capitalism in our health system. The presumed dichotomy is Thompson’s assassin as avenger against capitalism or Thompson as capitalist victim. Both of these premises are wrong. The proper perspective acknowledges the reality that today’s health system is closer to dictatorship than to capitalism and the crimes of the accused must be considered within this context without equivocating on the consequences of his actions. Brian Thompson’s assassination happened almost 15 years after the medical profession was nationalized by Barack Obama. This fact is as unequivocal as the assassination of the executive running the health cartel controlled by ObamaCare.

This week, the state of New York added a new criminal charge against Thompson’s accused assassin: terrorism. As Jennifer Peltz reports for the Associated Press:

[Luigi] Mangione is charged with first-degree and second-degree murder counts that specifically refer to a New York law that addresses terrorism. Essentially an add-on to existing criminal statutes, it says that an underlying offense constitutes “a crime of terrorism” if it’s done “with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

This charge, regardless of legal merit, is a de facto admission by government that ObamaCare, not UnitedHealthcare as a private corporation, is a factor in motivating the assassination. By filing the terrorist charge, the U.S. government admits that UnitedHealthcare is a “unit of government”. This is true.

Must it be? Imagine you are free to choose your own drugs, treatments, forms of trade and payment, doctor, nurse, hospital, medical center—in a market for medicine that’s advanced and traded like personal technology—including surgeries, insurance (or no insurance) as well as pricing and terms. Imagine your life with free choice in medicine. The impact of this trial—Luigi Mangione on trial for assassinating Brian Thompson—can be a cause for abolition of ObamaCare.

Assassinating Donald Trump

President Trump was injured during the July 13 assassination attempt. I covered two assassination attempts in detail in this article. I encourage you to read the assassination report. This roundup of mostly unreported facts covers the conspiracies to assassinate the 45th, now 47th, president of the United States.

Donald John Trump has yet to take the oath of office. With mysterious drones and over 8,000 pardons during Joe Biden’s presidency—an unprecedented scale of mass mercy by one of the nation’s worst presidents—whether Trump assumes the oath of office and becomes president is a matter of concern.

Do you know that the weapon used in one of the attempts to assassinate the president was obtained in Ukraine by an American sniper who traveled to Ukraine to fight in combat with Ukraine in support of Biden’s policy to subsidize Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion? Do you know that Iran, which issued a death decree against Salman Rushdie, vowed to assassinate President Trump? Do you know how many devices and weapons were found with both attempted assassins trying to kill Trump? Do you know of the Trump assassins’ international connections?

These are important questions which raise multiple unanswered questions. The assassin affects the existence of America as a Constitutional Republic. This is why the assassin, who lurks in the shadows, is 2024’s man of the year. The assassin may be a woman. Or an advocate for fascism, anarchism or Communism. Or a state sponsor of terrorism or dictatorship. Most Man of the Year candidates are heroic compared to the assassin. The assassin—and I write this knowing that Trump, the first President to militarily retaliate against Iran for killing Americans when he ordered the killing of an Iranian military leader, is also an assassin—trumps everyone as man of the year.

There’s a disturbing acceptance of the assassin as a regular, deadly part of daily life—particularly among leftists anticipating and celebrating Trump’s impending assassination—and a shrill, repulsive fixation on assassination, which I observed and wrote about this summer when I visited the Kennedy assassination site in Dallas. Contrast this with lack of news (except on this media) about Trump’s assassins and legitimate interest in what motivates accused assassin Mangione.

The assassin lies in wait amongst us. Let the patriotic American be vigilant about acting to defend and protect this republic and knowing about what moves the assassin into place: ideas. Do you recall Ayn Rand’s character Steven Mallory in The Fountainhead? He, too, was an assassin. Would Mallory be objectively judged—would Roark be accused of terrorism?—today? Asking questions does not rationalize murder or mass death. Brace for reality checks to come. The conflict between the irrational and the rational threatens to engulf us with the dual rise of the altruistic state and the role of the assassin.

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