Disputed if this picture is real, but it doesn’t matter, it’ll be the iconic picture.
Obviously it makes him more likely to be elected. Obviously you can’t call someone Hitler and a fascist and a threat to everything good without an increased chance for violence. If he is Hitler reborn, after all, killing him would be the right thing to do.
Blame will be apportioned, whether rightly or wrongly, and it increases the chance and amount of violence and repression down the line when and if Trump becomes President.
I don’t, personally, care much except as regards the consequences. I wouldn’t care if Trump or Biden was killed, not for them, anyway. They’re both mass murderers and Trump has spent the last nine months going on about how much he supports the Gaza genocide.
That said, I wouldn’t kill either myself or advise anyone to assassinate them, as it is counter-productive and pointless. Both of them are symptoms, not causes, and if Trump had been killed whoever replaced him would have been as bad or worse and likely won on a sympathy/vengeance surge.
America’s problems aren’t about any individual. If only it were so.
(Also, I don’t see why everyone’s so worked up. As Trump once said about a school shooting, “get over it.” This is the country the right and neoliberals wanted: all these weapons available + an economic and political pressure cooker. What did you think would happen?)
bruce wilder
Assassinations tend to be very consequential. No leader of consequence — regardless of the nature of the consequences — is ever replaced by his clone. If Trump disappeared, there is no obvious successor in kind. Whoever followed would probably be “worse” by my political lights, but Trump’s peculiar brand of populism would be hard to revivify without him. Someone might try, but there are not a lot of obvious stand-ins.
The Republican establishment would attempt to seize the moment to insert a more standard Republican class warrior and hope that Trump’s base could hold together long enough to win an election, but no standard Republican would pursue any version of Trump’s incoherent, off-the-wall “program” nor command loyalty or hope from the segment of the population he does.
Anyway, putting counterfactual speculation aside, you can say personality in leadership does not matter much in the present American malaise, but the shock of assassination itself also can trigger its own chaos. Even the attempt will power paranoia about plots by the deep state or the malevolence of the Biden Administration.
I wonder if RFK, Jr might get Secret Service. Or Jill Stein might get her matching funds.
different clue
We’ll see if everyone is so shocked and appalled that everybody calls for a cooling-off-period and calls for a fizzling-out of violent desires.
Or if someone tries to shoot Biden and several other “likely suspect” Democrats in return, followed by a slow and building cycle of tit tit for tat , tat tat tat for tit tit for tat, tit tit tit tit for tat tat tat for tit tit for tat violence, etc.
A cooling-off period would be better at this time.
different clue
I think Steve Bannon would come closest to commanding the same loyalty from the same people that Trump commanded such loyalty from. But Steve Bannon doesn’t care what I think. He has already said he wants to be the “General” controlling the battle from behind, and not a part of the battle.
So what would that leave? Senator Hawley? Congresswoman Margaret Taylor Greene? Other such?
Eric Anderson
Exactly.
https://kolektiva.social/@LeftistLawyer/112782102486077821
different clue
Of course, there are people who would prefer the rising violence approach, and will work to help it happen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/inthenews/comments/1e2q60k/house_republican_immediately_accuses_biden_of/
and . . .
https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1e2r7uh/no_one_should_condone_political_violence_unless/
Ordinary people should ” go gray” in place, if they can.
Mark Level
Since I stopped listening to NPR much early after the Russian SMO started due to all the sloppy lying & propaganda, I often start the day with YouTube, & this morning the first coverage I saw was by Richard Medhurst, & his take is excellent, not very different than Ian’s– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnMKAqS7uD0 [PS– I only really listened to it on the radio when driving unless I chose music instead; I knew it was trash for a long time.]
Yes, Trump is a killer (Soleimani, with his diplomatic passport, a violation of the Geneva Convention, advocated that Assange be executed) as American society is, the most violent country in the world as Medhurst readily covers.
“Man is a bad animal,” as Brion Gysin long ago observed. Medhurst makes the obvious point that all the clowns (Pelosi, Sanders, various Republicans) saying “Violence like this has no place in America” are all 100% hypocritical. America is & has been for its entire history the greatest purveyor of violence in the world (once it sidelined Britain as the great Western hegemon c. 1944).
It is not individuals. It is purveyed by the society en masse, part of “our” Freedumb in the US is having everyone armed, shooting each other for cutting them off in traffic, etc. And mass-murdering Palestinians thru our Israeli proxies, imagining we somehow create “Control” in the middle east by the naked use of genocidal violence.
We will never achieve that Control, the jig is up. Over 85% of the world knows the USA is a mass criminal, murderous enterprise. The Elites of Neoliberal shit-holes like Germany, the UK, mighty Estonia, Sweden (formerly smarter), etc. etc. support the US violence, & for the time being their stupid populaces are (like ours) too weak & complacent to resist. But that too may change in time.
As Gysin’s more famous pal William S. Burroughs observed, in “Ah Pook is Here!”, “Is Control controlled by its need to control? Answer: Yes.” Those of us who try not to be heartless, blood-soaked predators need to beware Control. The Blob is many-headed, Trump survives and this will make him no wiser or more circumspect when he’s in charge of the Death Machine again, which, unless the SS really was complicit in allowing what just happened and it occurs successfully, is the most likely outcome in the near future.
As Medhurst says, “It’s a never-ending cycle of violence.” And those who salute flags & follow leaders have not, & evidently never will, learn to do any better. Man is a bad animal!!
bruce wilder
Narrative rulz: foreshadowing sets up interpretation.
Tucker Carlson’s prophecy of assassination as the next step in the escalation of the Deep State’s relentless attempts to take Trump out is going to drive from now on.
Good job, Genocide Joe “bullseye” Biden, master politician!
Bill r
I really think it was a put up job. Ears bleed so easily when nicked and the blood will show up quickly and dramatically. If a bullet had hit anywhere in the chest, I think it would be more like a real attempt. Of course a put up job with no chance of his death could still get him more votes, after all it worked for saint Ronnie and made him more popular. It does not seem like an election when neither candidate has any quality of a decent human being.
Willy
Looks like another hopelessly confused incel. A registered Republican or Dem donor? Whatever. I wonder who his Jodie Foster was.
What’s shocking about this, is the return to courage. Are soft kindergarten targets no longer fashionable? Powerful elites are now fair game? A retro Godfather2 fan, where “if anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can try to kill anyone”? I guess we shall see.
Not hoping that Time’s Man of the Year cover will be featuring a pic of some basement incel, but that the article might signify a shift in focus,
Mary Bennet
Bruce Wilder, it would appear that RFK, Jr. is getting better protection from his private security than Trump gets from the Feds.
Ksw
“I don’t, personally, care much except as regards the consequences.” On occasion I’ve supported your blog. However this comment is similar to The View. So count me unsubscribed, bye bye.
mago
I dunno Mark L. George Thorougood claimed to be bad to the bone and he drank alone*, but I don’t think a disgruntled resident of Bhutan or Ladhak would attempt political assassination to settle a score. Humans are many things: stupid, reactive and easily influenced by dominant culture, for example. But inherently bad? I believe in basic human goodness and nobody who knows me would ever accuse me of being a sweetness and light kind of guy.
Anyway, one of the worst aspects of this incident is the tsunami of commentary. Good incentive to drop my bad habit of reading political sites on the internet.
*referencing 80’s music, most of which sucked just like the decade.
different clue
Here is a little video titled ” Ah Pook Is Here”, narrated by William S. Burroughs his own self.
https://www.openculture.com/2014/05/ah-pook-is-here.html
mago
Maybe we’ll see a movie called Death in Texas, or maybe even Bloody Bobby LA Kitchen.
However, they’ll be unable to Trump This, already on your live stream.
Gotta Go Now.
Ciao
Ian Welsh
KSW,
weirdest comment ever. Why would anyone who has read me regularly think I’d give two shits if Donald Trump or Biden got shot, other than for the consequences? You understood nothing I wrote, it appears, I’m sorry I didn’t write clearly enough to make you understand.
Raad
Ian that law shit was just likely some weird troll, you can actually check their given email vs the donations you receive and the email given there if you have the patience for that shit but honestly fuck that guy
Most of us here who have read you for many years and for some I’m sure decade(s) wouldn’t really be surprised with this
And also, if anyone has any sympathy for trump after everything that’s come out about him, attempt or no attempt, you’re a fucking mark
bruce wilder
I don’t think a disgruntled resident of Bhutan or Ladhak would attempt political assassination to settle a score
There is, of course, the infamous case of the Nepalese Royal Massacre to consider.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_royal_massacre
bruce wilder
. . . it would appear that RFK, Jr. is getting better protection from his private security than Trump gets from the Feds.
Trump’s security is lax and incompetent. RFK’s security is a major drain on campaign funds. Dark Brandon will find a way to handicap and eliminate his rivals.
bruce wilder
I have a family connection to McKinley and as a kid, I studied his assassination closely.
Emma Goldman wrote a famous and quite eloquent “apology” for his assassin, with whom she had a slight acquaintance. I admire her critique of the common tendency — on full display in the aftermath of an assassination — to value the lives and persons of the Great and Good, the High and Mighty and to ignore and despise the common, ordinary person leading Thoreau’s life of quiet desperation in obscurity.
https://libcom.org/article/tragedy-buffalo-emma-goldman