Alan Zendell, July 15, 2024

Assassinations are among the worst things humans can do. They tend to occur during periods of anger and divisiveness when tensions are already high – clichés about tinderboxes come to mind. In an unstable situation with persons of good will attempting to find common ground and a peaceful path forward, an assassination, either foiled or successful can tip the balance into chaos and massive bloodshed. I refer you to World War 1, which was triggered by the assassination of the Austrian Arch Duke and set the tone for all the death and destruction in the first half of the twentieth century.

Do you wonder what would cause a twenty-year-old kid with a fascination for guns and explosives to attempt to kill a presidential candidate? He had to know he’d be killed instantly by the Secret Service or local law enforcement. If he thought he’d die a martyr, he was wrong. Either young Mr. Crooks, the deceased assassin, was mentally ill, or he was obsessed with a deeply ingrained movement that is a real threat to our country.

Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, who might be announced as Donald Trump’s running mate this week, took to social media: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

That’s a fascinating statement, one that Fox News began promulgating immediately after the shooting. Let’s try to parse it, together, and let’s try to put our biases aside and be objective. Vance’s first sentence is correct, although he meant to apply it to the level of anger that exists between the Biden and Trump campaigns, and I would prefer to apply it to the epidemic of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States. The anger in the campaigns was the catalyst for what Crooks did, but the culture that believes gun ownership should be completely unrestricted and that enables people on the fringes to feel entitled to use their guns any way they want to, is the more credible explanation.

Similarly, the issue of mental illness and the scarcity of health care resources which might have helped Mr. Crooks. And equally important, the destabilizing effect of unregulated social media. We live in a country in which for years, someone like Alex Jones was able to perpetrate the lie that the Sandy Hook shooting that killed twenty six people – teachers and children as young as six – was a hoax, until the courts finally caught up with him.

Vance also claimed that the central theme of the Biden campaign is that Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. Vance is right about that, but what he left out is that Trump has defined himself that way. Trump doesn’t have to call himself a Fascist or an autocrat directly when his actions speak for themselves.

Trump supporters don’t deny that’s what he is, and his most loyal supporters revel in the image of a strong leader unfettered by the Constitution or the Rule of Law. The most dangerous of them do things like surround state houses in Michigan and Kentucky and threaten Democratic Governors and their families. They also staged an insurrection at the Capitol, and told us afterwards that they believed they were following Donald Trump’s instructions.

That Mr. Vance’s statement is wholly disingenuous should not surprise us. After all, he wants to be Donald Trump’s Vice President. What better qualification could he have than practicing the Doublespeak his master is so adept at?
Vance is also correct that the rhetoric in the campaign undoubtedly affected the shooter’s view of the world. But you can look it up yourselves. It’s all documented in nine years of nonstop media coverage.

Only one candidate has been unrelentingly belligerent. Only one candidate campaigns with slanderous insults. Only one candidate pumps his fist in the air and screams fight. Only one candidate always fights to assure that no restricitions are placed on gun ownership and use. And only one candidate continuously advocates cutting back on mental health care benefits, especially Medicaid, which people of limited means depend on.

Every time we reel from the aftereffects of gun violence, the MAGA crew blames mental illness. But the same people have rejected every attempt by Congress to provide help for the people who continue to murder and maim. Trump pledged to increase mental health care funding after every shooting but went back on his word every time, just as he has always fought against restrictions on automatic and semi-automatic weapons like the one used to attempt to assassinate him.

We’re being told that as a result of his nearly being killed, Trump will present a softer gentler version of himself at the Republican Convention. Let’s see if he can pull that off for four days, but more important, how long it takes for him to revert to form.