This week we’ve been through quite a bit. Serial Pipe-Bomb terrorist Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. has been arrested after leaving DNA and fingerprints on several of the 14 IED devices that he mailed to prominent Democrats, Two former Presidents, CNN and Trump critics such as Tom Steyer, Robert DeNiro, former CIA Director James Clapper and former Director of National Security John Brennan.
Even before he was caught there was an argument over whether these attacks were by a Republican Trump supporter or were a Democratic false flag. Not surprisingly that debate is still going on in GOP circles because, basically, they can’t accept facts and reality.
And here in lies the problem, neither could Sayoc.
If we want to understand how someone could have done what this person did, and why they did it — it’s obvious that the best sources to rely are those who knew him best and longest.
Some of those have already come forward including his former boss Debra Gureghian who went on CNN and said that he was White Supremacist, anti-gay hater who openly said that he would have to kill and destroy anyone he felt was “weak.” Including her, since she was gay however, he was a good worker, was always on time and dressed immaculately and was generally polite, he was just also filled with hate.
“He was very angry and angry at the world, at blacks, Jews, gays,” she said. “He always talked about ‘if I had complete autonomy none of these gays or these blacks would survive.’”
While she never heard Sayoc said “he would kill them or murder them or bomb” minorities, the comments and texts in which he made those statements nonetheless upset his coworkers.
“He was kept on because he did his work reliably,” the report noted, summarizing Gureghian, “and good drivers are hard to find.”
Sayoc’s family lawyer said he has lesser IQ, emotional problems like an 14 year-old in an adults body, a tendency for steroids use, had falsified his drivers license to make himself seem 10 years younger in order attract women, and had an identification issue where he really didn’t know who was.
“He suffered from identification issues. He needed people to be impressed with him. He had issues of insecurity. I then began to realize that he had what I considered a lesser IQ, substantial emotional problems. He was like a 14-year-old in an adult’s body.”
Lowy explained that the family wanted him to get medical help, but that he was a definite and refused help. He describes the family as being “destroyed.”
His father is Filipino and his mother is Italian while he claimed repeatedly to be part of the “Unconquered Seminole Tribe”. He had threatening a power company with being blown up unless they turned his power back on. “His sickness has obviously worsened over the years.” His family had urged him to seek medical help for decades, but he always refused and there was no legal recourse. HIs mother Madeline who is a prominent Democrat was having surgery that very morning and woke up to this news. And also that he was never political before, but that had changed after Trump.
This is a confused man, this is a damaged and broken man. He clearly needed help for years but refused to accept it. He didn’t take responsibility for his life and health, he blamed other people for all his problems.
Trump didn’t make him like this, this was already his existing state. What Trump did — was provide him targets for his hate and anger. He focused it, refined it, sharpened it into a sharp pointy weapon.
Some have argued, dismissively, that he should be considered an E.D.P. [Emotional Disturbed Person] and there may or may not be some validity to that, since he was never examined or treated according to his families attorney there’s no baseline for making that case.
I strongly suspect, since he was easily able to hold down a job, that he’ll be found competent to stand trial on all charges.
But that isn’t the point, the point is how much different is this guy from the rest of the #MagaMob who rabidly and irrationally continue to support Trump against all reason?
I disagree with Rick Wilson who says that “Of course Trump inspired [Sayoc]” — I think there’s much more to it than that as argued by Joshua Holland. This guy was already a ticking time bomb, Trump just helped aim him at those particular targets.
For most of us, it’s easy to draw a direct line between Trump’s seemingly endless invective against his perceived enemies and those pipe bombs. In a piece titled “Of Course Donald Trump Inspired Cesar Sayoc’s Alleged Terrorism,” Rick Wilson, the entertainingly sharp-tongued #NeverTrump conservative, wrote that “introspection isn’t exactly one of this president’s strong suits, and the discovery that the MAGA Bomber was one of the millions of creatures he created, inspired, and motivated to wage war against those he describes as Enemies of the People will never trouble the placid waters of his stunningly shallow intellect.”
Obviously, Trump’s rhetoric led to Sayoc snapping, but not necessarily in the way people think. Research into political violence by Nathan Kalmoe, a professor of political communication at the University of Louisiana, found that most people who engage in it have a history of aggressive, anti-social behavior, which was certainly true of Sayoc.
In
an interview last year, Kalmoe told me that, regardless of whether one falls on the right, the left or somewhere in between, there’s “an important distinction to make between people who have more conventional views, versus people who have much more extreme views.” He thinks that, regardless of a person’s ideology, those who are at least within spitting distance of the mainstream “have a greater commitment to nonviolent approaches to politics and are socialized into nonviolent norms of how participation is supposed to work.”
In that sense, it’s not Trump constantly railing about his enemies that’s uniquely dangerous. It’s his consistent delegitimization of our political system. Before all the facts came out,
it was easy to predict that Cesar Altieri Sayoc embraced at least elements of the
QAnon madness that’s become popular among Trump supporters and is a direct extension of Trump’s own Deep State nonsense. It’s Trump’s persistent promotion of conspiracy theories about rampant voter fraud and the media making stuff up to damage him and Democrats welcoming Islamic terrorists into the country and
a cabal of international jewry “globalists” trying to keep America down that can lead people like Sayoc to conclude that normal politics is a sucker’s game. What’s the point of trying when shadowy, all-powerful forces are dead set on destroying this movement?
“He’s a typical Trump loser—blames everybody else because his life sucks,” Maher said.
The fact that Sayoc has a long criminal record and drives a “creepy van” while threatening Democrats was exactly as most people expected.
“It turns out he is exactly what you thought—an angry a**hole in a red hat,” Maher said.
Maher was almost in disbelief about just how much Sayoc fit the stereotype of a Trump supporter.
“He lives in Planation, Florida? Yes, I know. How is that still a name? Was ‘Slave Ship, Florida’ taken?” Maher said.
Maher also mocked the Republican obsession with “civility.”
“Is it OK to call this one deplorable?” Maher said. “Or would that hurt Republican feelings?”
Yeah, I think it is. He’s exactly the kind of person Hillary Clinton was talking about. The larger problem though is the rest of them, the Non-Deplorables who aren’t racist, sexist, xenophobic violent assholes.
They are the ones in deep, dark, desperate denial.
When I posted last night that Sayoc was a registered Republican, and followed up using the Washington Examiner I got this funky screen shot from a Trumpster who claimed that he was Affiliated with the “Democrat Party” using a questionable screenshot from MyLife.com.
The left section says “Democrat Party”, but the right say Republican Party. As we all know Democrats themselves never call it the “Democrat Party” because that’s gobbledegook. It’s the Democratic Party. Just the fact that someone went to the lengths to fake this screenshot within just a few hours, is illustrative.
Then you have people who say that the Obama’s and the Clinton’s paid Sayoc to send bombs to them.
“You don’t think [Cesar Sayoc] actually sent the bombs?” a reporter asked.
“No, probably not,” Runyon said. “They probably had it done. They may have paid him to do it.”
“What would be the upside of that?” the reporter asked.
“Trying to bring people over to their side,” he said suggesting that they wanted to turn people against Trump.
Trump doesn’t have to tell people this stuff, they come up with it on their own.
Focusing only on Trump as the catalyst is missing the point.
People like this are all around us. Deplorable or not they are still openly and violently racist, dismissive of truth, obsessed with the wildest most ridiculous conspiracy theories.
In that past week, as Rachel Maddow reports here, there were arrests on the West Coast against members of the violent Rise Above Movement in California for causing a riot and beating up anti-Trump protestors — while sporting Trump gear — and also in New York members of the Proud Boys were arrested for attacking AntiFa members, whose leader Gavin McGinnis is a frequent guest on Fox News and Newsmax and had just had a speaking engagement at the Republican Club in Manhattan. There was also a shooter who killed two people after attempting to enter a black church.
Now we’ve had yet another mass shooting event at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Sadly, not a shocker. Also not a shocker that Trump thinks the real problem was that people inside the Synagogue weren’t armed to the teeth.
Because that’s how we should all go to worship, yes? Strapped. Never mind the fact that there were three armed police whom the gunman shot — even though they were like — also armed?
Yes, Trump is inspiring this, Trump is enabling, rationalizing and justifying hate — but the fact is that the hate was already there. The hate was there during Barack Obama’s Presidency, it was there during Bush, it was there during Clinton. It’s grown louder, it’s grown more strident, but it was already being stoked for years on right-wing radio by Limbaugh, then again on Fox News by O’Reilly and Hannity, then online by Brietbart who gave voice to Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos and the fever swamps of Reddit and DailyStormer. We’ve had trolls from RT and Sputnik News fueling this nonsense through Facebook and Twitter for years.
Many forces are inspiring this, many forces are enabling it.
All these people were already here, and there’s a reason that they have all decided that Trump is their guy, because he decided early on, essentially from day one when he said “Mexicans are Rapists” that he’s going to pander to their worst instincts.
He says the same thing out loud that the voices in their heads say. He repeats the lies. He stokes their fears. It’s not so much that he’s inspiring them, THEY ARE INSPIRING AND DRIVING HIM by giving him the adoration he craves when he talks their talk. He’s not driving them, this is a feedback loop of hate between them. He says something hateful and they respond, so he says something else even more hateful — and it goes on and on -— escalating the hate higher and higher.
And when you point out that they’re a pack of hate-mongers, they whine and counter-accuse, makes excuses and continue the cycle another layer deeper.
They picked him, they support him, they make up bullshit excuses for him because HE IS THE BOMB that they’ve already thrown at the rest of America.
He is their weapon.
There’s only so much damage someone like Sayoc can do. There’s only so many people the Proud Boys and Rise Above can beat up. There’s only so many bullets one guy can unleash in a synagogue.
But with the resources of U.S. Law Enforcement, Homeland Security and perhaps using the Military on our border to shoot people seeking shelter and Asylum — he’s out to do much more damage, to many more thousands of people, perhaps Millions, than what any of these guys can do individually.
Those guys are riff-raff, Trump himself is the Political Terrorist.
He’s the #MagaBomb and he’s already been fired directly at the center of our government and our political norms to blow them to smithereens.
And when Trump is eventually gone, they’ll find another… and another.. and another.