On March 25th, at the first big rally of his current electoral campaign, Donald Trump explained his role in history. In 2016, he told the crowd of supporters, he’d been their “voice.” Now it was different. “I am your warrior, I am your justice,” he announced. “I am your retribution.”
Those words, ominous enough on their own, seemed more so in light of the locale. Trump hadn’t wanted to speak in “one of those fifty-fifty areas,” he explained, but somewhere his support was “close to a hundred per cent.” He chose Waco, Texas, best known for a fifty-oneday standoff outside the city in 1993, between a religious sect called the Branch Davidians and the Department of Justice. The date of Trump’s speech put it during the siege’s thirtieth anniversary.
The siege, which culminated in a fire in the Branch Davidian complex, killed four federal agents and eightytwo Branch Davidians, including their leader, David Koresh. Given Koresh’s messianic tendencies and end-times prophecies, many shrugged this off as just deserts for the zealots from “Wacko, Texas,” as Jay Leno joked at the time.
Yet for others the siege was a sickening display of state power. Waco helped kick the militia movement into high gear. Timothy McVeigh’s biographers Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck said that it was the largest “turning point in his life,” provoking him to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995—the second anniversary of the Waco fire. A young Alex Jones became obsessed with Waco; it led him to start his Web site Infowars.
この記事は The New Yorker の May 08, 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The New Yorker の May 08, 2023 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
ANTIHERO
“The Boys,” on Prime Video.
HOW THE WEST WAS LONG
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1.”
WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Taffy Brodesser-Akner weighs the cost of generational wealth.
TWICE-TOLD TALES
The seditious writers who unravel their own stories.
CASTING A LINE
The hard-bitten genius of Norman Maclean.
TEARDROPS ON MY GUITAR
Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.
THE HADAL ZONE
Arwen Rasmont waits hours at Keflavík International for his flight; they call it as he leaves the men’s room. He walks past the mirrored wall and is assaulted, as usual, by his dead father’s handsome image: high-arched nose, yellow hair.
OPENING THEORY
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around.
THE LAST RAVE
Remembering a summer of estrangement.
КАНО
I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”