Assassins, Arsonists, Pipe Bombers: What You See Is What You Get

Over the past 18 months, beginning with Thomas Crooks in Butler and moving through Ryan Routh, the attempted assassin in Palm Beach; Luigi Mangione, who shot the UnitedHealthCare CEO in Manhattan; a whole string of Tesla arsonists; Robin Westman, the Minneapolis school shooter; Tyler Robionson, the Charlie Kirk assassin; and now Brian Cole Jr, the J6 attempted pipe bomber, we've had a remarkable menagerie of weird figures who've burst into the public consciousness through various acts, or attempted acts, of quasi-political violence.

To some extent, we've got the problem that experienced homicide detectives frequently pose: "What does a murderer look like? He looks like any of the people behind you in the checkout line." But actually in these cases, they do have something in common: their lives are obscure; they're reclusive; they have minimal or no social media profiles; they have at best spotty employment histories; their political beliefs are at best inchoate; they don't have girlfriends; they're often in the 18-30 age range where schizophrenia begins to manifest.

This is such a consistent pattern that people darkly hint in comment sections, "Yeah, right. Another reclusive guy with no social media," as though the intelligence agencies are cooking this up as a cover identity to conceal an actual perp. Brian Cole Jr fits this pattern. According to the UK Daily Mail,

‘He’s not politically affiliated with anything,’ the grandmother told the Daily Mail during an interview at her home in Gainesville, Virginia. 'He has no social media contacts. He’s never online going back and forth with politics or anything like that. He says he don’t like either party.

'He’s borderline autistic,’ she added. 'He’s slow. He may be 30, but he’s got the mind of a 16-year-old. That’s why we’re thinking - What the hell? What’s going on?’

. . . 'This young man is very calm and quiet,' she said. 'He just stays to himself. Nobody bothers him because he doesn’t bother anybody.

'He doesn’t have a girlfriend,’ she added. 'That’s how slow he is. He’s just off in a little world on his own. He stays downstairs and he used to be with his dog all the time.'

. . . 'That’s why everything is so messed up with us because he’s a good kid,’ she said. 'If you knew him, you would say that he couldn’t have done it.’

‘And if he did, it was just him trying to prove a point or whatever,’ she continued. 'He probably doesn’t even know the magnitude of what he’s done, if he did it.’

At this point, Cole is reported to have confessed to making and planting the bombs and is cooperating with investigators. He was represented by counsel at his arraignment, but as far as anyone can tell, his counsel is allowing him to speak with investigators. This may well be a good strategy, as it may provide insight into his mental condition and introduce mitigating factors in any sentence he receives. Acccording to CNN,

During interviews with the FBI, the suspect arrested in the pipe bomb probe told investigators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen, providing perhaps the first indication of a possible motive for the bombs placed near the DNC and RNC headquarters, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

Brian Cole Jr. spent hours with FBI investigators and made multiple statements, the sources said. Dan Bongino, deputy FBI director, told Fox News on Thursday that the FBI had interviewed the suspect at length, but didn’t elaborate.

. . . Appearing on ABC News, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday that Cole was disappointed in “both sides of the system.”

“He was disappointed in various aspects of the election, but this guy was an equal opportunity bomber,” she said. “He put a bomb outside the Republican National Committee and the Democrat National Committee. He was disappointed to a great deal in the system – both sides of the system.”

He has this in common, for insance, with Thomas Crooks, as well as Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk's assassin:

Prosecutors in Utah released charging documents that don’t ascribe a specific motive but do feature a number of clues and shed light on Robinson’s politics.

Such acts of violence often feature suspects and perpetrators with sometimes conflicting sets of beliefs and characteristics that don’t necessarily fit neatly on the right-left political continuum, despite politicians’ and partisans’ attempts to blame the other side.

It’s still early, and the picture we’ve gotten so far comes from law enforcement. Much remains to play out in court.

. . . The charging documents say Robinson’s family also asked why he did it, and he “explained there is too much evil and the guy [Charlie Kirk] spreads too much hate.”

That evidence would seem to undercut theories that Robinson might have been motivated by far-right views. While some on the far-right have strongly opposed Kirk – you might have heard in recent days about “groypers” – they generally disliked him because they didn’t think he was far-right enough.

But the evidence so far doesn’t directly point to what specific form of alleged “hate” Robinson objected to.

But oddly, Sundance at Conservative Treehkouse is worried not about Cole's motive, but about the FBI's motive in fingering Cole!

I personally am not ascribing operational motive (or outcome) to the intents of either Kash Patel or Dan Bongino because as I have said from the outset of their selection, neither of these two men have the intellectual or discernment skillset needed to confront the corrupt institutional intent of the FBI as an organization.

Both Dan and Kash have easily identifiable ‘attack vectors’ which can be exploited by those skilled in the dark arts of manipulation. Kash’s open weakness is his ego and lust for lifestyle, Bongino’s open emotional weakness is his need to be cherished and appreciated. Both mindsets are easily influenced by those who know how to do such things.

. . . For five years the FBI couldn’t exploit the cell phone use for identification, then suddenly they were able to exploit the cell phone use for identification. Something doesn’t add up here and is really hinky, despite Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino claiming the FBI’s investigative efforts were excellent.

Why not take Patel's and Bongino's assertions at face value? Before they arrived, the FBI, for whatever reason, failed to identify the suspect with the evidence they had. The new leadership put a new team in place, and they worked to corroborate -- manually -- existing license plate, cell phone, and credit card information to identify Cole. But Sundance and many others seem deeply suspicious of this and are imputing motives to Bondi, Patel, and Bongino that they're covering something else up -- indeed, that they're actually pawns of unnamed deep state actors.

Well, I'm not a mental health professional, I haven't examined in person any of the whole managerie of bombers, arsonists, and assassins we've seen over 18 months, and I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. But I feel fully confident that that every one of them fits the non-technical category of nut case. I'll return to what I've said before: Lee Harvey Oswald offered his services to the Soviet Union, and they wouldn't touch him, for the same reason that no serious set of conspirators would touch any of the current managerie: like Oswald, they're nut cases.

Disorganized, out of it, unreliable. You can't build a conspiracy with people like that. I don't believe they're going to find a conspiracy in any of these cases, still less a deep state conspiracy to cover this up with the unwitting connivance of Bondi, Patel, and Bongino.