Yesterday, I learned that a Trumpist gunman was menacing people a few blocks from a school off of Wallisville Road. The gunman said that he was trying to provoke a reaction:

The gunman picked the Sonoma Subdivision where the median home costs more than a quarter million. Built in 2005, the subdivision is located in the 77049 zip code which, according to census data, is about 69% Hispanic, 18% Black, and 8% White and leans Democratic.

This, after a recent attempted mass shooting was stopped in Houston’s Galleria Westin Ballroom entrance where several 100 children were participating in a community event. The bible the theocratic fascist shooter was carrying was bookmarked so that he could easily open to the Old Testament’s story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

About the Sonoma gunman, one commenter said, “People like this are dying for conflict so they can feel something. All this by a playground? Why not somewhere that is adult-only traffic? How pathetic.”

Both of these gunmen are likely theocratic fascists. Both carried what amounts to a mere hunting rifle that’s disguised to look like an M-16 automatic army weapon. Both picked areas where children and their parents could be menaced. Both seem to be desperately attempting to embody a certain male archetype prominent in our cultural ecosphere.

The Sonoma gunman is wearing tactical gloves and shorts. He’s wearing ill-fitting body armor that would likely be ineffective while carrying a hunting rifle that’s cosplaying as an M-16 with a tactical flashlight attached during the daytime. Moreover, he’s clearly unhappy. And yet, he clearly needs to be seen.

This got me thinking about the psychology of these people and how they are used by the sociopaths they tend to identify with. Hunter S. Thompson remarked on this psychopolitical trend in American politics 43 years ago:

This may be the year when we finally come face-to-face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used-car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes … understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose … Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

– Hunter S. Thompson, 1979

In some ways the closing statements of Adam Kinzinger (R), of the 1-6 Committee echo Thompson’s remarks about the changing character of the Republican party:

Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this. Donald Trump’s conduct on January 6th was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation.

It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service of our democracy. When we present our full findings, we will recommend changes to laws and policies to guard against another January 6th. The reason that’s imperative is that the forces Donald Trump ignited that day have not gone away.

The militant intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation and the disaffection, the weird fantasies and disinformation, they’re all still out there ready to go. That’s the elephant in the room. But if January 6th has reminded us of anything, I pray it is reminded us of this, laws are just words on paper.

They mean nothing without public servants dedicated to the rule of law and who are held accountable by a public that believes oath matters — oaths matter more than party tribalism or the cheap thrill of scoring political points. We — the people must demand more of our politicians and ourselves. Oaths matter.

Character matters. Truth matters. If we do not renew our faith and commitment to these principles, this great experiment of ours, our shining beacon on a hill, will not endure.

Indeed, the “elephant in the room” is the “militant intolerant ideologies, the militias, the alienation, and the disaffection, the weird fantasies, and disinformation.” This national problem –one that currently has no name– is driving America into oblivion. However, one thing is clear: the problem is psychosocial.

Political sociopaths, like Nixon and Trump, cultivate the intolerance, militarism, alienation, disaffection, weird fantasies, and disinformation because it psychologically binds their targets to them. In this way, they are not very different than cult leaders who employ the same tactics to warp the minds of their followers, cultivating them into the embodiment of the cult leader’s design. For their part, MAGA people get to feel both eternally victimized and eternally empowered; they have access to special knowledge and insight that others do not; and, they become something more than what they began as. Their previous identity is jettisoned and in its place lives something that is part of a power that could shape the world if they only remain loyal to their leader.

I say something and not someone because, whenever I have engaged with these people, I’ve come away with the distinct impression that I might as well engaged with a pamphlet of MAGA talking points. Not once have I encountered a MAGA member who could offer their unique thoughts about any particular aspect of existence. It’s as if their subjectivity was excised and in its place resides a hollow identity comprised of anger, misinformation, and absolute alienation from who they once were and the rest of their fellow Americans.

Therefore, I would disagree a little bit with Thompson’s assessment, if it were applied to today’s MAGA members because they are no longer the “used-car salesmen” of Nixon’s age; they are the car. If the 1-6 Committee has demonstrated anything, it has demonstrated the cognitive dissonance animating the psychology of those who testified. While they were shocked, disguised, and felt personally betrayed, many of them said they still supported their leader: Trump.

Watching all of this play out is, for me, equally frightening and heartbreaking. The unhappy Houston man making a fool of himself, dressed up in his pretend military garb –desperate to be seen, desperate to be recognized– seems to need to spark one of the only human connections left to him: rage.

According to the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) The Violence Project, that’s a problem. NIJ is the research arm of the Department of Justice and working with professors from two US universities, they found some psychosocial similarities between those who engage in mass shooting events. One thing that drew my eye is that the motivations behind the shootings have changed since Thompson’s remarks:

Specifically, since Trump became a significant attribute of our nation’s political media ecosphere, hate and grandiosity-seeking have spiked in ways that we in America have never before seen.

Significantly, the NIJ researchers were able to measure risk factors for those who engage in mass shootings. About 43% of shooters exhibited up to five of the following psychosocial attributes: increased agitation, abusive behavior, isolation, becoming lost in compounding mistakes about facts, depression, mood swings, loss of ability to engage with the tasks of daily life, and paranoia.

How might these psychosocial attributes correspond to MAGA members? A forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine said that what we are seeing is an interplay of narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis on a massive scale:

Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

“Shared psychosis”—which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals.

From what I can tell from the literature, the behavior of such gunmen tends to be fueled by the very psychosocial attributes MAGA membership cultivates. In the 1990s, the Pew Research Center found that the #1 reason men owned guns in America was hunting. In 2017, the #1 reason cited for gun ownership was protection. An Iowa State professor noted that we are safer now than we were in the 1990s saying, “crime and homicide rates started falling from the mid-1990s until quite recently. Yet the perception of danger has increased. So, there’s an obvious mismatch.” In other words, the rise in gun ownership is motivated by a mistaken grasp of reality.

Here, I think is a good place to leave these NIJ evidence-based solutions for how to manage the cycle of “narcissistic symbiosis” and “shared psychosis” that seems to be currently driving mass gun violence in the US: