Basalt Day

Basalt Day, 6th of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): The attributes so many American mass killers have in common, from school shooters to terrorists, are gender (I don't even have to tell you which one), a military background, and a history of relationship problems. The urge to dominate those who disagree with them seems to be a common consuming goal. 

The active-duty Green Beret who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day left letters on a phone found at the explosion site. The letters urged a focus on strength and winning (domination). "Masculinity is good and men must be leaders,” he wrote. “Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.” He called for weeding out "those in our government and military who do not idealize” masculinity and strength, and urged military personnel, veterans, and militias to “move on DC starting now.”

Explaining why he was performing what he called “a stunt with fireworks and explosives,” he claimed he wanted to “WAKE UP” servicemembers, veterans, and all Americans. The U.S. is “headed toward collapse,” he claimed, and he listed as reasons diversity programs, a weak and corrupt government, an economy that permitted the top 1% to leave everyone else behind, and Americans’ moral failings. 

He wanted others to follow him and occupy (dominate) "every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around town 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.”

His  thoughts reflect the far-right notion that a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends.  

The idea of reclaiming the country for white men by destroying the federal government is not a new one. “Is a Civil War imminent?,” Timothy McVeigh asked in a 1992 letter to a newspaper. "Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that. But it might.” McVeigh later set off a bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and wounding more than 800.

The notion of destroying the government has only grown in the yeas since McVeigh. In 2016, as a Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump insisted that his Democratic opponent belonged in jail and that he alone could save the country from the Washington “swamp.” As president, he attacked the government over the FBI’s investigation of the ties between his campaign and Russian operatives, and then, after his first impeachment, went after any official who tried to hold him accountable to the law. Although many of his critics were Republicans, including his own appointees, he called anyone who crossed him a "Democrat." 

As the incoming president-elect, he continues to vow that he will dismantle the federal government.

(Attribution: much of this post is largely modeled on a longer article by Heather Cox Richardson)