Has it been long enough to allow honesty about the assassination attempt on Trump?
When I left with my pups for a wilderness excursion, Biden’s debate meltdown made Trump’s dictatorship appear almost a certainty. Then Trump’s post-gunshot photograph (online “For just $29.99!”) and his consequent “meeting with God” made his kleptocracy a sure thing. The Founder’s experiment in self-governance was about to end at 249 years.
However, while cozy under the moonlit sky of a wilderness so wonderous, the decline of civilization seemed a dream from some other timeline; as the old saying goes, “Things, they were a-changin’.” Like magic, Biden vanished. Harris appeared. Challengers attached themselves to her like magnets. And dollars sprouted from trees as Harris picked five hundred million of them in just thirty days. The collective recoil from abject despair sprang this limping Republic into a kind of Olympic sprint. Euphoria burst forth with a promise of normal times and normal people no longer possessed by that lizard lump in our brains addicted to the petty bitching of a thin-skinned five-year-old in a fat man’s body. In less than a week, the Democrat hand-wringing went away. Suddenly, Trump is running from prison as fast as Boss Putin is running from Ukraine’s invasion of Russia. What a turnaround.
So, what about that assassination attempt? It seemed so right for reality TV. And so transformative that Trump supporters were moved to claim Mr. Permanent Petulance a “changed man.” No more Divider in Chief. Trump’s brush with death made him a champion of “unity.”
It lasted four days.
Since the political whiplash of one week in America feels like a year, has it been long enough we aren’t forced to be politically correct about this act of violence? Let’s try.
Would any reasonable person today say the assassination of Lincoln was right? Would any reasonable person today say the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944 was wrong? There’s a difference.
For all the correct conversation surrounding Thomas Crooker’s assault rifle round that grazed Trump’s ear, no such correctness would lead a sane person to claim the assassination attempt on Hitler was wrong and Lincoln’s was right. Without sufficient separation in time to make historical assessments, no American alive today can make an unbiased judgment in Trump’s case. The fierce hatred each side has for the other makes all judgments emotional, not reasoned as those of Hitler and Lincoln can be.
There’s also the fact that Trump hasn’t yet had the full-up Hitler Administration he wants, so the association implied isn’t accurate. However, that’s not how a sizable fraction of America felt. Desperation resulting from a failed American legal system unable to corral Trump’s criminal syndicate made perhaps one-quarter of Americans not sorry for the attempt on Trump; they were sorry it missed. The opposing quarter would have been equally disappointed had Biden been the target, but they wouldn’t be so reserved about expressing it as Trump haters are. Like their jokes over the hammer attack on Democrat Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband or the conspiracy to kidnap, “convict,” and hang Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trumpers would have cheered.
Just as Trump-supporting Christians violate every teaching of Jesus in their support of a lying, adulterous thief, so too, Trump haters were willing to look the other way in their opposition to violence when it came to Crooker’s bullet. This glosses over the fact that one of those rifle rounds tragically killed fireman Corey Comperatore, who heroically shielded his family, and two others were hit. Politics by violence is a package deal with deadly collateral damage.
But as the Trump haters now know, be careful what you wish for.
After losing a 34-times criminally convicted felon at the top of the “Republican” ticket who sought to overthrow the Constitution and stole hundreds of Defense Department Top Secrets, who’d replace him? Some younger MAGA acolyte with fewer mental deformities, absent of aimless, self-ingratiating ramblings of incoherence, and more likely to win.
But if the “joyful” blue wave keeps rising, and with Trump in place, his bitter psyche will continue to decompose on nationally televised “press conferences.” He’ll plead his status as National Loser is fake news. He’ll command election-denying county auditors to refuse certification of the November vote in counties across the country. Once again, he’ll claim the election was rigged (yawn) like he said the Emmys were when his gameshow didn’t win one. As Tim Walz said, he’ll keep shrinking as something to laugh at. Then he’ll face his remaining 88 indictments, be convicted, and go to prison for the rest of his short life. (And I’ll again write about meaningful topics on this blog.) Or he’ll move his campaign fund contributions to Russian banks as Putin spirits Trump to Moscow. There, irrelevant and receiving none of the attention his inferiority disease begs for, Trump will stare into empty space, whispering to himself, “I won. I’m not a loser… I won. I’m not a loser…,” ending this particular disgrace in American history.
Things are looking up.
