Jamie O ably handled our initial response to the Trump shooting yesterday. I wanted to let the dust settle before telling this story.
On May 15, 1972, I was a 14 year old high school freshman. Even then, I was opinionated. I was a young lefty excited by the promise of the McGovern campaign. Then I heard the news: Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace had been shot while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland.
1972 was a confusing political year: George Wallace was the candidate of racist Southern segregationists, but he was running in the Democratic primaries, not as an independent as in 1968. The leading Democratic candidates came from the far right and left of the party. Polarized politics is nothing new in American history.
I don’t remember if it was that day or the next that I attended my freshman poli sci class. It was my favorite class because of the subject and teacher, Miss Dunn whose first name I don’t recall. She looked grim when we started class. I now know why but teenage me was clueless.
Miss Dunn gave us a thumbnail sketch of the Wallace shooting: it was before we knew he’d survived or how weird the shooter, Arthur Bremer, was. She asked for our reactions, my hand shot up and I was the first to speak. I said something to the effect that I was happy a racist demagogue had been shot and that he had it coming.
I recall Miss Dunn shaking her head and telling me that I was too smart to celebrate an act of violence. It didn’t matter who was shot, it was the act itself that was objectionable. I was somewhat taken aback: Miss Dunn was a staunch liberal who I’d seen at McGovern HQ in San Mateo. That’s why her words resonated with me. I learned that day to oppose political violence in all its forms.
Miss Dunn also taught us that while the shooting should not be celebrated neither should the repugnant views of George Wallace. We should wish the man a speedy recovery while simultaneously deploring what he stood for. It was an excellent lesson in nuanced and complicated thinking that has stuck with me.
That brings me to the Trump shooting, which is already being used as a political cudgel by his allies. They blame an unknown amorphous THEY for the shooting, not the gunman himself. Newly minted Veep candidate J.D. Vance is already blaming Biden. It was inevitable. It’s who they are. It’s what they do.
The pukes at Axios have seized on this sorry episode to claim that we’ll see a New Trump emerge from the shooting. It’s typical nonsense from those GOP humping idiots. They’ve been waiting in vain for a Trump pivot since 2016. Besides, I remember the New Nixon, he was just as bad as the Old Nixon.
I hate to keep quoting former Bush speechwriter David Frum but he’s written the one of the best things I’ve seen about the shooting and how we should respond to it:
“The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.
Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.”
We’re on the same page, Frummy.
Trump remains a clear and present danger to American democracy. As long as his critics don’t celebrate this appalling act of violence, we should continue our critique. Nuance may be dead in the GOP, but it must live on among those of us who oppose dictatorship, foreign and domestic. The Trumpists will keep fighting, so should we: No retreat, no surrender.
The last word goes to Peter Gabriel with a song inspired by the diaries of Wallace shooter Arthur Bremer:
You know the craziest thing to me: we’re less than 72 hours from it and it’s already been bumped off by the “Vance is the VP” and “Biden vs Lester Holt verbal fisticuffs” news. The normalization of violence he’s championed over these last 9 years or so has truly taken hold and not even he could be bothered by it — just by the fact he was out golfing the next day. Hum drum. Moving along.
And I never bought the conspiracy theory angle that it was all a false flag. He’s too narcissistic to even contemplate someone taking even a fake shot at him. He’d be terrified that they might get him for real and turn him into a martyr. He wants his worship here and now, not later.
I’m glad that the media and public have moved on. It’s definitely not a false flag BUT I would like to know where the bullet hit: ear or plexiglass?
I don’t think there was any conspiracy, either. But isn’t it normal to hear from the doctor of a current or former president when something this significant happens?