In October, 2018, Cesar Altieri Sayoc Jr. mailed sixteen pipe bombs to prominent critics of Donald Trump. Luckily, none of the bombs contained a trigger mechanism, and no one was injured or killed.

Sayoc’s targets included former President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Representative Maxine Waters, actor Robert De Niro, billionaires George Soros and Tom Steyer, and CNN’s world headquarters.

Suffice it to say, had even a fraction of the bombs detonated, the consequences would have been devastating. Following Sayoc’s arrest, law enforcement discovered a list of 100 targets in his van. According to one of his former co-workers, he was consumed by “pure hatred.”

Yesterday, Sayoc filed a handwritten letter in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the letter, he described his experience at Trump rallies, writing, “the first thing you here (sic) entering Trump rally is we are not going to take it anymore, the forgotten ones, etc. It was fun, it became like a new found drug.”

Apparently, Trump wasn’t the only drug Sayoc was on, as he wrote, “I was using heavy amounts of steroids, 274 different supplement and vitamins … I lost my head, steroids altered my growing anger. I made a bad choice taking them to help … I lost control of myself and mental state from them.”

Sayoc’s defense attorneys are expected to submit reports from two psychiatrists, who will likely claim that he was not fully aware of/in control of his actions as a result of his drug use.

He also wrote last month that “the intention was to only intimidate & scare,” claiming that he intentionally built the devices without trigger mechanisms.

Of course, this defense will likely be shredded by prosectors as little more than a post hoc attempt to diminish the perceived severity of Sayoc’s terror campaign, and abdicate him of responsibility because of his impaired mental health.

In a press release last month, Assistant Attorney General John Demers said, “Our democracy will simply not survive if our political discourse includes sending bombs to those we disagree with. I applaud the efforts of so many in our law enforcement community whose alertness and tirelessness led to the prompt arrest of the defendant before he was able to injure anyone, as well as those whose efforts led to today’s plea.”

Demers is right — this case goes far beyond the mental health of one impotent, steroid-addled, fifty-something man. Shortly after congratulating law enforcement for their work apprehending Sayoc, Trump returned to his usual attacks on the media and Democrats. He then deflected by bringing up the shooting of Republican lawmakers by a Bernie Sanders supporter.

However, when you consider the big picture of modern political violence in the United States — including the Oklahoma City bombing, the Tucson shooting, the Charleston shooting, the Charlottesville car attack, and the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, it’s clear that most attacks have been carried out by right-wing extremists.

According to one study, counties that hosted Trump rallies saw an average 226 percent increase in reported hate crimes.

It’s no coincidence that after electing a self-described nationalist who promised to “make America great again,” we are witnessing a surge in hate crimes and political violence reminiscent of the terror that white Americans openly inflicted on communities of color in decades past.

After all, our nation’s economy was founded on this terror, and continues to depend on it as we over-police communities of color and profit from their incarceration in the form of penal labor, much of which is carried out by descendants of the slaves who built the United States.

Ultimately, cases like Sayoc’s serve as a Rorschach test in our post-truth political climate — either you dismiss him as the exception to the rule, a fringe case blown up by liberals to demonize the President, or you see him as representative of our slide into authoritarianism, state-inspired terrorism, and the disintegration of civil discourse.

Agree or disagree, nobody is likely to concede any ground in such a divisive argument. I will, however, point out that anyone who thinks Sayoc will be the last Trump supporter to attempt mass political violence is almost as deluded as him.

We may have dodged a bullet, or in this case, a series of bombs — but the next time a Trump supporter decides to take matters into their own hands, we might not be so lucky.