The Disturbing Pattern Behind Three Political Attacks and What It Means for American Policy
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The Disturbing Pattern Behind Three Political Attacks and What It Means for American Policy
Andrew Bustamante discusses a hypothetical scenario analyzing patterns in recent political violence, examining commonalities between attackers in high-profile incidents including the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York, and a fictional scenario. The analysis explores how the profile of domestic threats has evolved over decades and speculates on potential policy responses that could impact civil liberties, privacy, and everyday American life.
The whole world is talking about recent acts of political violence. People are wondering why these incidents happened, who was behind them, and if there's a greater conspiracy at play. But there's a different question worth considering: What do these violent acts mean for the American people moving forward? What does it mean for policymakers? What does it mean for changes in everyday life as a result of the violence that has unfolded?
When examining recent political violence, it's important to consider it through a lens of time. Three very high-profile political assassinations or attempted political assassinations have occurred in a relatively short period. All three of these violent acts show an important trend that Americans need to be aware of as the country moves forward.
Three High-Profile Violent Acts
The first of these high-profile violent acts happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th, 2024, when then-candidate Donald Trump was running for his second term in office. A young man named Thomas Crooks mounted a building and fired an AR-15 at then-candidate Donald Trump, barely missing him and hitting him in the ear. The assassination attempt sent shockwaves around the world and particularly throughout the United States. Secret Service was able to immediately neutralize the threat and killed Crooks while he was still in place on the roof of the building. No motive to this day was ever established, even though a lot was learned about the killer.
The next major high-profile violent act happened in New York on December 4th, 2024, when Luigi Mangione killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood on the streets in front of his hotel in the early morning before a conference. Following the killing of Brian Thompson, there was a surprising dichotomy in media coverage. Some people condemned the act of violence as unnecessary and inhumane. Others actually cheered for killer Luigi Mangione for his efforts to highlight attention on healthcare disparity by killing this high-profile CEO who was also a father of two young children.
The third high-profile violent act referenced is a hypothetical scenario used for analysis purposes. The suspect shows interesting correlations and trends with the previous two instigators of violent acts against Donald Trump and against Brian Thompson. These correlations inform what is likely to happen to American citizens as they continue through life.
FBI Statistics Reveal a Troubling Pattern
A 2025 FBI report highlighted that 50% of all violent lethal acts actually originate with men under the age of 30 who are unemployed or underemployed and very intelligent. This is a fascinating metric because it goes against what so many people assume is true about violent acts. The assumption isn't that intelligent people would carry out violent acts, and certainly not that there would be multiple similarities between the perpetrators of violent activity. But in fact, the empirical evidence shows something very different.
Let's consider what was learned from the FBI as we look at violent act offenders. Thomas Crooks, the man who tried to shoot President Donald Trump, was under the age of 30. He actually scored in the 99th percentile of the SATs, putting him in the top 1% of all students in the United States taking standardized exams for college. He was unemployed at the time of the assassination attempt.
Luigi Mangione was also under the age of 30, highly successful academically with multiple degrees and advanced degrees, very well known for being a very intelligent student and a very intelligent person.
With all of these individuals, you have men under the age of 30 who are highly intelligent and were unemployed or underemployed at the time that they chose to carry out their violent act.
The Changing Face of Violence in America
When you think about the face of threat, the actual image that comes to mind when the average American thinks of a dangerous person, we've seen that face change over time. In the 1980s, the average American was afraid of gang violence. Groups of young people who would wear some sort of gang memorabilia that identified themselves. That was the face of violence.
Then as the 1980s ended and the 1990s came in, the face of violence changed again. This time it changed to the face of a domestic terrorist, a middle-aged Caucasian man who was disgruntled with his government or disgruntled with life and chose to take out his aggression by bombing government buildings like Timothy McVeigh.
As the 1990s closed and we moved into the 2000s, we saw yet another change in the face of violence and started to think that violence looked like an Arab face, a terrorist, some sort of unknown non-state actor who was wearing a bomb or coming in to leave some sort of suitcase that would explode.
By late 2010, early 2020, we started to see that face of violence change yet again. Now there was fear once again of inner city youth, often Black, with guns.
Policy Responses to Evolving Threats
Every time the face of threat changed for America, we started to see an equal change in response by way of policy. With the gang threat of the 1980s, we saw police crackdowns on inner cities. With the change in the 1990s, we saw new policies and new organizations being stood up by the government that allowed for the hunting down of domestic terrorists using individual profiles and digital signatures.
After 9/11, when the face of foreign terrorists became something Americans were also afraid of, we saw incredible changes in policy. We saw the activation of the Patriot Act. We saw the collection of metadata from every American citizen as the federal government worked to try to combat the new face of terror.
And then of course in the late 2010s, early 2020s with that face of violence once again changing to be Black men in the inner city, we saw a round of very violent policing against Black men that cost them their lives unjustly, unfairly.
What's important to highlight here is that each changing threat is responded to with a change in policing policy that often overreaches the individual liberties and civil rights of human beings, of American citizens.
What the Future May Hold
So what does that mean for the future now that we've seen these high-profile violent acts carried out by white, educated, intelligent men under the age of 30 who are unemployed? What does that mean for the future? Because the new face of threat inside of the United States doesn't look like any of the previous faces.
FBI metrics show that 43% of violent crime is coming from Black men and 57% of crime is coming from Caucasian men. So we know that Caucasian men are empirically the new face of violence. On top of that, FBI is also showing that educated men under the age of 30 are also the face of violence.
And when you dig into the personality profiles of these individuals, not only do you find that these are smart people, but you find that they are charming. You find that they are friendly. You find that they are shy and introverted and that they are the average next-door neighbor that everybody's really very fond of. Nobody expected any of these people to carry out the heinous acts that they carried out.
So that means the new face of danger inside the United States looks much more like your friendly neighborhood kid than it looks like any kind of inner city threat or any kind of weird grizzly looking middle-aged man. It's a completely new face. It's not a face with a beard and a turban. It's a face that is Caucasian that has a smile, that's quiet and friendly. It's not a person walking down the street in a wife beater with armpit stains. It's a kid under the age of 30 walking down the streets in some kind of nerd t-shirt.
Anticipated Policy Changes
This is the new face of danger for the United States. And that means that policy will start to find a way to combat that threat. We need to be prepared for new policy, new policing policy, new federal policy, new local defense and protective policies that are going to reach into the middle class home. They're going to reach into the average Caucasian household in an effort to try to identify who these future violent offenders will be.
This is good news for all the Black people who have been arguing for a long time that it's racially unjust and empirically unsound to accuse Black people of crime just because they're Black. They are exactly right and FBI findings are proving it. So the faster we can let go of any kind of racial correlation between violent crime and Black men, the better off we all are. The actual correlation, the dominant correlation right now is Caucasian, educated, intelligent men at a rate of 57% to 43%. That is the new face of violence. That is the new face of worry and concern.
So, we need to be prepared for the kind of policy changes that will adapt to that new threat. What might that mean? There could be a new type of Patriot Act, some sort of widespread AI-driven surveillance effort that is targeting people specifically based off of the profile that FBI has started to sketch for these violent offenders.
For the people who consume or comment on particularly far-left or far-right leaning content, it's very easy to create an AI agent that's able to consume, monitor, and surveil those people who are actively involved in those communities. Excessive interest in political commentary is something that is consistent between all three of the recent attackers that carried out these violent acts.
There may also be policy changes that allow police officers to reach deeper into our daily lives in an effort to try to identify and prevent these violent offenders before they can be violent.
A Broader Pattern of Violence
In addition to the high-profile violence that we've seen, there's also been a lot of low-profile violence that we're not necessarily aware of because it's not hitting headlines. School shootings are still happening all across the United States. And once again, the trend that we're seeing in the people carrying out these violent acts are young men who are intelligent and Caucasian under the age of 30.
It's a shocking, powerful demographic, a shocking fact and piece of empirical evidence that we all need to consume and take on board because it shows that the threat that we should be afraid of is not coming from the inner city. It's not coming from overseas. It's not coming from disgruntled workers. It's coming from our next door neighbors. It's coming from the most unexpected place. It's coming from middle America. It could be coming from your next door neighbor's house.
Watching for Changes Ahead
The federal government is going to be working its way through new policies for the coming weeks and months. There is a new trend that law enforcement is seeing, and that new trend is something they will be taking very seriously. And as a result, to combat that trend, we should expect to see changes in our everyday life, policy changes that could affect your right to privacy, that will affect your daily commute and your information security, that could reach into your schools, into your businesses, and possibly even into your household.
It's sad and it's unnecessary and it's discouraging to see that more and more violence is happening all over the United States. And it's also very discouraging to see that there is now a correlation between violence and intelligence. If anything, it makes you wonder: What have we done to land in this place? What have we done culturally that we have communicated to our intelligent young men that violence is a viable solution, a viable action, something that may even come with honor or reward?
It's unreal to think how far we've come as a country, where we used to die to defend each other to now the place where we are killing each other to try to send a message. Changes to privacy, changes to policy, changes to policing are worth watching as a result of this dangerous new trend.
