FMJRA 2.0: Harvey Dent Week

Posted on | February 15, 2026 | No Comments

The Senators went 3-3 this week, sweeping the hapless A’s before going to Minneapolis and getting swept by the division-leading Twins, who we are now trailing by 9.5 games. We’re facing the Daytraders tonight and the Tribe on Friday, so I’m not too optimistic about this week. We’ll see what happens.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

“A Perfectly Good White Boy”
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Better Late Than Never
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Monday: Boots & Bikinis
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 02.10.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.11.26 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

A Heinous Crime and a Mystery Motive
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Office Products
Amazon Essentials
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software

Category: FMJRA Award

The Canadian ‘Gunperson’ and the Syllogism of the Liberal Narrative

Posted on | February 15, 2026 | No Comments

The phrase “deranged transgender teenager” may be somewhat redundant, and especially when you add “Canadian” to the phrase. Is there any such thing as a normal transgender teenager? And isn’t everybody in Canada more or less deranged? Nevertheless, perhaps we can all agree that 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar was not even normal by Canadian standards. Notice my use of the past tense.

Roostselaar (who also has been called Jesse Strang, because that was his mother’s surname) began his Tuesday murder rampage in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, by killing his mother and stepbrother, then went to the nearby elementary school where he killed six people and wounded 27 others before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot. And what’s really important, of course, is not to “misgender” the mass murderer:

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police described the suspected shooter as a “gunperson” in a presser on Tuesday’s attack at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia.
CTV News aired the press conference, during which a reporter asked about a “gunperson” and RCMP North District Commander Chief Superintendent Ken Floyd responded by referencing “the deceased gunperson.” . . .
The BBC noted that an alert went out when the incident was reported that described the alleged shooter as a “female in a dress with brown hair.” During the presser, Floyd confirmed that the shooter was the same individual described in the alert.

Ace of Spades points out that in Canada, mental health professionals are forbidden by law from expressing doubt about a patient’s desire for gender treatment. If a schizophrenic declares himself to be “a woman trapped in a male body,” a psychiatrist must “affirm” the patient’s gender identity, without regard for how otherwise crazy the patient may be.

Jesse Van Rootselaar

Weird how he looks like every glam-metal guitarist from the 1980s, but Jesse Van Rootselaar apparently didn’t spend his time in the garage with a Gibson Les Paul plugged into a Marshall stack, the way long-haired teenage boys used to do. Instead he was plotting mayhem:

The teenager who murdered his mother and step-brother in a mass shooting in a Canadian town had tried to kill his family before, a neighbour revealed. . . .
Melanie, who lives several houses down from the home Van Rootselaar shared with his mother and four younger siblings, said he had previously deliberately set fire to the house in 2023.
She told The Telegraph: “A couple of years back, he lit their house on fire because he was trying to kill his own family… it almost completely burnt down.
“He was just sitting out in the front when the fire trucks arrived.”
Melanie, who only provided her first name, described how “everyone on the street saw the blaze”, which she said destroyed most of the inside of the wooden plank home.
However, the incident was later “dismissed” by police, she added. Authorities have not confirmed the incident.
The troubled teenager had a history of mental health issues and was struggling to transition to a female. Police had made numerous call-outs to their home over the last several years, related to mental health and firearms incidents.
Van Rootselaar had mentioned the arson attack in a social media post seen by The Telegraph, saying he did it under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms.
The gunman, who discussed using illegal hallucinogens several times online, wrote on Oct 28 2023: “I went crazy and burnt my house down the second time trying shrooms, but still have the desire to try alternatives.”
He said he had a “complete break from reality and did a lot of irrational things, I felt like I was dreaming. Many consequences ensued.”

Why are we expected to have sympathy for this weirdo? Why did Canadian authorities and most of the news media feel the need to avoid “misgendering” a mass murderer? It has to do with how the liberal belief system is organized around sympathy for Victim Groups.

Every time I use the word “liberal” to describe the ideology of the Left — the motivating belief system of the Democratic Party — some pedant is sure to pop into the comments lecturing me about classical liberalism, as if he’s a college professor and I’m an ignorant sophomore who signed up for his Political Science class. The pedantic comments always annoy me, with the insulting implication that I don’t already know this distinction. And then you have another bunch of know-it-alls who want to make distinctions between liberal Democrats of the old-fashioned Walter Mondale variety and those left-wingers (e.g., AOC) who nowadays call themselves “progressives.” These fine points of nomenclature, however interesting they may be, are not relevant to the phenomena at issue.

Have you ever read Up From Liberalism by William F. Buckley Jr.? If not, you should order a copy immediately. It was published in 1959, the year I was born, but is still very valuable as a study of rhetorical methodology. Buckley was a fine writer who knew how to construct an argument. On page 4 of Up From Liberalism, Buckley remarks:

I detect a little discomfort, here and there, when the word “Liberal” is bandied about. Many people are not satisfied to be unique in the eyes of God, and spend considerable time in flight from any orthodoxy.

He solves the problem by reference to Eleanor Roosevelt:

Because Liberalism has no definitive manifesto, one cannot say, prepared to back up the statement with unimpeachable authority, that such-and-such a man or measure is “Liberal.” But one can say that Mrs. Roosevelt is a Liberal, and do so confident that none will contradict him.

For you kids out there, it is perhaps necessary to explain that, after FDR’s death, his widow continued to be politically active. Her syndicated column was published in newspapers until her death in 1962, for example. Buckley’s point was, if Eleanor Roosevelt was not a liberal, nobody was a liberal, and the category “liberal” could thus be given actual meaning. Buckley went on to name other individuals and institutions (e.g., Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Edward R. Murrow, the Washington Post) as examples belonging to the category “liberal.” It is not necessary for me to repeat Buckley’s exercise with updated examples in order to demonstrate the continued existence of the category “liberal,” although I might cite Hillary Clinton, Mika Brzezinski, and others as such.

Having disposed of that chore — to preempt you damned pedants from lecturing me about liberalism, as though I were a schoolboy in need of your tutelage — now I will proceed to the main task of explaining the underlying psychological mechanism of liberal belief. Here I make no claim to real originality. Anyone can grab a copy of Thomas Sowell’s 1995 classic The Vision of the Anointed and see how he shows that the Anointed worldview involves dealing with “mascots” (groups for whom the Anointed pose as advocates, e.g., the homeless) and “targets” (the villains in this political melodrama, e.g., the U.S. military).

There is a syllogism hidden behind all liberal rhetoric:

A. Group X are victims of wrongful oppression;
B. Democrats want to help Group X;
therefore
C. VOTE DEMOCRAT!

It really is as simple as that. It is as true now, as much as it was the year I was born (when Buckley was examining the phenomenon of liberalism), that there is a symbiotic relationship between liberal beliefs and electoral propaganda of the Democratic Party, so much so that a chicken-and-the-egg question of causality arises: Are Democrats advocating a particular policy because a significant element of their constituency demands it, or have these constituents been persuaded to support this policy because prominent Democrats have told them it will help them win elections?

Leaving aside such questions, the point is that liberal beliefs are a matter of categorical sympathy — certain groups of people are classified as victims of social injustice, and are therefore deserving of sympathy merely because of their membership in the category. In the beginning (if I may plagiarize the Book of Genesis), liberals professed concern for the plight of “the poor,” who were said to be victimized by “the rich.” Sometimes this was expressed as a conflict between “workers” and “industry,” but however it was described, the rich/poor dynamic was liberalism’s original version of categorical sympathy.

After World War II, however, liberalism began to de-emphasize this economic warfare rationale for two reasons: First, postwar prosperity made the middle class a far more important constituency than “the poor,” and second, the Cold War cast a shadow of suspicion on anyone who spoke of “workers” as possibly being a Communist sympathizer.

Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency represented the pinnacle of 20th-century middle-class politics. Ike was neither an ideologue nor much of a partisan, and conservatives like Buckley grew dissatisfied with the moderate bipartisanship of Eisenhower-era Republicanism. Liberals, meanwhile, were grasping for something — anything — to replace the political leverage they’d lost with the decline of the rich-vs.-poor rationale that won the Democratic Party landslide majorities in the New Deal era.

You can never understand liberalism if you do not view it in the context of partisan politics. It is true that there were, and to some extent still are, conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, but at least since 1964 — when Barry Goldwater presented the electorate with what Ronald Reagan called “A Time for Choosing” — political controversy in America has been largely a matter of liberal Democrats vs. conservative Republicans. It is foolish to pretend that ideology (a belief system or worldview) transcends partisanship (electoral politics).

Civil rights (blacks oppressed by whites) became the crusading issue for liberals in the 1960s, with feminism (women oppressed by men) subsequently ascending to an equal prominence in the pyramid of priorities defining categorical sympathy. Adding these two vectors to the liberal Democratic worldview, you come up with this basic formula:

VICTIMS vs. OPPRESSORS
Poor vs. Rich
Black vs. White
Women vs. Men

The ultimate victim was a poor black woman and the ultimate oppressor was a rich white man. It is nevertheless remarkable that a lot of the most prominent Democrats promoting this worldview were rich white men like Ted Kennedy and Al Gore. In the 1980s, the AIDS crisis boosted gay rights as a priority for Democrats, so that a new categorical sympathy vector of gay-vs.-straight was added to the pyramid of oppression, and more recently, transgenderism has become a another priority.

It is important to emphasize that the political priorities of liberalism make the requirement of sympathy categorical — all black people are entitled to sympathy, simply by their group membership, without regard to their individual behavior or other factors. No matter how rich a black person may be (e.g., NBA stars), they must be regarded as sympathetic victims of racial oppression, and never mind how this may conflict with the original rich/poor dynamic of liberal belief. For similar reasons, although white males are automatically regarded as villains in the liberal worldview, one may not criticize Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and therefore entitled to categorical sympathy by his membership in a victim group.

The term “intersectionality” was coined by black feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to reconcile such apparent contradictions in liberal beliefs, arguing for a sort of “Popular Front” strategy against the dual menace of racism (white supremacy) and sexism (patriarchy). Then in 1990 Judith Butler published Gender Trouble, the founding document of postmodern “queer theory,” which had the effect of adding transgenderism to the intersectionality formula:

VICTIMS vs. OPPRESSORS
Poor vs. Rich
Black vs. White
Women vs. Men
Gay vs. Straight
Trans vs. Cis

Ru Paul is now the ultimate victim, except for the fact that Ru Paul is very rich, so that a poor black cross-dresser must be considered as sitting at the apex of those entitled to categorical sympathy. Like all other dynamics in the liberal worldview, their advocacy on behalf of transgenderism comes with a set of rules — a protocol of victimhood etiquette, as it were — including for example taboos against “misgendering” or “dead-naming” any member of the category.

Here, at last, we arrive at the explanation for why officials and media were so careful in discussing the “gunperson” Jesse Van Rootselaar. Even though Canada does not have the same Democrat/Repubican partisan divide that shapes liberalism in the United States, one finds that throughout the English-speaking world — including the U.K., Australia, etc. — a similar symbiotic relationship between ideology and partisanship prevails, liberalism having become one of America’s major exports.

Categorical sympathy means that those considered to be members of victim groups are to be regarded as saintly heroes, no matter what they do, and that is why everybody is required to tiptoe lightly around the issue of Jesse Van Rootselaar’s transgenderism, lest we somehow stigmatize the mass murderer of innocent schoolchildren.

What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?

— Norm Macdonald (@normmacdonald) December 16, 2016

Category: Canada, Crime, Liberals, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 14, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Drunk catgirls on Roombas. This is the way.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day They Killed JFK (1963), also, Ring, Nest, & The Invisible Surveillance State
357 Magnum: How Do You Run a City Without a Tax Base? also You didn’t think Windows 11 could actually get more annoying
EBL: Kathryn Ruemller, Clinton and Obama Attorney and Epstein Pal, Out At Goldman, Great Lake Invaders, Flatfish Friday, Cool Papa Bell, and Japan’s Empty Island
Twitchy: One Simple Graph Shows How Democrats Tried To Destroy America With Illegal Immigration, Gov. Hairgel Promises Climate Deniers Will Face A Religious Reckoning, and Administration To Investigate School Over Charges That Troon Assaulted Girl During Wrestling Match
Louder With Crowder: They let Occasional Cortex speak in Munich, where she tosses a word salad on “authoritarianism” that only makes sense to her, “Raging Grannies” perform their latest CRINGE anti-ICE anthem instead of spending time with their grandkids, Creepy guy hoping to replace Nancy Pelosi drops video where he hangs out with children protesting ICE, and Democrat senator demands you show your ID to attend rally…where he tells you Blacks and women don’t know how to get an ID
Vox Popoli: The Waking of the Palantír, McCarthy and the Molecular Clock, Happy Darwin Day, and The Epstein Inquisition
According To Hoyt: Coming Home to You, The Writer In A State, You Pay The Price, Blast From The Past: We Don’t Make Ourselves, and Risk and Opportunity
The Bugscuffle Gazette: All right
Gab: Why AI Can’t Save Us

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Don’t Trade Away America for Some Soybeans, Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster, The Promise and Perils of Korean Reunification, Europe, South Korea, and Brazil Attack U.S. Tech Over Free Speech, and Starmer Survives a Palace Coup, But for How Long?
American Greatness: Feds Have Reportedly Charged 158 Anti-ICE Agitators With Federal Crimes in Minnesota; More Expected, Rep. LaMonica McIver Asks ICE Director If He Thinks He’s ‘Going to Hell’ During House Hearing, Trans Maniac Kills 8, Injures 25 in Mass School Shooting in British Columbia, Former Obama White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler Resigns From Goldman Sachs Amid Epstein Fallout, and SBA Uncovers Massive Fraud in California: 111,620 Borrowers Linked to $8.6 BILLION in Pandemic Fraud
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 74 – Visiting Moose
Baldilocks: Great Black Patriots Of The U.S. Congress – Revisited
BattleSwarm: Jeffrey Epstein Revelations Update, No More Illegal Alien Buyers For Colony Ridge, California’s Wealth Streams For The Exits, Uncle Sam Assembles Big Stick For Iran, and LinkSwarm For February 13
Behind The Black: FAA confirms “no significant impact” to environment for Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica, SpaceX launches new crew to ISS, Axiom raises another $350 million in private investment capital, Vast wins sixth ISS slot for tourist mission, and NASA testing SLS fuel leak repairs; UPDATE: Problems!
Cafe Hayek: On Job Growth in 2025 – Even Worse, Compared to 2017, Than Earlier Reported, More on Jobs Growing More Slowly in 2025 than in 2017, Katherine Mangu-Ward Is Right, and Comparing U.S. Economic Performance in 2025 to that of 2017
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: In Washington Post Delendum, Worthwhile Reading, and Rabbit Season (UPDATED)
Da Tech Guy: Under the Fedora: Somebody is Listening
Don Surber: The stupidity of environmentalism
First Street Journal: A half-hearted defense of Jeff Bezos, Will Bunch and due process of law, Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen, and Now you know why I call it Journolism!
Gates Of Vienna: Knife Attack Thwarted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Culture-Enriching Dismemberment in Belgium, Those Railroad Blues, Monarchy, and What Do They Know?
The Geller Report: Thirty Years, $10 Trillion—and Absolutely Zero Impact on the Climate, FIERCE: AG Bondi SLAYS Democrats at Congressional Hearing, VIRGINIA: Loudoun County Trains Staff to Fight ‘Terrorist’ Parents, Female Muslim TV Host: “Allah Allows Muslim Men to Rape Non-Muslim Women to Humiliate Them.”, and Major Trump Win: Mandatory Detention, No-Bond For Illegals
Glenn Reynolds: The Coming Revolution Down South
Hollywood In Toto: Charlie’s Angels to Rise from the Woke Ashes, Shock: Three Major Stars Refuse to Get Political, Bill Maher Says Jimmy Kimmel Ended Our Friendship Over Politics, One Battle After Another’s Price Tag Just Got Even Higher, and This Wuthering Heights Will Drive Purists Mad
Legal Insurrection: Alleged NYC Antisemitic Stabbing Suspect Out on Bail as Incidents Rise 182% Under Mamdani, USDA Deploys Sterilized Flies, High?Tech Arsenal to Guard the Border Against Screwworm Threat, State Dept. Links ‘Code Pink’ and Other Far-Left Groups to the Chinese Communist Party, January 2026 Inflation Eases a Bit to 2.4%, and In the End, it is Trump Who Has Done More Than Anyone to Bring Down Epstein
Nebraska Energy Observer: Christ Come to Cleanse the Temple, The Midweek Report, Remembering the Great Emancipator, The Ghost of England’s Past, continued, and The Guthrie Kidnapping
Outkick: EXCLUSIVE: Dept. Of Ed. Opens Investigation Into Alleged Sexual Assault By Trans Wrestler During HS Match, Whiskey Sales, NIL, Tennessee Fans: Joey Aguilar’s Fight Against NCAA Had It All, With Vols Arguing In Court, ‘Quad God’ Ilia Malinin Falls Twice, Finishes Eighth After Shocking Performance, Olympic Curling Chaos As Sweden Accuses Team Canada Of Cheating During Heated On Ice Confrontation, and Nancy Mace Shoots Up The ‘Hot Congresswoman’ Chart In A Tiny Top, Daytona 500 Cheerleaders & Libs Vs. A Grill!
Power Line: The Law, With Entertainment Value, Obama White House Counsel ?? Jeffrey Epstein [Updated], Unhouse me here, Remembering Mr. Lincoln, and What’s Wrong With White Women?
Racket News: A Play-By-Play of Jeffery Epstein’s Staggering Financial Illiteracy
Shark Tank: Byron Donalds Says He’ll Visit Israel As Governor, Outlines Existential Threat Of Sharia Law
Shot In The Dark: Where There’s Smoke, The Security B-Movie, and Squirrel
STUMP: Political Mortality – Rahm Emanuel Says There Should Be A Mandatory Retirement Age of 75 For Key Federal Roles
The Political Hat: The Post-American Arsonists, Quick Takes – Speed Bumps Against Euthanasia, and Firing Line Friday: Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders
This Ain’t Hell: Wealthy Californians eying move to Las Vegas as a means to reduce their tax burden, Virginia Democrats are pushing a redistricting bid to increase the numbers of House Democrats in Congress, Valor Friday, Gotta be careful, and Fly the Friendly Skies of El Paso
Transterrestrial Musings: Trump/Epstein, Iran Thoughts, and Elon’s Mars To Moon Pivot
Victory Girls: Tampon Timmy Has a Tantrum, Come On, Eileen Gu, You’re Not American Any More, and SAVE America Act Passes House, Can It Pass The Senate?
Watts Up With That: The Super Bowl Without EVs Tells You Everything, New York Times Gives Wind Turbines a Free Pass to Slaughter Birds, Harvard Divinity School and the New Climate Inquisition, New York Climate Act Issues, and Macron says Spain’s mega-blackout was due to the country’s reliance on renewable energy
The Federalist: Don’t Wait Until Valentine’s Day To Romance Your Spouse , Virginia High Court Greenlights Democrat Effort To Give Millions Of Republicans A Single Seat In Congress, While Jimmy Lai Sits In Prison, Eileen Gu Takes The CCP’s Millions, The Nixon Library Is Wrong About Nixon And The Deep State, and Mamdani Demands U.S. Immigration Policy Start Obeying Islam
Mark Steyn: Groovy and Gone, Bob Fosse Uncut in My Sister Eileen, If You Were the Only Girl in the World, Gross for Grapes, and Live Around The Planet – The Mounties Always Get Their Person

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Tools & Home Improvement
New Releases – Tools & Home Improvement
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software

Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | February 13, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The 2026 Spring Based Books Sale is underway!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day Mount Vesuvius Erupted (79), also, How The West’s Censorship Infrastructure Was Built
357 Magnum: More Improvised Weapons, also Florida Is a Bad Place for Bad Guys
EBL: The Scream, The Women of the Rockford Files, Pink Porgy, Ponies, and Trees Taking Over The Great Plains
Twitchy: U.S. Oil & Gas Association Realizes Democrats Use Them As Props but Demonize Them Otherwise, Meteorologist Takes Al Gore’s Freakout Apart, and Watch As Keith Ellison Realizes He Just Told The Truth About Democrats & Illegals And Can’t Spin It
Louder With Crowder: Illinois Town Starts Handing Out $25,000 To 44 Black People As A Form Of Reparations, ICE arrests migrant charged with 50 pounds of meth, check the DISHONEST way legacy media is covering it, Rand Paul blasts Katie Couric for minimizing arrests of violent illegals, attempts to explain it slowly to her, Scott Jennings causes CNN meltdown when no one would answer his one-word question about them opposing voter ID, and Jasmine Crockett spews more hate, claims even white democrats are probably racist “behind closed doors”
Vox Popoli: Recalibrating Man, Not Necessarily Self-Inflicted, The Black Spies of Dunland, The Corpocrats Complain, and Book Review: The Frozen Gene
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: The End of 2Tier Keir
Cedar Sanderson: Akbar’s Bridge
Weird Catholic: The Wood of the Cross
Gab: The Patronage Problem,
Stoic Observations: We Are Spirits In The Material World
Jim McCoy: Let’s Fix ‘Em
The Abbey of Misrule: Writers Against AI
Ammo.com: How Many Guns In The U.S.?
Upstream Reviews: Reviews From The Spring Based Book Sale

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: All Euro-NATO Reporting Is Suspect Until Further Notice, also, Well You Could Have Had A Deployment Like Truxtun
Dana Loesch: Catholic League Removes Wannabe Influencer From White House Religious Commission, also, It’s An Epidemic – Canadian Troon Killer Targets School
Don Surber: Macron v. Trumpzilla, also, Transgendering into a killer
Racket News: Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Bondi, Brits Spied On Racket & Other Journalists, Activism Uncensored – A Return To Minneapolis, and FBI Gathered Intel On Thousands of Journalists, Politicians & Religious Organizations On Flimsy Grounds

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Snacks & Sweets
Survival Foods
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software

Category: Linkagery

A Heinous Crime and a Mystery Motive

Posted on | February 13, 2026 | No Comments

This is Nafiah Ikram or, rather, I should say this was Nafiah Ikram.

Not that she’s dead, but she doesn’t look like that any more. On the evening of March 17, Nafiah was 21 years old and had just gotten home from working a shift at CVS as a pharmacy technician. She was helping her mother bring some items in from the car when a man ran out of the bushes near a neighbor’s house, and threw a cup of sulfuric acid onto Nafiah’s face. Take my word for it, her injuries were horrific.

For nearly five years, Nafiah’s attacker escaped justice. The mystery was why anyone would want to harm Nafiah, who was attending Hofstra University part-time while working full-time at CVS. She had no known enemies, and yet, as her father told reporters, it was not a random attack:

Her father, Sheikh Ikram, 50, said Nafiah was targeted on her way home from work.
“No it’s not a random attack, it’s a planned attack,” Ikram told The Post Wednesday night.
“If it was a random attack, why did … they waited for her to come home,” Ikram said, adding the suspect could have attacked his wife, who was outside moments earlier.

This week, police arrested a Brooklyn man, Terrell Campbell:

A flower deliveryman who allegedly threw acid on a woman and then wrote a song about it has been indicted five years later.
Terrell Campbell, 29, of Brooklyn, was indicted on Tuesday on first-degree assault charges for allegedly throwing acid on Nafiah Ikram while she was walking up her driveway in Elmont on Long Island in March 2021, leaving her with significant burns.
Campbell allegedly used sulfuric acid — a highly corrosive mineral acid found in lead-acid batteries — in the attack.
Surveillance video allegedly caught him running up on Ikram, throwing the acid and then running off.
After the attack, Campbell, an aspiring rapper, posted a song called Obsidian to YouTube under his rap name YungBasedPrince in 2023.
‘I’m discreet in the night, like a hitman assassin,’ he rapped. ‘Try to run up and have your face burning, acid.’
Nassau County prosecutors ridiculed his song in a statement, saying he ‘brazenly used the attack as material to further his rap career, publishing a video with lyrics that neatly fit the narrative of the crime.’
‘Terrell Campbell thought he was home free, but he could not have been more wrong,’ DA Anne T. Donnelly said in a statement. . . .
The red Nissan seen in the surveillance was a key piece of evidence, as community members told investigators he regularly drove the car under a family member’s name, as he had multiple violations on his license.
Cell phone evidence also showed he had searched ‘sulfuric acid remover,’ ‘sulfuric acid on car seat,’ and ‘can you recover from sulfuric acid burn.’
He also searched: ‘Acid attack Franklin Square Long Island,’ prosecutors said.
Campbell was arrested on February 9 by the Nassau County Police Department.
Campbell has pleaded not guilty to his charges. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
He is expected back in court on February 18.

Terrell Campbell

Perhaps you understand why I didn’t use my customary “Aspiring Rapper Update” headline, considering the grievousness of this crime.

Police and prosecutors have said nothing about Campbell’s motive. Maybe they have evidence or testimony they’re not sharing with the public, but why would this guy from Brooklyn commit such a heinous act against a complete stranger in Long Island, about 10 miles away?

My hunch is that the crucial clue is in that search that Campbell did for “Acid attack Franklin Square Long Island.” Why would he choose “Franklin Square” as the search term? Nafiah was attacked at her family’s home on Arlington Avenue in Elmont, about three-quarters of a mile away from Franklin Square. Well, there’s a CVS store at Franklin Square, and if Campbell had chosen Nafiah as his target after seeing her working at the Franklin Square CVS, he would have associated her with that location. We don’t know that to be the case, but it is a reasonable surmise, based on what we do know. To speculate further, it would seem that Campbell had been stalking Nafiah for some time prior to the attack, as he knew where she lived and was waiting to ambush her when she arrived home from work. But that still doesn’t give us the motive.

Here’s a scenario: For whatever reason, Campbell travels to Long Island and, during his visit stops into this CVS store where he sees Nafiah. Let’s just suppose he’s at the CVS to pick up a prescription, and Nafiah is working the register. Campbell tries to strike up a friendly conversation, but Nafiah doesn’t seem interested. Campbell gets his feelings hurts, becomes obsessed, and plots revenge against Nafiah.

That’s just a speculative scenario, among many possible explanations. So far we have no suggestion of Campbell’s motive — alleged motive, I hasten to add, since he has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, etc. But the heinousness of this crime heightens the mystery of what could have motivated it. Human nature is such that we suppose an extraordinary crime must have an extraordinary motive, which is why so many wild theories still surround the JFK assassination. Surely, many people think, it cannot be that a pathetic misfit like Lee Harvey Oswald could have single-handedly accomplished the murder of the President of the United States. And in the attack against Nafiah Ikram, similarly, we can’t imagine that this beautiful young woman could be so horribly disfigured because an “aspiring rapper” from Brooklyn randomly chose her as his target so that he could write a rap lyric about his crime.

It’s crazy, but you know what they say about crazy people.