The New Orleans killer was an all-American loser Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s story is all-too familiar (Alexander Nazaryan, January 4, 2025, UnHerd)
He was Texan-born and -raised, an Army veteran who spoke with an East Texas drawl, forced to shack up at a trailer park after his career and love life went sideways. In short, he was as American as gas-station apple pie, loaded with carcinogens and carbohydrates, wrapped in a plastic sleeve that will be floating shortly in a waterway near you.
America put Jabbar together, America took him apart.
Domestic terrorism is frightening precisely because it incubates within the body politic. If a terrorist is a foreigner, it can be said that he failed to appreciate the resplendent magnitude of America’s promise. He had never donned a beer helmet. He didn’t understand the glories of Must-See TV. Or else he understood it all too well, swelling with murderous resentment. But the domestic terrorist is an autoimmune disease, assailing the very system that nurtures him. Jabbar hardly spent the last several months training at some terror camp in the Hindu Kush; until recently, he had worked at consulting firms such as Deloitte, where, according to The Wall Street Journal, “he was paid the equivalent of nearly $125,000 a year.” This guy’s network was LinkedIn, not Al Qaeda.