This is what he symbolizes to me and also what I think he ought to symbolize: People have grown far too emotional about politics.
Calm down, everyone. Observe. Think. Don't throw away your humanity. Don't throw away your life. The anguish — the fever pitch — is not helping.
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Someone doing this, is not a matter of why, but when. What ever his current agitation was, it only represents the moment.
I had a customer that was a manic depressive. The huge swings were unsettling, and the only time ever, I was concerned about violence. (and I spent my formative years hanging out in some very rough bars, but I can handle common crazy fueled by alcohol)
There was another one a short time ago. We don’t want this to start trending. I agree with you.
What you call politics is emotion. Thank the soap opera business information model and the 19th amendment.
I agree with you, but I think it illustrates something else to me as well. That, along with the massive protests in support of Hamas, the utter fear in the minds of young people not wanting to bring children into the world because of climate change, their continued fear that life on earth is going to end, that Miami will soon be under water. That we have thousands lining the streets of our major cities living hour to hour hooked on drugs that turn them into half-standing upright zombies. That we have children- literal children looking to change their gender.
When did all this madness come about? I note that we have more degreed people than we have ever had, and also more need of mental help than we have ever had. I don't know if there is a correlation, and I could not prove one, but I strongly suspect our insanity is taught- from early ages on.
What he symbolizes to me is that some people are crazy and should be institutionalized before they harm themselves or others. There were likely many warning signs that this guy would do something like this, which the people who knew and loved him could not or would not act on.
what he symbolizes is:
Putting CO2 out into the world is FINE and DANDY IF you are doing it for "correct" reasons.
Just like Billionaires flying to Davos, protestors burning themselves is FINE.. IF
Temujin: The Left has driven people crazy. And it was done on purpose. Scare the daylights out of people so that they vote Dem. The Dems promise to act as Big Brother and save them for all these horrible events; especially from the planet burning up in 2100.
When I saw the Dem candidates in Iowa, they routinely promised more federal money for mental healthcare. Heads nodded in agreement.
He had just been released after 6 months
The Hate-Trump obsessives /and/ the Worship Trump obsessives are two sides of the same coin.
that said - I'd be OK if a few Trump-Hate Obsessives would set themselves on fire.
Just for diversity and fairness.
Does Madame Nhu have any comment on this?
John Henry
What he symbolizes to me is that some people are crazy and should be institutionalized before they harm themselves or others
As a culture we decided institutionalizing people was inhumane. The experimenting was what was inhumane, not the institution. Now the mentally ill have a right to sleep in the street. That’s not compassion…
When the therapists are for self immolation you see they have to be on the couch
Dave B.
Good reminder.
Recall the man who committed suicide because he was arrested for merely walking into the Capitol Building - and he did nothing but take a few photos and leave.
Our corrupt leftwing government forced him into that level of distress.
Another illustration of the limitations of the Baker Act.
This man had family and friends, and this was so unnecessary.
Florida's Baker Act is overused, inefficient and inadequate
This is not a politically motivated act, this is the end game of someone mentally ill. And I think that applies to anyone who sets fire to themselves in a "cause."
Committing suicide to further a political movement seems to me to be the ultimate act covered under Dr. Johnson's aphorism that "A wise man shows you the grounds of his beliefs, the fool shows you the strength of them."
This man was a conspiracy ideolog. He believed Joe Biden and Donald Trump were acting in concert to impose a "apocalyptic fascist world coup".
Self-fire bomber Lunatic
"Man who lit himself on fire outside of NYC Trump trial ID'd as antifascist agitator Max Azzarello, final post was singing 'Start a F*cking Revolution'"
Well. Now he's dead. What a waste.
Fox news reported that the man has died from his injuries
Too bad for him that as a nation we provide better care and benefits to illegals than to our own citizens.
And he was an anti-Trump Bernie Bro.
What you call politics is emotion. Thank the soap opera business information model and the 19th amendment.
Maybe the guy who thinks women are too emotional can explain why it’s always men who feel the overwhelming urge to burn themselves alive in our streets.
On yesterday's thread, someone mentioned the NYPD wanting to scrub the loon's substack.
Why?
Exactly. Politics has become a contact sport. Before convenient air travel and constant fundraising, members stayed in town. They dined together, got to know each other and the issues in their states and districts. No more. It’s now “my way or the highway” politics. Twitter, 24 news, bloggers, etc all provide forums for critics, often with no skin in the game, to criticize members. Members now not only make decisions based on the positions, but how will the public spin this.
One of my favorite politicians was the late Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY). He avoided all the talk shows and keep a low profile. When I mentioned to someone that Enzi was the shepherd that got the Trump tax cuts we enjoy through the Congress, they said “Who?”. And that was exactly how Senator Enzi would want to be remembered, a behind the scenes workman. He also believed in the 80-20 rule. He would talk to other members and say “You know we don’t agree on this bill as a package, but there’s some good in it, probably 80% that we can agree on. Why don’t we agree to do the good and continue to work on the remaining 20%?” Ah, the good old days of legislating. Now if you compromise you’re cast as weak.
The real problem is I don’t know how we get out of this situation. Maybe we need a Reaganesque leader to walk all this back.
I haven’t lost all hope but I’m not very optimistic. Im not for curtailing anyone’s 1A rights, but as long as there is the 24 news cycle, TV talk shows, the internet, it’s going to be difficult to bring back reason and even dignity to our public discourse.
The sign "burning man" was holding said:
"Trump is with Biden and they're about to fascist coup us."
Seems like he's a "they're all out to get us" kinda paranoid guy.
Political anguish resulting in self-immolation is like gender dysmorphia that results in “gender-affirming” surgery/hormones. Our country is in an unprecedented mental-health crisis. I often think about how the national suicide rate went down every year during WW2.
A 37 year old man in the prime of his life. This looks like bipolar. It's a sad waste. I don't know how forced medication is implemented, but we need to start having that conversation.
so we should treat mental illness by calming down. Or maybe look at things that uncalmed him over the decades.
fear porn, covid porn, the media producing 'studies' by 'experts' that tell us we will die in a few years from, covid, or cancer or global warming.
24/7 coverage of nothing events, making them into a terrifying reality.
Social media, and the news, are a proven method for creating hysteria and insanity.
Maybe your trusted elites, who make up the news, who steer the insanity towards people, should calm the fuck down.
Start telling the truth. go back to marked opinion sections, instead of presenting the 'news' as lies packaged to instill panic and dread.
The people who consume these previously trusted sources, and social media, are shown to have more problems, mental illness, than those of us who avoid the yelling, hysteria, and blame game practiced by those 'trusted' sources.
A multi billion business, dedicated to creating fear, distrust, and panic- helped along by a 'profession' that gives drugs to kids, and young adults- the main side effects are depression, fear, paranoia and mental illness
and all of this 24/7 news, by intel agencies, the government, and politicians, is waging war on us, and we should calm down. Got it.
Maybe we should look at the reality, instead of role playing being normal in a dystopian nightmare, orchestrated by Wapo, nyt, atlantic, vanity fair, et al.
Maybe those people, dedicated to lies and propaganda, should calm the fuck down.
It's also 99% mental illness.
If liberals want to kill themselves I won't stop them.
Darwin something something...
So you thought it was an effective way for him to communicate the message you interpreted?
And if more people aren’t hearing that message, maybe more people like him can “repeat” it?
Hmmmm….
THe guy wrote a manifesto, will it be published? He is reportedly a Marxist hardcore Antifa Bernie supporter. Fuck him.
This is what he symbolizes to me and also what I think he ought to symbolize: People have grown far too emotional about politics.
I don’t know about that, Althouse. I was eligible to vote in 1968, and I voted in that election and every general election since then. I thought the election of 1980 was critical — terrible inflation, the hostages, the abject failure of Eagle Claw (especially when I later read that the major contributor to the failure of Eagle Claw was Secretary of State Vance managing to delay the start of the operation until well into the Haboob (sandstorm) season in Iran while vainly pursuing ever less likely routes to a diplomatic solution). That man Carter had to go.
But I honestly think this election might be even more existential than 1980. Forty-four years later the world is, if anything, an even more dangerous place than it was then. India (and Israel?) had recently become a nuclear power, but Pakistan and North Korea hadn’t yet. I’ve so far seen only one article where they calculated inflation the way it was computed during the Carter years, and it was eye-opening. Carter’s foreign policy was pretty inept, but it seems a model of sanity next to Biden’s.
I have grandchildren now. Wonderful children, and amazingly smart. I worry about the world they’ll inherit, and so, yes, I am very emotionally invested in the outcome of this election.
Max Azzarello's self-immolation symbolizes nothing; unlike some others who have burned themselves to death while being (arguably) of rational mind, (e.g., the monk in Viet Nam in the 60s), Azzarello appears to have become emotionally and/or mentally unstable, possibly stemming from the death of his mother two years ago. His action, tragic for himself and his loved ones, is just a freak show staged outside the courtroom where Trump's trial will commence next week. There is no coherent meaning that can be drawn between the legal proceedings and the suicide.
“In November 2020, a few hours after the US presidential election had been called for Joe Biden, Virginia Thomas, wife of Clarence Thomas, justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, sent a bizarre text to Donald Trump’s chief of staff, her old friend Mark Meadows. It read: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days & will be living in barges off GITMO [Guantánamo Bay] to face military tribunals for sedition”.
“Thomas’s fantasy had not originated in her own head. It had been generated online by some part of what we must now call the “QAnon community” — a sprawling nebulous matrix of individuals who adhere to a compendious almost rococo conspiracy theory.” ~ FT
One might widen the gaze and say that in the ever-increasing greatly expanded information space, there are going to be wacko neighborhoods, places infused with the black magic of dark conspiracy.
A vast information space must be assumed a permanent feature going forward, therefore the "kitemarking" concept should be pursued and expanded so that all participants have some opportunity to see and hear all the voices in the public square, not just a few. There's too much self-reinforcing self-selection going on today (which is a form of censorship that is self-created and what is worse subject to manipulation by others).
A key feature of the coming Trump criminal trials is that speech (information beliefs) are unregulated and not subject to public censorship but that actions are subject to strict accountability; otherwise a functioning, interacting human society becomes impossible.
The best inoculation against conspiracy theories from the fringe infecting the broader political process with a view of overthrowing democratic governance in favor of some reactionary "elite" is to stigmatize political parties with defeat who peddle extremist doctrines.
Trump rode a populist wave into power — and populist is very people based -- and then tried to leverage that people power into an autocratic overthrow, which is the opposite of being people based. One would expect most of Trump's populist base to erode down to a much narrower conspiracist base as additional information is exposed in the public square. If that doesn't happen, then some very harrowing questions are in the offing.
One question might be whether or not the plutocracy is using their money as Supreme Court sanctioned free speech to overthrow a democracy supposedly based on free speech? The opening anecdote about Virginia Thomas raises disturbing questions. We now know who her husband works for. Who does she work for?
Higher up at Little Rock airport gunned down by Biden's corrupt ATF.
No body cams (as required)
Happy coincidence!
"People have grown far too emotional about politics.
Calm down, everyone."
Just one of the many downsides to allowing a government to have more power than is necessary.
Everyone contributes, if only as a bad example.
He doesn't symbolize anything. He manifests suicide and crazy. Always looking for symbols is the manifesting of mind virus algorithmic commandments. Most of the time a cigar is a cigar.
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