And now we pay the price: The new Trump era is likely to be defined by acts of domestic terror

Three incidents may not a pattern make, and attempting to glean any broader picture from the acts of "lone wolf" actors, individuals whose violent acts stem from thought processes that we can only glean from whatever they themselves do or don't share, is infamously prone to error. That said, we've seen three recent incidents in the last month that matches a pattern of stochastic terrorism that watchers of political extremism have long been warning could be coming, as Trump and his allies continue their drumbeat of apocalyptic rhetoric and wave aside the rule of law for their own petty purposes.

Whatever else might come about, the "new" Trump years are likely to be defined by at least two broader social shifts. The first we're already seeing: the rapid capitulation of institutions, media outlets and major corporations as they seek to become partners in Trump's promised wave of self-dealing corruption—or, at the least, to offer up enough bribes to skirt his presumptively corrupt government's direct wrath.

The second is a broad expansion of vigilante violence and acts of domestic terror. Political pundits have all clammed up very tightly about the topic, but an expansion of public violence is very nearly a given, when you flood a population of hundreds of millions with rhetoric that insists that their country is a failed state, they are under existential danger from political enemies, and that the current rule of law must be overturned by force, if necessary, so that the nation may be saved.

It is the essence of fascist rhetoric—and, note for note, the message of fascists and pro-insurrectionists like the Heritage Foundation's Russell Vought, new Trump hanger-on Elon Musk, a majority of House Republicans, and many of the radio, podcast, and other broadcast hosts favored by Trump's pro-coup coalition. And it has become, as Republicanism becomes synonymous with the many-legged skittering thoughts that wander through Trump's nearly haunted head, omnipresent.

There are millions of Americans who have been hearing conservative-pushed arguments for patriotic retribution and violence for nearly a decade now, and who have watched as the Republican Party has reliably celebrated perceived race vigilantes (Rittenhouse, Penny) while reacting with unabashed fury over the prosecution of Trump's willing coup mob, calling the collection of extremists that viciously attacked police officers in order to find and threaten members of Congress "patriots" and "political prisoners" rather than participants in an attempted insurrection. There are millions of Americans who have heard the Supreme Court's now-countless explanations that the rule of law isn't what any of us thought it was last year or the year before and that a president, in particular, enjoys immunity when committing crimes like an attempted coup if he believes, or merely asserts, that those crimes are what America most needs right now.

You're not going to baste a population of millions in that sort of rhetoric, handed down from the most prominent figures in media and government, and come away with no ill effects. Millions are going to believe you; a percentage of the most isolated and violent, and even if it is only a tenth of a single percent that is still a disaster in the making, are going to act.

And it is worse than that, even. The stabilizing forces in American life have at present been eroded to nothing; none of us can expect to know what being an American will entail after another two years of court rulings, open corruption and mockery of whatever being an American meant beforehand. It turns out, four years after a coup attempt that remains not just unpunished but celebrated, that whatever country we thought we had grown up in was a giddy fiction all along.

The first of the three acts of politically-minded terrorism to follow Trump's election victory is the one that the American media itself appears most riled by, the December murder of UnitedHealthcare's then-CEO in what appears to have been an act of stochastic terror targeting either corporate America in general or the health insurance industry in specific. It was not the murder itself that so riled the nation's important classes—the name of the actual victim, though he died very rich and very important, was hardly mentioned in the ensuing spasms of Concern.

What's gotten more focus from people paid to interpret our society while deigning to set foot in very little of it was the public outpouring of dark jokes and gallows humor, both online and off. There are few Americans who consider the shooter a hero, but there were many Americans who professed to be not so broken up over the death of a rich man leading an destructive company perched atop a socially malignant industry, given how many other Americans are killed by how many other gunmen while politicians sniff and tell us we ought to be glad for the freedom the murders afford us. Now that was seen as an alarming new public dynamic.

The widespread approval of Thompson’s assassination, which has shocked many pundits on the left and right, has only one real precedent in modern American history: when Navy Seals killed the 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Eeeeeh, that's a bit much. It's largely impotent, definitely bitter gallows humor from a public that has largely given up on the idea that they have any agency at all in the forces that shape their lives. Government doesn't matter. Laws only matter if you're poor enough to not be able to skirt around them. You have no real opportunity to get ahead other than winning a lottery, either real or of the Wall Street variety, and you'll get what your betters serve you and like it.

The reactions definitely reflected a national cynicism, but I'd argue it's one that took root during the Covid-19 pandemic. First we panicked over mass deaths. Then people got bored of the mass deaths. Then people got angry that fighting the virus was costing them anything at all. The American public has been in a mean, mean place ever since—and again, a large part of that can be attributed to the Donald Trump era of Republicanism, one that has sought to opportunistically stoke every possible meanness and paranoia so that Americans would not turn their anger towards the figures who objectively ought to have deserved a lot more of it.

The impetus behind that first act of domestic terror: The law is useless against my self-designated enemies, so it is time to act apart from it.

The second and third acts of terror occurred near-simultaneously at the turn of the year.

In one, a purportedly "very patriotic" active duty Green Beret who "loved Trump" filled a rented Cybertruck with "propane tanks, fireworks and camping fuel" and detonated it and himself at the door of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. There's no way to interpret that as anything but an attempted act of domestic terrorism—but what it was intended to convey was a confusing indeed, until we learned of two "manifestos" left behind by the would-be killer.

In those, we learn that the Trump International bomber didn't just love Trump, as the initial media gloss would have it, but was a violence-seeking far-right militant who called "DEI" a "cancer" and advocated for the expulsion of Democrats from government "by any means necessary."

Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity. Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands. Lock the highways around down 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.

The bombing of Trump's hotel using a rented Musk-produced truck was apparently intended, in the bomber's suicidal mind, as a compliment.

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.

The bomber, who suffered from PSTD and whose thoughts were hardly coherent, claimed that:

This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?

But it was, obviously, a terrorist attack. It was an act of violence and destruction deliberately plotted to deliver a political message, and filling a vehicle with propane tanks and other explosives so as to detonate it at the literal doorstep of a busy tourist attraction had every chance of killing bystanders or starting a fire that could threaten many other lives.

In another act of terror that took place only hours earlier, a Texas-born Army veteran with no readily apparent grievance drove a rented car into a crowd of people in New Orleans, Louisiana, then opened fire on responding law enforcement. At least 15 people were killed. Much like the Trump International bomber, the attacker had purportedly gone through significant personality shifts in recent years, shifting from a man described as quiet and intelligent to one allegedly enamored with religious extremism; law enforcement announced that an Islamic State flag was found in the truck afterwards and that the man pledged himself to ISIS in a video posted before the attack, which tells us at minimum that the killer wanted the attack to appear to be connected with that terrorist group, even if he could make no direct claim of involvement.

Again, the attack seems self-evidently a politically motivated act of domestic terror. Again, both the real motive and the intended message are buried under so many layers of confused thinking as to be blurred beyond credible interpretation.

That incoherence of motive is symptomatic of most if not all acts of stochastic terrorism. They are undertaken by men (almost exclusively men, in fact, which likely signifies more about the acts than any other pattern) driven to inexplicable desperation or an uncontrollable hunger for violence, and even when the perpetrators produce long manifestos laying out their alleged grievances those papers are nearly always gibberish, full of incoherent and usually delusional claims that appear to be post-hoc justifications for violence already sought. The Atlanta Olympics bomber murdered his targets for the sake of, supposedly, his deeply held "pro-life" beliefs; right-wing attacks against mosques, synagogue or church are most frequently meant to be the opening shots in what the perpetrator believes will become a "race war" in which their allies finally exterminate whatever group or groups the killer most hates, and each of them does so even though none of the prior hate crimes have sparked anything more than copycat attacks by later peers.

The motives are irrelevant, but the copycat part is not. The copycat part ties together disparate acts of terror from all portions of the political and social spectrum.

It's notable that all three acts of terror were, in their planning and execution, attempted cookie-cutter repetitions of three of the most recognizable types of terrorist acts.

The murder of a health insurance CEO was of the "target famous person" form, in which a lone gunman (who had outfitted themselves with a useless silencer, spy-novel style) executes a socially significant target; the world has been awash with footage of such scenes since the invention of television, so there is no dearth of examples for a would-be killer to mimic. The Trump International bombing appears to have been a sloppily executed mimicry of catastrophic car bombings that were used in Oklahoma City and which have become fixtures in recent Middle Eastern terrorism; such attacks target specific, locally significant buildings and whoever happens to be in them at the time. The New Orleans attack, driving through a large crowd of randomly chosen innocents, then opening fire on first responders, is also part of a too-familiar pattern.

Each of the perpetrators sought to repeat a very specific mode of terrorist attack. No shoe bombs here; no murderous innovations. A spate, instead, of barely-planned-out copycat violence undertaken by single actors living out whatever delusions were in their heads. It was as if they were all trying to recreate scenes from movies they had watched.

And that is the pattern that's most concerning, if we are to take the leap of presuming three such incidents in less than a month amounts to a "pattern."

Consider the dominant themes in American society right now, as expressed both by political leaders and the media that defends and normalizes even the most extremist voices among them.

• The nation is allegedly under siege by refugees, minority groups, and political opponents of Republicanism. (Republican Party campaign messaging, all levels)

• Vigilantism targeting those enemies is Good, Actually, and may soon become even more Necessary. (Celebrations of Rittenhouse, et al)

• Those who commit insurrection in service to the national rebirth are heroes; those who prosecuted them for their crimes are enemies of the nation and must themselves be punished far more severely. (Donald Trump; an array of House and Senate Republicans)

• A purge of Trump's enemies in and out of government is vital to the survival of the nation. (Heritage Foundation; Claremont Institute; Steve Bannon, etc)

• Citizens do not have the right of dissent, but must be punished or imprisoned for opposing or embarrassing Trump (Bannon; Trump; movement-wide)

• The law is an impediment to national rebirth, and those who back such rebirth must not be constrained by it (Russell Vought; Project 2025)

• The president and those acting on his behalf are allowed to violate the law without repercussion if he deems it necessary for the nation's wellbeing. (Supreme Court Justice John Roberts)

• The rule of law is determined largely by wealth and context; government has few abilities to check corporate abuses, but both government and corporate/wealthy supplicants have near-unlimited power to curtail citizens' rights. (Supreme Court decisions, 2016-2025)

Put this together and you have (1) full-bore fascism, the laws-are-optional sort in which vigilante justice against perceived national enemies is not just tolerated but glorified, and (2) a movement that is more than halfway to becoming a terrorist organization just in their own self-pronouncements.

Such a framework does not just encourage acts of stochastic terror; if the rhetoric is to be believed, national greatness requires such violence. While we cannot predict the precise targets and which "lone wolf" actors will carry out which acts, we can certainly expect that a social permission structure that has been altered to endorse some such acts—and from the highest levels of elected government, no less—will assuredly produce more of them.

The assassination of a prominent executive was a random act, but not an unplanned one; it was meant as political act targeting abusive corporate acts of the sort that multiple conservative courts are now insisting the law has no power to constrain. Ergo, only extra-legal remedies are possible; ergo, targeted violence.

The targeting of New Orleans pedestrians was a random act, but also one with a political premise: The nation has so lost its way that it must now be opposed not with speech, but as paramilitary struggle; there are no such thing as innocents.

The car bombing of a Trump property was a random act, but one that was intended, like countless "race war"-obsessed nationalist attacks in the past, to accelerate violence against described political enemies. This will show somebody, the bomber appears to have imagined, which will make the dream of a militia or military encirclement of Washington, D.C., and a purge of Trump's enemies more likely.

All are premised on the law being an impotent force that must be thwarted rather than acknowledged; all are terrorist acts that both parrot terrorism's most common forms and which appear to have been planned in large part with the hope that other, like-minded actors will be inspired to take up the cause with similar actions.

What can we expect, with a convicted felon and unrepentant backer of sedition now calling for a purge of his personal enemies from within the White House itself?

Violence. That has been Trump's game all along; his political career consists of riling crowds to attack his political enemies, a pattern that has led every prominent American to run afoul of his temper to be inundated with death threats. We can expect the promised pardoning of the Jan. 6 attackers in particular to grant would-be lone wolf actors a new conviction that committing new violence will make them heroes, rather than terrorists; they will act.

The short version of all of that is simply this: There is no pattern in the actions of a lone wolf, but put a country teeming with potential lone wolves under extreme social and political pressures, though, and you'll start to see patterns. The hallmark of the majority of lone-wolf and small-group terrorist acts are that they stem from an innate belief that the rule of law no longer matters, either for them or in society at large, and that it's now time to shun those laws and achieve goals through force.

Which is, and this is not even remotely a coincidence, now the governing message of a far-right Republican coalition that has explicitly declared the old laws to be insufficient, and the old checks on power to be irrelevant, and which comes with a John Roberts-written Supreme Court ruling authorizing movement leaders to commit outright crimes, so long as the leaders have determined that America needs those crimes to be committed.

There's a new surge of Americans who think the nation is so broken that only acts of extreme violence can fix it? Yeah, no kidding. The ones with money or connections turn those beliefs into a new career in the House or Senate; the ones without either watch their televisions, buy guns, and stew.

With every Trump speech celebrating those who have broken laws for him, and with every self-pardon and pardon of others who have committed crimes for his benefit, the drumbeat will intensify. It's difficult to imagine any future in which Americans exposed to such apocalyptic claims and such grandiose, ever-growing paranoias will not act out.