Don't blame normal people for political violence.

Victims of the New Year's terrorism have not been buried. Take a damn breath before you make it about taking sides.

Happy New Year, everyone. There was a terrorist attack in New Orleans at 3:15 on January 01, 2025, at 3:15 AM CST, and likely another one in Las Vegas.

Once my hangover from a hard night of party-hopping in Georgetown had been dispelled in the late afternoon, I expected to spend a lazy day watching Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing—always a pick-me-up! I had no intention of checking the news. I assumed there would be none; if there were some, it could wait. But then, I found that HBO had removed the beloved program from the library—fucking ominous—and as I stewed, a colleague sent me an SMS message linking to video of an exploding Cybertruck outside the Trump® International Hotel Las Vegas.

“Perfect metaphor for 2025,” he wrote sardonically. “Looks like fireworks.”

I had assumed, because I am naturally an optimist, that the culprit must have been a sloppy drunk driving around with a trunk full of fireworks. This is not too out of the ordinary—truck-driving, hard-drinking amateur pyrotechnicians are a type of person I grew up around. Now, the memeable explosion is being investigated as a possible act of terrorism. This seems probable unless some evidence emerges that the driver was a hapless moron contracted to put on a New Year’s Day fireworks show (unlikely).

I saw later that 15 people were dead and 35+ more were injured after an ISIS-loving lunatic rammed a rented Ford truck into a New Orleans crowd on New Year’s Eve. The killer, Texan Shamsud-Din Jabbar, died in a firefight with police. Authorities discovered two IEDs in the area. He had an ISIS flag flying. Scary shit.

So far, officials have found no reason to assume the attacks are linked. Both trucks were rented via Turo.com, but I see no reason to blame a rental company for violence done with trucks. I imagine executives will end up hauled in front of Congress to answer stupid questions because we are a country that wants to have someone to blame.

Which brings me to my grievance. Americans are dead and injured. Let them be buried and treated before celebrating their maiming with Internet fights over whether or not the killers were disgruntled MAGA firing the first shots in the Republican Civil War, Antifa youth emerging from a long public absence with dangerous new tactics, Osama bin Laden’s revenge-seeking nephews, Democrats malding over the election results, pissed off Star Wars fans or incels or whatever damn faction you think the villains-of-the-day belong to. It’s stupid and ugly.

The trend of excitedly looking up the perpetrators of mass violence to see what team they’re on, or, in lieu of facts, imagining what team they might have been on—like the orange clown did today—is shameful and counterproductive. Murderers and terrorists are not on anyone’s team. The vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, Christians, nudists, conspiracy theorists, gun owners, goths, virgins, or any other group of people in this or any country has never killed anyone and would not unless their lives were in danger.

I do not believe this country can ever become less divided, but we do not need to escalate the rhetoric to the point of accusing random factions of instigating murder while waiting for the actual police to finish their investigations. There will be time, soon enough, when all the facts are on the table. Then we can argue based on what happened instead of some ranting Twitter users’ fantasies.