The Branch Davidians were founded in 1955, an offshoot of an offshoot of Seventh-day Adventists, with a Texas home named after Mount Carmel, which in Israel overlooks the plain known as Armageddon. Thirty years ago this month, America was collectively nearing the horrific April 19 end of the 51-day siege of the compound near Waco, Tex.

This was the first domestic event since CNN’s creation in 1980 to mesmerize the nation with saturation coverage by cable television. Waco attracted thousands of gawkers, who attracted vendors hawking T-shirts and such. Five dollars could purchase a “Fear the Government that Fears Your Gun” bumper sticker sold by a 24-year-old Gulf War veteran, Timothy McVeigh. Exactly — intentionally — two years after April 19, 1993, his truck bomb murdered 168 people, including 19 children, and injured more than 800 others at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

As Kevin Cook writes in “Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias,” Waco was a precursor that had a precursor — the 11-day standoff in 1992 at Ruby Ridge in northern Idaho. There, federal agents and U.S. marshals (one of whom was killed) attempted to serve a warrant on the white separatist Randy Weaver for selling sawed-off shotguns to a neo-Nazi who was a government informant. Weaver’s son and wife died in the gunfire.

David Koresh, a high-school dropout, was born as Vernon Howell to a 14-year-old mother. He had “wives” as young as 12 at Mount Carmel. Federal agents could have served their warrant (for gun violations) when Koresh went jogging or shopping. Instead, the siege began when 76 heavily armed agents rushed the Davidians’ building while National Guard helicopters hovered. Four agents died.

The siege included agents bombarding the compound around-the-clock with ear-shattering noises, according to Cook: “acid rock, bawling babies, bagpipes, sirens, dentists’ drills, the squeals of animals being slaughtered.” As the siege continued, Koresh appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek. He would not negotiate as he toiled to decipher the seven seals in the Book of Revelation.

The siege ended in a conflagration — its origin is still disputed — with modified tanks punching holes in walls, through which tear gas was inserted. Seventy-six Davidians died, including more than 20 children. Cook says “no domestic government action had led to so many American deaths since U.S. Cavalry troops killed more than two hundred Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890.”

Government agencies made many mistakes in allowing the siege to begin — and in the conduct of it. But the primary blame for this tragedy belongs to Koresh, whose fanaticism probably was as sincere as his lunacy (leavened by calculation, opportunism and cynicism) was real. He died that day, probably by suicide. His followers — not including the children — were culpable for following him: Sincerity does not excuse gullibility.

There is never a shortage of people eager to libel the United States as a nation defined by a unique susceptibility to recurring lunacies. Such people should acquaint themselves with human history, including the mass fanaticisms of the previous century, and this one. And with the meager resonance of most made-in-America manias. Most, but not all.

In 1859, a fanatic (friends and family attested that his maternal grandmother, his mother, and one of his sons died insane; three aunts, two uncles, and another son were intermittently insane) accelerated the coming of the Civil War. John Brown, abolitionist and insurrectionist, said his 1856 butchery, with broadswords, of five Kansans (none a slaveholder; two born in Germany) had been “decreed by Almighty God, ordained from Eternity.” In 1859, Brown and a small ragtag band of followers, some armed with pikes, attacked the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. When Brown was hanged — John Wilkes Booth traveled to Charles Town, Va., to witness this — Ralph Waldo Emerson declared him a “saint,” Henry David Thoreau rejoiced “that I was his contemporary,” and from New England to Chicago church bells tolled communities’ admiration.

Our generally temperate nation, although it is an unparalleled success, has a history flecked with end-of-times manias, which often are fueled by religious imagery.

The 45th president, who aspires to be the 47th, recently said at a Waco rally that the 2024 election will be the “final battle.” Some people — how many is unclear — really believe this. The Bible, which many of those people also believe in, says the climactic conflict between good and evil will occur not in America but at Armageddon.