I wrote today about how the perpetrators of the latest attacks were united by their socially disconnected existences:

Their crimes are, in their diseased view, feats of grandeur. They make up for the sting of failure and rejection. They give them a chance at perverse consequence and notoriety otherwise not available to them in their marginal lives and social isolation.

Yes, Cesar Sayoc might have been eking out an existence as a homeless strip club DJ, but he might kill or maim, or at least frighten, a titan of international finance. Yes, Robert Bowers might be the man living in a shabby one-bedroom apartment whom no one knew or cared to know, but he would act to save his race from “genocide.” Yes, Nikolas Cruz might be a miserable kid obsessed with video games, but his name will now long live in infamy.

It’s evil and pathetic, infuriating and sad, and, by the looks of it, a persistent feature of 21st-century American life. What Emile Durkheim called anomie has been weaponized, and it’s horrifying to behold.