But the Waffle House killings managed to tap more deeply into the national zeitgeist than those other cases. There were loud overtones of race — it was hard not to notice that the customers and staff targeted by the white male gunman were all black or Hispanic — and politics, with reports that the killer (we don't use their names here at Attytood) considered himself a "sovereign citizen" not bound by U.S. law and that he'd tried to barge into the White House to discuss those things with President Trump, instead getting himself arrested.