Even before the most basic details of the shooting at Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally yesterday had emerged, the ceaseless, grating background noise of American political life had cranked itself up once again.
You might imagine that a possible assassination of a leading presidential candidate would be a scared-straight moment for a nation that has been sleepwalking into a culture of political contempt, delegitimization and tribalism. But before anything, it was right back to reflexive criticism of the media, vitriol for the other side and conspiracy theories.
The shock: Someone was apparently able to take multiple shots at a former president of the United States, protected by a phalanx of Secret Service and surrounded by a throng of citizens.
The non-shock: Yet another person in the United States was apparently willing to engage in potentially lethal violence in the arena of politics, the latest in a sorry trail that has menaced elected officials, judges, civilians, the Capitol and now a leading presidential candidate.
I really don’t care much about the assassination attempt. It’s a natural outcome of putting more guns into a population, stirring up hatred, and then putting everyone in a financial pressure cooker. I’m surprised that we didn’t see something similar earlier than this, aside from the attack on Mr. Pelosi and some other lower profile attacks (at least the ones we found out about due to many being foiled by FBI and other agencies).
The right wing media bubble and GOP politicians have been fomenting this for years…It was done to both build a lone wolf stochastic terrorist pool and to build out the mob that attacked the US Congress on Jan 6th. The attack just happened to turn against them this time.