A small update on the Cybertruck incident in Vegas, since I discussed it in today’s Backchannel. The 37-year-old active-duty soldier in the vehicle apparently shot himself in the head moments before the car ignited. He was also, according to his uncle, a big Trump supporter. Needless to say (or I hope it’s needless to say), this makes the motive for this incident pretty hard to make sense of. Given the apparent suicide and other outlandish parts of what happened it seems obvious that mental health issues likely played some role. But this goes a bit beyond making bad decisions or having a general suicidal ideation. Even in the context of some distorted reasoning, what was the message? What was the point? I’ve seen a number of people propose that the dead soldier may have been angry about Trump’s new fealty to Musk. On its face this struck me as the kind of over-ornate theory you’d come up with if you’re spending too much time on social media and had too much time on your hands. But the truth is I haven’t been able to come up with any more plausible theory.
It’s always good to remember that people who rent a car, drive it from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas and then light the car on fire and shoot themselvs in the head probably aren’t thinking in very linear ways or ways that are going to make sense to the rest of us. But it’s still pretty hard to figure.
