Why Are Publications Sugar-Coating Livilsberger’s Political Minifestos?
talkingpointsmemo.com
Over the last four days the bizarre Cybertruck fire outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas has run from comical interlude to possible terrorist incident to tragic suicide of another veteran of America’s…

But at least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.

Those documents denounce Democrats and demand they be “culled” from Washington, by violence if necessary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a national rebirth of masculinity under the leadership of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Did you miss that stuff?

Yeah, me too!

Most headlines I’d seen in the news report only that he warned of national decline and bore “no ill will toward Mr. Trump”, in the words of one of the investigators. That gloss on Donald Trump is, shall we say, a bit of an understatement as you can see in these excerpts.

Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.
Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.
Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.
Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

…

I should note they capture what we might call the ideologically polyglot – or what appears to many of us as ideologically polyglot – thinking of many of these people. He also rails against the 1%, excessive screen time for kids, wars with no clear strategic purpose, obesity. We should also note explicitly that Livelsberger can both be a violent extremist and a victim of PTSD and in a broader sense part of the human collateral damage of the wars that occupied the US military through the first two decades of the 21st century. Our minds should be big enough for both those realities. But the through-line is pretty clear: If you’re a Democrat or someone who is Democrat-coded Livilsberger’s version of national rebirth probably isn’t a fun one for you.

  • @jordanlund
    21•3 days ago

    My guess would be because what he’s arguing about makes no sense in light of his actions?

    Why say all these things about liberals, Democrats, etc. etc. then kill yourself just as your man is about to take office for 4 years? Why off yourself in front of one of his hotels? In a truck made by his biggest supporter?

    That cognitive dissonance between words and actions makes no sense, which I guess is technically on brand for your average MAGA.

    • @[email protected]
      7•3 days ago

      He clearly wanted to become a martyr to start off a Night of Long Knives/mass terrorism campaign against anybody who disagrees with the MAGA extremists.

      I could go all armchair psychologist and guess that he was probably suicidal as well, and this was a better option than, say, suicide by cops or burning yourself to death on the steps of the capital building or something, but who really knows.

      And, yeah, the cognitive dissonance is par for the course. You need it in order for fascism to make sense.