He stormed into a Michigan church with a rifle, gasoline, and a vendetta, leaving behind ash, blood, and heartbreak. We’re not printing his name. He doesn’t deserve the echo. He’ll be Shitbag — a fitting title for someone who turned his own bitterness into carnage.
WHO HE WAS
Shitbag was a 40-year-old Marine veteran. Once upon a time, he lived in Utah, where he fell for a Mormon woman. When that relationship ended, he didn’t walk away. He stewed. Friends told reporters he became fixated on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, convinced its followers were “the antichrist.” Years of resentment hardened into a paranoid obsession. By late September, he was ramming his pickup into church doors, spraying bullets at worshippers, and torching the sanctuary with gasoline. Four people were killed before police cut him down.
THE SHIRT
There’s an old photo of him — camo tee stretched across his frame, bold letters screaming:
“TRUMP 2020 – MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN.”
It wasn’t just merch. It was an ethos. In a world where empathy is mocked as weakness, cruelty becomes a sport. The shirt says: the suffering of others is not collateral damage, it’s the point. That slogan is the distilled poison of culture-war politics: your tears are my trophy.
WHY IT FIT HIM
For Shitbag, it wasn’t enough to hate Mormons. He marinated in a broader stew of grievance, wearing his politics like armor. Making “liberals cry” meant he could feel powerful without fixing the wreckage of his own life. It was a shortcut to identity, a way to belong to something bigger and angrier than himself. He didn’t build, didn’t heal, didn’t reconcile. He lashed out, aligning himself with a politics that promises nothing but the thrill of cruelty.
THE REAL COST
Shitbag is gone. His victims are not nameless, and their families now carry a lifetime of grief. A church burned. A community torn apart. A governor mourning yet another mass shooting in a state drowning in gun violence.
The shirt photo lingers because it shows how ordinary objects — a camo tee, a bumper sticker, a yard sign — can broadcast the politics of spite. Shitbag didn’t invent that slogan. He just wore it like a uniform, and then acted out its logic: making other people cry. Not liberals this time. Mormons at prayer. Families in pews. Children hiding from gunfire.
WHY IT MATTERS
The shirt matters because it strips away excuses. Shitbag wasn’t acting in a vacuum. He was swimming in a culture that tells men like him their pain is someone else’s fault, and their joy comes from someone else’s tears. He believed it. He lived it. He died with it on his chest — not because he was powerful, but because cruelty was all he had left to cling to.
Four lives stolen in Michigan. A house of worship burned. A community grieving. We don’t give the shooter the dignity of a name. But we do confront the ideology he embraced — a politics of cruelty disguised as strength. If you believe in journalism that resists hate and speaks truth without compromise, subscribe now and stand with us.
powerfully written piece! very tragic event and sadly, so common. the genesis of the hate and how you have described, makes it likely we will see this again
And what kind of society have we become that there are so many like him?