An Update on the Attack on Homeland Security in Idaho

Idaho’s Meridian Police Department announced late Monday that it had made an arrest in relation to the attempted vehicle-borne firebombing of a controversial Department of Homeland Security annex inside a local hospital.

The suspect, 43-year-old Sarah Elizabeth George, was apprehended after several days of investigative work, authorities said. They added that the attack was only limited in its devastation — taking out only the front door of the hospital facility George targeted and the ambulance she hijacked to carry out the attack — because authorities arrived in time to spook her, compelling George to flee the scene before she could ignite the jugs of accelerant she staged at the scene of her attack.

Authorities have not established a motive for the attack, but local media outlets have provided us with a clue.

Via Idaho’s KTVB:

According to the PCA, investigators found a post George made on social media the morning of Feb. 18 depicting an AI-generated video of the White House on fire with the caption, “If it can be destroyed by truth then it should be destroyed; it was built in lies anyways.”

A St. Luke’s representative confirmed that this incident occurred in the same building where the DHS recently leased space.

Some (you know who you are) were frustrated that, in the immediate wake of the attack, I identified the ways in which this attack fits within an established pattern of left-wing political violence in recent years. Speculation in those early hours was irresponsible, they maintained. Surely, it’s better to wait for evidence of motive to emerge before rendering even a tentative verdict on this case.

But now that evidence of motive has emerged, there will be no reflections on this violence, the pattern to which it contributes, or its proximate causes. I doubt anyone will dwell much on this episode again. It’s just one of many similar episodes now — background radiation of which few take much notice.

When I’m asked why a book about left-of-center political violence in America was necessary, it’s often by those who are certain of the fact that the American right is the source of all meaningful political violence in America. It is a conclusion supported by the collective will to forget attacks like these. We’ve been doing a lot of forgetting lately.

In recent weeks alone, a man armed with a shotgun and a gasoline canister charged Mar-a-Lago and was fatally shot. Another young man with a shotgun, tactical vest, and Kevlar helmet attempted to storm the Capitol. A Maryland man fearful of the “fascist takeover” of the United States was arrested outside Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s home in what investigators believe was a plot to kill the Trump administration official. Mobs have stormed the hotels where they believe federal law enforcement took shelter. “No ICE, No KKK, No Fascist USA,” the demonstrators chanted as they beat at the barriers between them and their targets. “Kristi Noem will hang.”

Maybe we’ll get lucky again next time, and Americans in positions of authority can go on pretending that their refusal to confront these increasingly commonplace events is a species of prudence rather than cowardice. But luck doesn’t last forever.