Livelsberger's Manifesto

 Josh Marshall runs through the manifestos of the man who killed himself in front of Trump's hotel in Las Vegas. He was one of a new brand of violent extremists who seem to proliferate around Trump, including both those who idealize him and those who wish him harm. I do not include the kid who shot at him in Butler, Pennsylvania, who appears to be more a "famous suicide" than anyone with an ideological motive.

Instead, we have the guy who loaded up his van to attack DC; obviously January 6th and now Livelsberger, who appears to be something of a mentally disturbed man prone to violence and extremist views. 

His plan was roughly similar to Aaron Bushnell's, the man who lit himself on fire over Gaza. Bushnell was also a veteran, though he did not serve in an active war zone like Livelsberger, who appears to suffer from PTSD and possibly CTE. Basically, these were men who thought that a dramatic suicide would spur some sort of reckoning. 

Livelsberger wanted to foist some sort of anti-Democratic insurrection along the lines of January 6th. He was also obsessed with the sort of empty, performative masculinity that revolves around Trump. Here are some excerpts:

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.

Focus on strength and winning. Masculinity is good and men must be leaders. Strength is a deterrent and fear is the product.

Stop obsessing over diversity. We are all diverse and DEI is a cancer.
Thankfully we rejected the DEI candidate and will have a real President instead of Weekend at Bernie’s.

Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

This is the stuff of cults. 

Bushnell grew up in a Christian cult, but Livelsburger appears to have joined Trump's. A cult mindset can make acts of suicide into acts of devotion. That Trump and Musk are the lodestars of this act of self-destruction is crushingly sad.

Marshall and others have written about the disinhibition in Trumpistan - how we are moving towards an odd culture of violence that is slightly different from our usual culture of violence. It is political but not exactly ideological. It serves not a coherent ideology like fascism or communism, but "Trump" as an avatar of disruption and destruction of the status quo. 

The world, it turns out, isn't designed to make you happy. In fact, the apps on your phone, the low grade enshittification, consumer culture...they are all designed to leave you unsatisfied, while showing you a world where everything is great. This hopelessness, I think, breeds the sort of vaguely political violence of Luigi Mangione and Matthew Livelsberger. 

The fact that Livelsberger was a fan of Trump - same in some ways as the Butler shooter - means that the narrative of these violence events does not comport to easy and premade media narratives. So we ignore them.  

Thoughts and prayer, I guess.