The Motivations of Thomas Matthew Crooks
The Banality of Evil
I am not one to indulge in the daily commotions of political squabbles, which are all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yet, there is certain delight in watching the police and pundits thrashing through the tedious details of an anonymous nowhere man to find the motivations undergirding his unsuccessful assassination of Donald Trump. The political narrative of the current election cycle appears to hinge upon such a revelation.
Both partisan factions have taken to pointing fingers at each other for creating this present toxic polemical environment that encourages more violent expressions of that toxicity. Doubtlessly, there does exist a historical, albeit indirect, link between violent words and violent actions.
I sometimes wonder, however, whether a mea culpa (i.e., “yes, we have also been culpable of this toxicity”), without any expectation or likelihood that the other faction would follow suit, might be a politically astute move. But this forlorn hope would require a voting public with some intelligence, virtue, sanity, and prudence, a highly naïve conjecture in these present times.
Curiously, the lad has not left much of an electronic trail. He registered Republican but donated to a Democratic cause. There lurks no secret manifesto in the baseboards or floorboards. He was fully employed and without criminal incident or evidence of mental distress.
We are expected to find sympathy within ourselves for this bullied nerd who lived with his parents in a comfortable suburban neighborhood. (“In 2022, Crooks received a National Math & Science Initiative Star Award.”) However, there are artifacts which suggest that his own disposition contributed to his own social misfortune and loneliness.
The longer that the police and pundits fail to find a plausible political motive, the more an obscure song by Peter Gabriel, one of my favorite songwriters/musicians, acquires resonance. In Family Snapshot (Peter Gabriel 3: Melt, 1980), the perpetrator seeks to acquire social notoriety, even becoming a footnote in history, by becoming one with One who already has social notoriety.
I don't really hate you
I don't care what you do
We were made for each other, me and you
I want to be somebody
You were like that, too
What a pathetic reason, which could have struck the match of a long expected civic conflagration in the United States. It is as obscure a reason (relative to ultimate consequences) as that of another youth, just shy of twenty, some 110 years ago.
This conjecture is mere speculation. Yet, the banality of evil is just as good a reason as any ostentatious manifesto from some self-regarding narcissist to explain the actions of men.