An ‘exploding’ political atmosphere

On Wednesday 24th October, news broke of suspicious packages containing explosives mailed to former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Similar packages were quickly discovered, addressed to:

George Soros: billionaire investor and Democratic mega-donor

John Brennan: former CIA Director (the package was found in CNN’s Manhattan office, which was then evacuated)

Eric Holder: former Attorney General (the package was misaddressed and found at the office of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz in Florida, which was the return address listed on all the packages)

Maxine Waters: Democratic Representative from California (two packages were addressed to her)

Joe Biden: former Democratic Vice President

Robert De Niro: actor, who has been highly critical of Trump’s presidency

James Clapper: former National Intelligence Director

Cory Booker: Democratic Senator from New Jersey

Kamala Harris: Democratic Senator from California

Tom Steyer: billionaire investor and Democratic mega-donor.

Each of these packages contained a pipe-bomb, sent in a padded manila envelope, with the return address written to Democratic Representative of Florida Debbie Wasserman Schultz for all thirteen envelopes. None of the bombs detonated and no injuries occurred. The packages, when discovered, were immediately sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia for analysis.

On Friday, the Justice Department arrested Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr, the Trump enthusiast from Florida who had mailed these packages. Authorities were able to pin down his identity using fingerprints and DNA that he had left on the bombs. His social media accounts were also used to corroborate his crime: his Twitter displayed misspellings of “Hillary Clinton” as “Hilary Clinton”, and “Schultz” as “Shultz”, the same misspellings as on the envelopes. His Facebook showed photos of him attending 2016 presidential campaign rallies for Trump, underscoring the trend of who the bombs were sent to – the targets have all been subjects of Trump’s Twitter feed and rally rhetoric. Trump depicts Hillary as a “criminal”, George Soros as an “evil man”, Robert De Niro and Maxine Waters as “very low IQ individual[s]”…

Sayoc had been living in his van at the time they found him. His van is plastered with pro-Trump stickers: a sticker of Hillary Clinton’s face with a target on it, “CNN Sucks”, headlines reporting the jobs numbers Trump has boosted. He was also reported to have a hit list of a hundred potential targets.

It seems no surprise that it was a man like Sayoc behind these attempted bombings. The mainstream media is often a maelstrom of heated rhetoric, where the words are acknowledged and understood for what they are – just rhetoric. There are, however, people like Sayoc who have a blurred sense of where the boundary lies between reality and rhetoric, who take everything word for word, who are mentally susceptible to extreme suggestions and are prompted to act on them.

A look into Sayoc’s life proves this easily. Sayoc has travelled the country leading a mixed-race troupe of male exotic dancers; he has had multiple run-ins with the law which included past attempted bombings; he once filed for bankruptcy, and revealed on the bankruptcy filing that he lived with his mother and owned no furniture (he is 57 years old); his mothers and sisters have encouraged him to seek medical treatment for his “lack of comprehension of reality”. The Justice Department had found and arrested Sayoc at a strip club where he worked as a DJ.

This is not to say that mentally susceptible people are to blame and the American political atmosphere should not be toned down on both sides. The rhetoric on both sides needs urgently to be cooled down. Before the perpetrator’s identity had been revealed, Republicans were certain that the bombs were a false-flag operation orchestrated by Democrats – meaning that they sent the bombs to themselves – in order to boost mid-term results, and liberals were quick to blame Trump as the direct and only cause of these attempted bombings.

In characteristic fashion, both sides had pushed the blame onto each other without seeing that their reaction only spurs further rage across the aisle. The immediate accusation from Republicans that it was a false flag-operation allows right-wingers to believe that ill will can only exist in people who disagree with them. The claims from Democrats that Trump, and only Trump, is responsible for spreading charged and hostile rhetoric is hypocritical; Hillary Clinton said in a speech on the 10th of October, only two weeks before the pipe-bombs, “you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for”.

Furthermore, though this level of political violence has reached a new high, its history has not been exclusive to either side of the spectrum. In 2017, left-wing activist James Hodgkinson shot at Congressman Steve Scalise during a Congressional baseball practice session. Hodgkinson had attended presidential campaign rallies for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and was a member of multiple Facebook groups such as “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Republicans”. More recently, in September, a Californian man was indicted for making numerous calls to The Boston Globe threatening to shoot and kill their journalists. His reasons, as explained by him, were “because you are the enemy of the people . . . as long as you keep attacking the president… I will continue to threat, harass, and annoy the Boston Globe.”

These 13 pipe-bombs, addressed to some of President Trump’s most outspoken and famous critics, would have seized the spotlight for at least a week in any other time or country. But this attempted terrorist attack was quickly swept from America’s attention when, three days after the pipe-bombs were reported, a mass shooting occurred at a synagogue in Pittsburgh that left eleven dead.

The simmering rage of America’s culture and politics war has clearly hit a pressure point, a moment that was likely provoked by Brett Kavanagh’s recent confirmation to the Supreme Court and the consequential midterm elections that have occurred this week.