Christ on a bike:
Donald Trump appeared to be the target of an assassination attempt as he spoke during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, two law enforcement officials said. The former president, his ear covered in blood from what he said was a gunshot, was quickly pulled away by Secret Service agents and his campaign said he was “fine.”
A local prosecutor said the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead. The Secret Service said two spectators were critically injured.
Posting on his Truth Social media site about two and a half hours after the shooting, Trump said a bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said in the post. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”
The attack, by a shooter who law enforcement officials say was then killed by the Secret Service, was the first attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It comes amid a deeply polarized political atmosphere, just four months from the presidential elections and days before Trump is to be officially named the Republican nominee at his party’s convention... (via Jill Colvin, Julie Carr Smyth, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Michelle L. Price at AP News)
This is all happening in the moment and it's always too early to speculate even though a number of Far Right agitators on social media are already accusing Biden and "the violent Left" of being behind this shooting.
If there's anything I agree with on social media right now, it's THIS sentiment:
Mom can you come pick me up history is happening and I’m scared
— samuel catlin (@lint_ax) July 13, 2024
Seriously, America. Make this goddamn partisan madness stop.
For all my hatred aimed at donald Shitgibbon trump, the most I want to see done is him facing justice in a jail cell for all the crimes - the tax fraud, business fraud, and sexual assault - he's committed (and the ones he's allegedly done that he still needs to face in trial). Killing trump doesn't solve the reality that a willing and angry MAGA voter base will remain - and become even more angry and violent - and will be eager to turn trump into a martyr. Violence aimed at a group doesn't make that faction change their tone or their minds: It tends to radicalize them further, feeding into a cycle of violence aimed at the ones they blame.
Any form of political violence - street riot, bombing, targeted assassination - becomes self-defeating. I just wrote about what happened at Kent State: because the ROTC building had been fire-bombed, a lot of Americans in the middle class across the political spectrum actually felt the protestors were to blame and deserved to get shot by a panicked National Guard. Violence begets - and excuses - the reactionary violence that follows.
The idea that a Propaganda of the Deed would rally a silent hidden faithful into a mass movement justifying your planned utopia never happens. Assassinating Lincoln didn't win the Civil War for the South; shooting Garfield actually pushed the federal government into genuine civil service reforms; killing McKinley never sparked a Socialist uprising in America; what happened to JFK didn't end the Cold War or change U.S. policy towards Cuba (whatever the hell it was that motivated Oswald (maybe), we still don't know for certain); and shooting Reagan never impressed Jodie Foster (I'm not being flippant here, that's kind of what Hinckley was trying to do).
All that's going to happen now is a family will have to cope with the tragedy of losing a loved one - whoever it was that died at the rally - and the MAGA faithful are going to stir themselves into a frenzy over which conspiracy theories will make them the angriest and more eager to act out.
The political violence we've been trapped in since 2016 - with trump's demagoguery of immigrants and liberals - and accelerated in 2020 - "Stand Back and Stand By" anyone? - remains a downward spiral this 2024. History - chaotic, fear-driven, violent - is happening, and it's not going to stop until more innocent lives are taken.
1 comment:
I agree that political assassinations almost never have their intended effect, and even worse they undermine democracy, which really doesn't need any undermining just now.
This, though, displays another reason we need an assault weapons ban.
The homicidal moron on the roof had an "AR15 style rifle" that is, a semi automatic rifle that fires NATO rounds as quickly as its trigger is pulled. He was able to fire several rounds before the secret service killed him, and if you listen to the sound on the video, that was a matter of seconds. Without that AR15 style weapon, he would have gotten off one shot before they killed him, and perhaps that dead rally attendee would still be alive and the other two critically wounded could have escaped unharmed.
This could be another "the Panthers showed up at the Capitol strapped so governor Reagan passed gun control" moment, but I doubt it will be, especially since SCOTUS just decided that not only are AR15s just fine, but it's OK to modify them to fire full auto.
We really need to win this election.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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