BURNING MAN:...He Blamed Politicians For Much Of What Ails America...Conspiracies All Over The Place...Max Azzarello Decided To Flame-Out In A Park Near Courthouse Where Trump Is On Trial...

 

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...Opening statements hit the floor this morning in the Hush Money Trial of one Donald J. Trump, although, well, there are a few other events that could also fall into that category. Opening statement. Now, there's a cool phrase. It portends so much.

Was news of Trump's indictments also an opening statement, of sorts? His arraignment and mugshot in the Georgia case? That beatdown by the New York Appeals Court on Trump's wild claim of absolute immunity? Or maybe the real one will come after Thursday's gathering of the U.S. Supreme Court at which that "immunity" thing will be resolved once and for all?

Or maybe it was that bizarre (maybe not so bizarre) self-immolation last Friday by that 37-year-old Florida man at a New York City park near the courthouse where Trump is on trial. See photo above.

For dramatic effect, the sight of a dude setting himself on fire has to be up there as an opening statement, to perhaps the entire grass-whorled country being on trial. 

From NYmag.com: [ The man who set himself on fire across the street from the Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump is on trial has died. Max Azzarello, 37, was pronounced dead at a city hospital early Saturday, according to police. The act of self-immolation was not directly related to the trial: He wrote in paranoid manifesto that he took his own life to bring attention to a set of conspiratorial beliefs.

Azzarello’s life began to unravel after the death of his mother.

According to the New York Times, people who know Azzarello say he seemed to have succumbed to paranoid thoughts in recent years, particularly after losing his mother to an illness in 2022:

A closer look at the path the man had traveled to this moment of self-destruction revealed a recent spiral into volatility, one marked by a worldview that had become increasingly confusing and disjointed - and appeared to be unattached to any political party. His social media postings and arrest records suggest the immolation stemmed instead from a place of conspiracy theories and paranoia.

At the park on Thursday, Azzarello had held up various signs and at one point shouted toward a group of reporters gathered there: "Biggest scoop of your life or your money back!" One of his signs claimed that Trump and President Biden were "about to fascist coup us."

In a rambling street interview that day, he said his critical views of the American government were shaped by his research into Peter Thiel, the technology billionaire and political provocateur who is a major campaign donor, and into cryptocurrency.

"Donald Trump’s in on it," Azzarello said on Thursday. "It’s a secret kleptocracy, and it can only lead to an apocalyptic fascist coup."

Some of the pamphlets Azzarello threw in the air before setting himself ablaze on Friday referred to New York University as a "mob front" and also mentioned former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore and the lawyer David Boies, who represented Mr. Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount. Another of his pamphlets contained anti-government conspiracy theories, though they did not point in a discernible political direction.

NYPD said Azzarello entered the small park at 100 Centre Street surrounded by police barricades at 1:30 p.m. He was then observed rustling through a backpack, grabbing several pamphlets, and scattering them throughout the park. Then he reached for a canister containing some form of alcohol-based accelerant, poured it over himself, and lit himself on fire. ]

Opening statements?

Perhaps the entire country is on trial this week. This man opted to torch himself in as painful a death as there is. So public. So dramatic. So stinky and final.

Maybe that's where we're at as a nation these days...Something tells me there is no sadness for the death of Democracy, either...

-30-