Spontaneous combustion…for a cause?

What does self-immolation accomplish?

If you haven’t yet seen it in the news, today a man set himself ablaze outside the NY courthouse in which the Trump hush money trial is being held. The man (who, though identified by police, I will not name) entered a “designated protest area,” threw handfuls of pamphlets in the air, doused himself with accelerant, and ignited a lighter near his right hip, causing him to go up in flames. Bystanders caught the event on cell phone video, and a couple of newscasts managed to capture the gruesome experience live as well.

It has been revealed that the pamphlets contained “conspiracy theory” material. I also have seen a manifesto, claiming to be written by this human fireball, on a substack page (whose author goes by a different name). I have not read the entire manifesto (though I skimmed a good bit), and I do not intend to read it in its entirety. I am not going to share it. It was the last post to the substack, and it was published about a half hour prior to the fireworks.

I will say a couple of things about the manifesto. Some of it is not hard to believe. That government operates Ponzi schemes, taking money from taxpayers and funneling it back to themselves and self-perpetuating pet projects is not news to me (nor, I suspect, to most of you). That the government promulgates one fear-filled propaganda program after another, creating apocalyptic apoplexy over anodyne affairs in order to bolster these schemes and to exert control also is now the realm of the banal. That our government is trending toward tyrannical totalitarianism is trite.

Then there’s the other side. Saying things like Orwell told us of “a hellish future of totalitarian control that we are powerless to stop...So we would believe it.” Throw in with that the same reason for Easy Rider telling us the hippie movement is dead, Chinatown ending in “defeatism in the face of massive corruption,” Wall Street telling us greed is good, and Matt Groening writing the comic strip Life in Hell. That kind of thinking is a bridge too far. But let’s get back to the bonfire.

What did he hope to achieve by his self-deflagration? Is it simply to draw attention to his writings? To get the attention of more people in order to spread his message and awaken people from their slumber? There are scores of people using a multitude of media outlets spreading the word that government is corrupt (duh), that they’re lying to us constantly (duh), that they want full control (duh), and that they all work together to perpetuate their own power and profit (duh). Setting oneself afire may provide quite the spectacle, but if you’re gone, your ability to protest is over.

The same was seen in February when a U.S. airman lit himself up outside the Israeli embassy in protest of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. What came of his remonstrance? Did it have any effect on the war? Did it rally additional support for his side of the argument? Other than his death, there is no visible or tangible result of his pre-mortem cremation.

The same is true of today’s misguided martyr. He can no longer disseminate data on the diabolical dealings of the dastardly domineering delegates in Congress and the cabal controlling them. His (alleged) substack stops at a total of twenty-six entries, never to have another piece published. His pamphlets lie on the ground in NYC around his smoldering self, some perhaps burned along with him, the rest likely gathered into police evidence or tossed in the trash. That I can tell, the overriding outcome of his particular pyrotechnic “protest” is to convince people that he was psychotic. This will not act as an alert from an alarm clock rousing the dozing masses from their dreams; the only alarms this kind of action sets off are those at the firehouse.