On Passover night, an arsonist set fire to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence.
The alleged arsonist, Cody Balmer, snuck in and out quickly, setting several fires in what was obviously a well-planned attack. The guy doesn’t look like the sharpest tool in the shed, but who knows? Also, the “medical event” mentioned at that link likely is a suicide attempt, but we will see.
Drips and drabs of the dude’s social media work paint a choose-your-own-adventure disturbed person, similar to the two would-be Trump assassins. Holds a lot of MAGA beliefs like election denial, but also claimed he hated all politicians. And of course, violent rhetoric is quite common in his feed.
This raises all kinds of alarm bells that there is a violent subset of people in America at the moment who have generally right-wing views with a few conflicting, contradictory beliefs that don’t seem to fit.
The images from the fire, like the one at the top of this post, are chilling. The images show that this was a major fire, and heavy damage is evident. The scenes that include charred Passover-related items are sobering.
It is difficult to say whether anti-Semitism played a role in this attack. More investigation is necessary, and I am sure we will hear more over the next few days about a clear motive. These kinds of wackos also buy into the worst globalist Jews conspiracy theories. I have two more thoughts on this…
One, I hope job number one on today’s Pennsylvania government to-do list is figuring out how a rando from rural PA managed to get past the governor’s security detail to carry out his attack. The detail is made up of Pennsylvania State Police troopers, cops who have always struck me as competent. Similar to how a disturbed young man got a shot at Trump, this raises a lot of questions.
Second, there is a wildness and propensity for violence in this country that has me rather worried. As we as a nation get weirder and weirder and things continue to destabilize under Trump in so many ways, we worry about organized far-right acts of terror via groups such as militias. However, too many Americans are having their brains boiled by the constant firehose of batshit bullshit aimed at us every day by propaganda outlets such as Fox News and Anti-Social media like Elon’s Hellsite, TwitterX. If you do not live in a rural area, you have no idea how relentless and ubiquitous this stuff is. It’s just very difficult to avoid here in rural PA, for example.
I am not sure of the solutions for it. I hope that considering the effect of social media, insane levels of gun ownership, and extremely violent imagery and rhetoric is a growing factor in strategies to protect our leaders, and all of us, really, from these kinds of attacks.
The last word goes to The Rolling Stones.