How do I start this post without indulging my self-righteousness?
Probably impossible. I’m a pretty self-righteous guy when it comes down to it.
Let’s try this – I’m sure there are lots of principled leftists out there who are not reveling in the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Health Group.
But there sure seem to be a lot of them – and loud ones – playing Madame DeFarge right now. Reinforcing my unjust, unChristian prejudice that says that if you scratch a leftist, you’ll find Robespierre.
I know nothing of Brian Thompson’s personal life, beyond what Wikipedia tells me. He may have been a man I would not have liked. He may have been a man I despised.
He did not deserve to be murdered.
But that point is an obvious one, and not really the object of this post.
I was taken aback when I discovered Brian Thompson’s point of origin.
He was born in Ames, Iowa, but he grew up in Jewell Junction, better known to those familiar with it as just Jewell. He attended South Hamilton High School and the University of Iowa.
Distant bells rang in my long-term memory. I know Jewell, Iowa.
I had two roommates during my first year of college. One of them came from Jewell. I visited his home. Sang in a choir concert in his church. He used to talk about good old South Hamilton High.
But my connections go further than that. That part of Iowa is, in a sense, a homeland for me.
I’ve written here before (long ago; there’s no reason you should remember) about a collateral ancestor of mine. His name was Wier Weeks and he was a pioneer in the Norwegian immigrant community around Lisbon, Illinois. Lisbon became one of the centers where Norwegian newcomers settled in the mid-19th Century.
Eventually, the land filled up with Norwegians. (People doubtless sickened and died from the sheer social dullness.) So they got together, held a meeting or something, and decided to create a satellite colony. They sent out spies to find a likely place, and settled on an area in central Iowa. This area comprises such towns as Story City, Radcliffe, and Jewell. And it was there that my father’s parents’ families came in the 1880s. My grandfather Walker was born near Radcliffe, my grandmother near Story City. Both families moved north to Kenyon, Minnesota in the early 20th Century.
If you’re wondering what lesson I mean to draw – I guess it’s this. People from small towns in the center of Iowa are not the elite. They are not Mayflower descendants. They’re not even strictly WASPS, being (to a large degree) Scandinavian rather than Anglo-Saxon.
Thompson’s alleged murderer, on the other hand, was born to an affluent family in Maryland, and attended the exclusive Gilman School in Baltimore.
In other words, this was an act of “revolutionary” violence visited upon a member of the middle class (one who got above his station) by a member of the elite.
Which is, it seems to me, emblematic of revolution in the modern world.