Attempted Assassination 2024
We prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion over excellence in our government agencies, and are then shocked to find incompetence in the Secret Service.
Events and news are unfolding quickly since the attempted assassination of former President Trump. This dispatch from my Substack, therefore, is unusual. Below are various thoughts that have come to mind as I watch and read coverage of the attack.
These thoughts are not assembled into a single coherent essay. Instead, I present them as separate insights, observations, and relevant aphorisms, all united by yesterday’s attempt to murder a presidential candidate in our United States of America.
We Get What We Want
We advocate for nihilism and are then shocked to discover nihilists.
We prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion over excellence in our government agencies, and are then shocked to find incompetence in the Secret Service.
We insist Americans disarm in public places for safety, and are then shocked when unarmed citizens become the most vulnerable prey for predators.
Is Assassination Morally Wrong?
We Americans now live in a postmodern, progressive nation where millions of citizens with college and graduate degrees confidently assert—often in ordinary conversations—that there is no objective moral right or wrong.
They claim that right and wrong are merely subjective feelings or cultural prejudices and perspectives, none more correct or incorrect, legitimate or illegitimate, true or false, than others.
Should we then be surprised when a young man decides that the right thing to do is climb a building carrying a rifle, take aim at a former President who is well-positioned to be President again, and shoot at him repeatedly?
Will those same millions of highly credentialed, educated citizens who assert there is no objective moral right or wrong now say it is morally wrong to assassinate a presidential candidate (or anyone else)?
If they do condemn assassination as morally wrong, how can they know it to be wrong? What is the source of moral knowledge according to postmodern, progressive citizens with college and graduate degrees?
If they can know moral right from wrong, can others discover and know that important distinction too? And if others can know right from wrong, doesn’t that mean right and wrong are objective—capable of being discovered and known by various thinking people—and therefore not mere subjective feelings?
Think Well
We live in a world where many of the most schooled — not necessarily the most intelligent — people around us insist that truth, reasoning, and thinking are less important than feeling and venting emotions.
I disagree. Especially in a moment like the one we are in now, it is of grave importance that we think well.
Think well, my fellow citizens. Use your reason. Be logical, both deductively and inductively. Examine the evidence. Be strategic. Be wise. Don’t be foolish, gullible, or naïve.
Don’t believe whatever partisan late-night comedians tell you to believe. Be better than that. Be deeper than that. Be smarter than that.
After Show Trials, What’s Next?
In progressive experiments in central planning—such as Communist China, the former Soviet Union, and many smaller socialist tyrannies disguised as (banana) republics—show trials and “lawfare” are effective tools for the ruling class to maintain their power and control over others.
Political elites selectively enforce mountains of laws and regulations—many of which contradict each other—to decide who they allow to join their rarified ranks and enjoy the perks of political office, and who they do not. This is what Arthur Koestler’s famous novel, Darkness at Noon, is all about.
In the United States, however, as late as 2024, the show trials and “lawfare” cases against Donald Trump haven’t been working. If the goal of the numerous lawsuits and petty criminal charges was to keep Trump out of office, his political opponents clearly need more.
All the lawsuits and criminal charges combined, so far, have not made it impossible for Donald Trump to be elected again. And after the world watched Joe Biden mumble and bumble through the recent live debate, Trump, as of right now, seems well-positioned to win in November.
The question, then, for the elite political class who use show trials and lawfare to decide who will be viable candidates in future elections and who will not, is: What is Plan B after the show trials and lawfare fail to shut down a political opponent progressive elites want shut down?
Thomas Matthew Crooks answered that question.
Meanwhile, many millions of Americans simply want an open, honest, and transparent general election, the results of which can be trusted as legitimate and true.
Many millions of ordinary Americans don’t want the United States to follow the path of banana republics and Soviet experiments in progressive central planning. They don’t want to destroy Donald Trump or any other candidate with bogus lawsuits, criminal charges, or open murder.
Many millions of ordinary Americans want robust political debates followed by a legitimate election. Many citizens want to demonstrate for themselves and to the rest of the world that in the United States of America, We The People control our government because our government doesn’t control We The People. Many progressive Americans seem unwilling to try.
Trump Is Hitler
Since at least 2016, countless progressives have compared Trump to Hitler, or even claimed that Trump is, in fact, and literally Hitler. (They use the word literally in that confused way—clearly not understanding what literally means—I don’t)
Curiously, progressive Democrats don’t compare Trump to Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Kim Il-sung. Why is that?
Progressives frequently label Trump as a fascist. Most of these individuals aren’t interested in political philosophy or history. They are not well-educated, which is why they don’t realize that fascism is a movement and regime type that originates from their own school of politics: progressivism.
As I have explained, the roots of American progressivism trace back across the Atlantic Ocean to German political science. The same 19th-century German theorists who taught young American intellectuals how to become 20th-century progressives also taught young German intellectuals how to become 20th-century fascists.
Adolph Hitler’s favorite title was der Führer, which is German for “the Leader.” Leadership, in the sense of a political secularist savior who leads the government to create a future paradise on Earth, is a central concept in early progressive political science.
To borrow a term preferred by our current Vice President, Kamala Harris—who some claim is an intellectual and scholar in her own right—many postmodern progressive Democrats are “unburdened” by their ignorance and mistakenly continue to call their political opponents fascists, not realizing the invective they hurl at others is more applicable to themselves.
The list of public progressives calling Trump a fascist, Nazi, or Hitler is long. It includes many not particularly bright bulbs to whom leftists turn for philosophical enlightenment, constitutional tutoring, and political guidance: Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg, Rachel Maddow, Madonna, Louis C.K., Jim Clyburn, Jerry Nadler, Joe Biden, etc.
Comedian Kathy Griffin offered this image—featuring Trump’s severed head—as an example of cutting edge progressive comedy.
To boot, many of these same progressives and many others either say explicitly or imply that someone should do to Trump now what should have been done to Hitler in the 1930s or early 40s: assassination.
Indeed, there were more than two dozen attempts to assassinate Adolph Hitler during WWII. It’s not as if no one tried to take out Hitler. They tried. Their problem was that they failed.
As the echo chambers of progressivism reverberate over and over and over and over and over with declarations that Trump is Hitler, at what point do some citizens begin to view it as their duty to murder Mr. Trump as an act of democracy-saving assassination?
The progressive magazine The New Republic—originally launched by progressive activist Herbert Croly in 1914—recently featured a cover image transposing Trump and Hitler.
In explaining the cover image, the editors of The New Republic wrote: “Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”
The New Republic has openly declared a willingness to fight against Donald Trump. Does that fighting include shots from a sniper’s rifle?
And when a young man does attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump, will those same progressives—who for years have insisted that Trump is Hitler and who have called for Trump to be killed or otherwise prevented from holding office again—now denounce assassination as a wrong?
Will they now dismiss their own earlier remarks as mere jokes and asides when they repeatedly said we must treat Trump as if he is Hitler and we are in 1930s Germany?
It is a spectacle of human nature to witness people—including large numbers of Americans with all kinds of fancy university degrees—advocate, demand, and insist on something, only to be shocked and horrified when they get what they asked for.
Context Matters
Five days before a young man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, the current President of the United States, Joe Biden, said:
I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.
A bullseye. Let that sink in.
Imagine for a moment if Trump or any Republican had uttered those words about any Democrat. What would Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert make of that? What would Rachel Maddow say? What about the editors at The New York Times?
Progressive Democrats now demand the full context of that quotation, as if that helps their partisan cause. The context is clear: Biden wants to beat Trump, he thinks he is the best person to do so, and he concludes his remarks with a clear reference to a rifle scope—bullseye.
The demand for “context” is almost amusing coming from progressives who, for years, have misquoted Trump or ripped Trump’s statements out of context to serve their own political ends.
One example will suffice, and I will quote at length because it demonstrates how progressives ignore and distort context when it is convenient for them to do so. After the protests, riots, and fighting in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said:
Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.
[Y]ou had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
And you had people—and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists—because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people. But you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets, and with the baseball bats. You had a lot of bad people in the other group.
From these comments, progressives continue to insist that Trump morally equated white supremacists with peaceful activists who merely wanted to remove statues of Southern Civil War officers.
When they cite Trump’s comments about Charlottesville, they not only ignore the context, they do so because it doesn’t serve their purposes to quote him accurately. They frequently and consistently quote only the part where Trump said there were “good people on both sides.”
Any intelligent reader or careful listener knows context matters. Of course, it does. And, progressives who have purposefully ripped Donald Trump’s statements out of context for years are in no position now to lecture the rest of us about how context matters.
The current President said that Trump should be put in a bullseye. The current President should take responsibility for his words. Voters will hold him accountable in November, whether he wants to be accountable or not.
Brief History of Assassinations
Four sitting presidents have been killed by assassination:
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.
President James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau in 1881.
President William McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz in 1901.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.
Of these four assassinated presidents, three were Republicans: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.
John Wilkes Booth was the first to assassinate a United States President. Booth loathed Lincoln and the entire Republican Party. Booth despised the fact that Republicans were making plans for former slaves to vote as they became free men and women following the Civil War.
These three Republicans served in various capacities for the Union government during the Civil War. Lincoln was President and Commander-in-Chief during the Civil War, while both Garfield and McKinley were officers in the Union Army.
John F. Kennedy—the first Catholic to be elected President of the United States—was a Democrat.
There have been many assassination attempts that either failed when executed or were discovered and foiled before being carried out.
The first attempt to assassinate a United States President occurred on January 30, 1835, when Richard Lawrence tried to shoot Andrew Jackson after Jackson left a funeral service held in the House of Representatives Chamber.
Both of Lawrence's pistols misfired, and the assassination attempt failed. Lawrence was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.