American Hero Or American Nero?

What Kind Of Trump Will We See Now? What Kind Of Trump Do We Want?

What do you think was going through Trump’s mind at this moment, when he was on the ground, having just been shot? What would have gone through your mind?

As I write this diary entry, things remain extremely fluid. We don’t yet know anything about the possible motivation of the would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks. We have seen on social media absolutely disgusting reactions by some on the Left, complaining that Trump survived. I’m not going to take those as normative of the Left. We have heard many Democratic politicians denounce the act in strong terms. Good. Thank you. However, like many of you, I cannot help but wonder at what the kind of people — respectable people, not Tiktok loons — who have been saying over and over that Trump is an “existential threat” to democracy and to America (as Joe Biden did in February), are surprised that somebody took a shot at Trump. Here is a headline from a Vox story on July 1:

Well.

Whatever the motivation of the failed assassin, this was a monumental failure on behalf of the Secret Service. How the hell does a gunman climb onto that roof and crawl into place, with multiple people in the crowd screaming, “He’s got a gun!” and trying to warn police, and squeeze off shots at Donald Trump?! There were snipers already in place for just such a possibility. Why were there no Secret Service agents on that roof to begin with? It’s an obvious platform for an assassin, were one to be present. The conspiracy theorists are already going wild on this point, and understandably so. I say “understandably” not to endorse a conspiracy theory, but to say this Secret Service failure gives natural rise to such speculation.

My thoughts as I was falling asleep on the first night, on the fact political and culture war fact pattern emerging.

• They wouldn’t leave Evangelical Christian Jack Philips alone to bake his cakes and run his business.

• They won’t let parents know if their children are transing themselves in school.

• They won’t let parents remove pornographic books from school libraries.

• They teach little children and teenage minors to hate everything normal — their families, their own bodies, even their very identity.

• They told us that the President of the United States was a Russian Manchurian (Siberian?) candidate, and crippled his administration with these lies.

• They told us Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, though they knew it was not.

• They lied to us about Covid and its origins.

• They told us that we couldn’t have even a semblance of a normal life because of Covid … unless we were going out onto the streets to protest racism, or burn the cities down to honor George Floyd.

• “Mostly peaceful” riots.

• They have turned professional journalism into propaganda.

• For example, they ignored obvious signs of Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline into decrepitude, until he choked on live TV — and are now shocked, shocked that the White House deceived them.

• They tried to ruin as a bigot a high school kid who wore a MAGA hat on the Mall, and was set upon by a provocative left-wing activist.

• They have conspired to destroy institutions essential to running society by keeping out the accomplished and the meritorious, for the sake of letting in those who are incapable of doing the work, but who possess the favored demographic profile.

• They have divided America and made us fear and loathe each other on racial lines.

• They have demonized white people — especially white males.

• They have destroyed statues and attempted to rewrite American history to reflect ideological convictions.

• They have led near-pogroms against Jews on elite American campuses.

• They secretly pressured, from senior government levels, a policymaking medical organization to abandon scientific considerations in order to eliminate lower limits on sexually and psychologically mutilating children.

• They passed laws in some states allowing the government to seize minor children from their uncooperative parents, for the sake of sexually and psychologically mutilating them.

• They are destroying women’s sports, and making women everywhere more vulnerable to mentally unwell men who think they are women.

• They gaslit us into war in Iraq, and now they’ve gaslit us into an ongoing, unwinnable war against Russia, risking World War III for no plausible national interest.

• They are wrecking the military with DEI, such that fewer normal men want to serve.

• They have frightened millions of Americans into silence over fear of cancellation.

• They have left the back door into the US wide open for migrants, including Hezbollah fighters, likely Chinese agents, and others.

• They shipped America’s manufacturing base overseas, and blame Americans for being unhappy with their economic prospects.

• They deregulated Wall Street, and when it blew up in 2008, managed to avoid punishing anyone for it.

• They failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no senior military commander lost his job for it, even though the 2014 Afghanistan Papers report revealed that the Pentagon didn’t know what it was doing, and didn’t care.

• All those American soldiers, physically and psychologically maimed by the invasion of Iraq on false pretenses, and by the stupidity of trying to build a liberal democracy in Afghanistan — swept under the rug.

• In a country where you have to show ID to buy beer, this week they tried to defeat a law that would require people to show ID proving their are citizens in order to vote.

• They declared that Americans who dissent from all this are on the “far right” and might be “domestic terrorists” — while mollycoddling Antifa and violent leftists.

• They put Trump through a show trial in Manhattan on flimsy charges, to make him easier to remove as a rival to Joe Biden

• AND NOW … they have tried to assassinate Trump.

Who is “they”? The Ruling Class. The people in power — including some Republicans; it wasn’t Democrats who led the invasions, nor only the Clinton Democrats who bent over for Wall Street). I’m talking about the people who benefit from the system as it is.

No, I’m absolutely NOT saying they (“they”) conspired to kill Donald Trump. This kid who shot Trump is certainly not part of the American elite (though he did appear in a Black Rock commercial when he was in high school). What I’m describing is how the accumulation of these facts makes me feel. I see an order there — an order that does not imply design or conspiracy, but rather a collection of facts about events that have created within me a deep disgust with conditions in America today.

So, when bloodied but unbowed Trump shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” yesterday, I tensed up inside like a fist — and I don’t think it will unclench until Election Day.