Incident at Buc-ee's

I've hated Buc-ee's for quite some time, now. It was cute at first - the Six Flags Over Gas Pumps vibe to it. Hundreds of pumps! Clean bathrooms! The beaver mascot printed on everything! Kinda a silly roadstop.

But there's a dark side. The aisle after aisle of "Beaver Nuggets" and whatever kind of private label sugar and junk food that entice us fat Americans to get closer and closer to a dialysis machine. The Super-Walmart of gas stations. BBQ that is mediocre at best. Worst of all, the owners' politics are known to be pretty MAGA, with a lot of money flowing to Abbott and Patrick.

"But the bathrooms are clean!" So, use them. Then leave.

On Thursday, late afternoon, the fam headed out for a long, hill country weekend retreat, with all the fam that wanted to come. Our youngest (hereafter referred to as "The Boy," made it in from L.A., and we don't get to see him enough. The grandbrats were all going to go... they would rendezvous with us at... Buccee's. Because. Yeah, easy to find, easy to swap luggage and kids and screens and chargers and...

And dammit, I forgot to fill up, so I needed to buy Beaver gas. (The wife was a few minutes behind me in vehicle 2... grand brats require a lot of space and feed and supplies on road trips.)

I selected a pump out of the hundreds on the lot. Even before I got out of my car, I heard some yelling that seemed to come from a car in the next fuel aisle. I told The Boy that some kids were having a road fit or something. As I opened the door, it continued, but rather than the sound of kids engaged in misbehavior, the screams seemed very desperate. I looked closer as I hooked up to the pump, and a family and dog poured out of the vehicle. The plates were from Colorado. The shrieking grew more intense as the panicking family began hugging each other.

A landscaping crew was in front of the vehicle, beside mine. I asked what had happened... they shrugged, their eyes wide.

I turned around to see that a man had appeared suddenly and had opened the passenger door. He had put a towel over the passenger's face to apply pressure. Because there was blood. A lot of blood. I thought at first that the man had experienced a bad medical emergency, some sort of massive sinus bleed, but deep inside I knew better. My son even remarked that it was no nosebleed.

The good Samaritan reached over and unbuckled the man, and signaled for someone to help him. A couple more people came in to assist, my son being one of them. They got him to the ground, and someone started chest compressions, but it was clear that it was of no use.

The Boy was a bit dazed and came back to tell me 'don't go over there.' I had already seen it.

We looked up to see one of the grandkids looking at us from the corner of the store. I didn't even have to tell my son as he ran to get her out of the line of sight.

And of course, some a**hole had a smartphone up in the air, video-ing away. This is the modern era, you see. I guess the family can be grateful he didn't try to narrate it or pose for a selfie.

Cops, EMTs, and the fire dept were there immediately. Buc-ee's staffers were in a bit of a daze, unsure of how to help and struggling to believe that this was happening. EMTs brought out a gurney, the police began to shoo people away, and directed folks like me, still at the pump, to move. As one cop passed by me, stringing up "crime scene" tape, I asked what the call was. "Suicide," she replied.

A man had shot himself, in a car, with family members inside. Allowing for mental illness, what drives a person to do this? What kind of despair could cause this?

And no matter how you frame it, this was in great part an act of cruelty. Because no matter the circumstances, this was brutality.

I will not try to make a correlation/causation argument with this suicide and Trump, but I am going to measure the distance between the cruelty that Trump dishes out daily in his words and policies against the despair and fury that is rising up in this country. And he has a court of jesters and toadies willing to execute his orders, a political party of sycophants willing to bend the knee in service to him while forsaking the best interests of their constituents, and a rabid base willing to blind themselves to their own well-being in exchange for domination over their perceived enemies. Now Trump, via ICE agents (made possible by his compliant party) and loyalist law enforcement and military personnel, is building an army of goons willing to carry out violence against immigrants, protestors, and organized dissent. Finally, he can count on a well-funded media empire to cover for him and disseminate any kind of propaganda that keeps him in power.

I have written before about how this administration is perfectly content to destroy happiness and remove any sense of joy in our lives. But it gets worse, as every act of cruelty layers on anger, now rising to fury. Trump and Co. keep up the distractions to throw the scent off of their destruction of the economy and their refusal to expose their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein with the usual tossing off of bright, shiny fearmongering. "They're eating the dogs, They're eating the cats," was a real number one hit on the campaign chart, as was "Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants." Hundreds of lies like these have a subtext of blame. Blame on immigrants, women, democrats, the poor, and especially dark people. As long as the focus could be diverted away from Trump's many failures and grift, it was a powerful and winning strategy. It almost seemed too easy. His followers were happy to blame it on the "takers" and "losers" and "elites" and "criminal migrants."

But Trump is having trouble shaking off that base's realization that he has betrayed them. They invested everything in him - he was going to "take America back" for them. He was going to punish those liberal elitists who had ruled over them for decades. He was going to reveal that the libs really were a cabal of immoral, cheating, child molesting, money-changers. He was (importantly) going to give the economic advantage back to hard-working, blue-collar, God fearing, white, heterosexual voters.

From day one, his extreme tariffs were a laughably bad idea; there wasn't a serious economist in the world who saw it as anything other than an unforced trade war. His Draconian immigration policies appeased his rabid, racist disciples, though they were sure that his target would be the alleged massive criminal element that he promised to deport, not the employees at their restaurants, factories, hotels, and construction sites.

The Trump family profiteering from the presidency was fan fun at first - he deserved it! He's taking back from the elites! But now every multi-million dollar bribe he receives seems to coincide with a reduction in (earned) benefits to the middle and lower middle class. Trump publicly berated Fed Chair Jerome Powell about cost overruns on the Fed’s renovation at its headquarters facing the National Mall. Powell has refused to kowtow to Trump and risk more of the economy by reducing interest rates. This is while Trump has gilded the White House in gold, paved over the famous Rose Garden, and promises a White House remodel that will replace the East Wing with a 90,000 sq. ft. Mar-a-Lago-inspired "event space."

And for the vicious right who were ready for the great Epstein reveal, they are being thwarted by Trump, no less, at every turn. Even Trump's most loyal lieutenants are fearlessly denouncing him. Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Musk, Lara Loomer, and more have demanded that he release the 'Epstein files.' Trump has insulted and angered his constituents for wanting transparency - calling them "dumb" and telling them to "get over it."

The Sturm und Drang of the tariffs, the Epstein files, inflation, the stock market, Trump's daily diversional proclamations... they are Trump micro issues. The bigger macro that "liberals" have warned about for years is finally becoming clear to the MAGAts: the monstrous wealth gap, the likes of which have not been seen here in this country since the pre-Depression Roaring Twenties.

And now that people are feeling it, there is a fury that has been loosed.

Trump was their guy. One of them. OK, he is rich, but he EARNED it, he said. He knew how they felt, how they struggled, how immigrants were stealing their country. And he validated their anger at all those brown people. Told them to act on that anger. He was just as oppressed. Hell, they tried to STEAL his election!

Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in downtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024, by Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old. Mangione was reportedly angry at the medical insurance industry. He left behind a manifesto, abridged here:

Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as [sic] our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed [sic] them to get away with it. -Luigi Mangione

It shouldn't have been surprising that to many, Luigi became a folk hero. A GoFundMe campaign raised over a million dollars for his defense. Even for those who condemned his actions, their social media commentary went something like, "Sure, this was unacceptable, but..."

Wesley LePatner was an unintended victim last week in the mass shooting at 345 Park Avenue in New York. She was CEO of Blackstone’s Real Estate Income Trust—a $53 billion portfolio. Blackstone is an American alternative investment management company, known for mergers and acquisitions, located in the same building as the headquarters of the NFL. A gunman entered the building looking to attack NFL executives - he claimed to suffer from CTE, a damaging brain injury caused by helmet hits in football - though he never played pro football. Known to suffer from mental illness, the gunman appeared to have approached the wrong offices and randomly shot at anyone. Wesley was a loving mother of two small kids, a well-liked employee, and a philanthropist. By any measure, she was wealthy, a member of New York's elite investment community.

Activists accuse Blackstone's real estate ventures of driving evictions, inflating rents, and worsening racial inequality. (Research has shown the opposite.) No matter, it is the symbolism of her murder that has been applauded on social media. "Ms. LePatner was LUIGI’D."

Violence is being celebrated, not just as a response to the day-to-day injustices that seem to be piling up but also as a symbolic stand against perceived predatory capitalism.

Some are calling it Luigism. But this anger has been building for years in proportion to the widening wealth gap. Like the violent tendencies that have grown with the MAGA movement (including a full-blown insurrection), it looks like there may be bipartisan rage producing violent blowback against the ultra-wealthy and symbols of that wealth.

Even some in the top 1% have warned for years that the pitchforks were coming. "During the past three decades, compensation for CEOs grew 127 times faster than it did for workers. Since 1950, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio has increased 1,000 percent, and that is not a typo. CEOs used to earn 30 times the median wage; now they rake in 500 times." Those gains didn't magically appear in the bank accounts of the 1%... those gains came from the increased productivity of workers who never saw commensurate compensation. All those Walmart employees are stocking the shelves, loading inventory onto trucks, and serving customers. They're also waiting in line at charity food banks, applying for (and being denied) Medicaid, and getting emergency room medical care without insurance.

The 99% are starting to figure it out. They feel the scam. They see the grift. They know betrayal. Their anger is making them desperate. They've learned from Trump-the-Tough to joyfully embrace political violence. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” “I’d like to punch him in the face.” “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”

Trump supporters have taken the hint and are ready to punch or to shoot. Trump haters feel cornered and out of peaceful options. Both groups may find common ground in their collective nihilism - ready to declare war on a common enemy - Trump and the rest of the 1%.

The isolated acts of vengeance and anger will continue. Over job losses, personal bankruptcies, evictions, inflation, healthcare costs, etc. Violence will increase, targeting institutions and wealthy individuals alike. Banks, insurance companies, politicians, courts... they will all be targets in this environment.

We're all in that car at Buc-ee's, now. A distressed and disturbed family, continually on edge, knowing that dad is absolutely mad. And when he finally pulls the trigger, his self-destruction will damage us in equal measure, and it will last forever.

Man, I hate Buc-ee's.