Well, Friday was certainly interesting. My day started with a telcon as well as a visit to a local medical facility for an outpatient diagnostic procedure. I am still waiting for the results of the diagnostic procedure and may not hear back until Tuesday perhaps.

Later in the day we heard of a young man self-immolating outside a courthouse in Manhattan. It appears that the young man, apparently a conspiracy theorist with a Substack account, set himself on fire in a park opposite the courthouse where Donald Trump is standing trial. Before ignition the person had posted a nearly three thousand word long screed to Sbstack explaining his views and why he set himself ablaze. While the screed is most aligned with far-right views it still takes positions that are most charitably regarded as being paranoid and delusional.

Why does that incident in a park in Manhattan even matter? Now that a jury is seated for this trial of Donal Trump we’ll see proceedings begin on Monday. We can easily see more people attempt to engage in a variety of disruptive acts. It also isn’t that far to go for far right people to go from self-immolation to engage in outwardly aggressive acts.

As we begin to head into the general election season I frankly have a bad feeling. Are we likely to see outbreaks of violence in weird places? It seems like the answer is yes. I just don’t know what the next step is after self-immolation in terms of the continuum of violence with what constitutes today’s “right wing”.

Eventually I must return to working on the bolthole project…