By James Lileks
Sunday, September 06, 2026
The stabbing death of a New York mother and Bank of
America vice president by a mentally unstable woman has brought out the
absolute finest in revolutionary commentary. From a Palestinian-American
filmmaker who tweeted out a bat signal with Luigi Mangione’s face instead of
America’s favorite gravel-voiced vigilante, to various commie-kids on X
justifying the murder because the victim was involved in (waves hands) all the
capitalism, we see how ethically wretched political systems corrupt the
humanity of people who believe them.
The fact that she was a VP at a bank was reason enough to
spit on the corpse, because her job surely consisted of meeting with poor
hopeful people who sat across the desk twisting their caps in their calloused
hands, begging the bank not to foreclose on their lean-to. She looked at them
with a glacial expression and said no and then refused to validate parking for
their pack mule. She did this all day. Her job title was probably Vice
President in Charge of Maintaining Structural Poverty, so yes, those are precisely
the people whose demise Luigi would have nodded with Che-like sagacity. Also,
the Bank of America has ties to Israel, which means that when you deposit your
check there, it’s instantly converted into a bomb designed to strew
tetanus-infected nails in a Gaza preschool. Also, Bank of AMERICA. Say no more.
If we are to have societally sanctioned executions of the
kulak class, it would be nice to have some definitions, so we aren’t surprised
when we get shot or stabbed in the street by an agent of change. Let’s ask a
young DSA woman who lives in a $1.7 million townhouse who does, and does not,
deserve punishment:
Q. Can I work for a bank at all?
A. Only if you are oppressed by your position. If you are
a janitor, you will be allowed to live, even though you are upholding
white-supremacist notions of cleanliness, which use industrial poisons to
disinfect instead of using indigenous ways of combatting bathroom tile scum.
You are small and interchangeable, and hence a victim. Note: This does not
apply to janitorial managers, who interface with bank management, and hence
engage in validation of the capitalist system.
Q. What if I am promoted to shift manager? If I subvert
the system from the inside by appropriating bathroom tissue and selling it to
underserved communities, can I live?
A. Yes, but you will have to explain this — quickly — to
the person who has come to stab you, and you cannot make a profit over $5 per
day. If you make between $2.50 and $4.99, they will be permitted to stab you in
a non-vital location.
Q. I am a teller at a bank, and I hate the Zionist
occupation entity. Will I be permitted to be un-stabbed?
A. You are not high-priority, but if stabbed, it will be
noted that you were working for a Zionist-supporting capitalist structure when
you could’ve quit and spent your days engaged in meaningful change, such as
dashing quarts of red paint on the bank’s windows.
Q. I am the senior manager of the New Rochelle branch of
the bank. Can you guarantee that I will not be shot in the head in front of my
small children?
A. No. If you did not want to be executed in front of
your family, you wouldn’t be a banker at all but would be organizing a
theatrical group in New Rochelle to protest capitalism through the prism of
Queer Drag Polycule Pan-racial Struggles. It’s quite telling that you hold up
the idea of “family” as a shield against revolutionary direct action. Your very
participation in cis-normative nuclear-family formation delegitimizes your
insistence on perpetuating your own existence.
Q. No, seriously, I just don’t want my kids to see me get
shot in the head.
A. Well, I want a pony. Actually, I don’t, since the
relationship between man and horse has been historically exploitative, the
exception being indigenous adaptation of symbiotic co-existence with the Equine
Community to struggle against 19th-century settler-colonialism. But if I am
allocated a pony after the revolution, the relationship will be grounded in an
acknowledgment of this historical injustice, the oats will be sourced from
co-ops, and the groomers and stablehands who take care of my pony will be repositioned
former employees of right-wing think tanks. As a lesson to all who think they
can change their views without being held accountable for past opinions, Bill
Kristol will be in charge of removing manure.
Q. No, please, I will buy you a pony. I just don’t want
my kids to see me get shot in the head.
A. You should have thought of that when I was a young
girl at camp and all the other girls were good at dressage and I wasn’t,
because my parents could only afford to send me to riding lessons on rented
horses instead of getting me one of my own. That’s when I learned how deep the
systematic injustices truly are.
Hope this helps.
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