Another Assassination Attempt

Ryan Routh did not get a shot off. Hiding in the bushes at Trump International Golf Club for a dozen hours, the somewhat deranged Routh was honing in on Donald Trump when a Secret Service agent, having espied a gun barrel sticking out from the shrubs, did get a shot off. 

Of course, he missed the target, but Routh got up and tried to run away. A sharp eyed citizen saw his vehicle and took down the license plate number. Police officers from the area needed very little time to stop Routh’s SUV and to arrest him.

As of now he is being charged with the illegal possession of a firearm. 

The assassination attempt has been foiled. But the blame game has just begun. Because what really matters is both affixing blame and ensuring that no one considers that the people who have been calling for the assassination of Donald Trump are held to moral account.

It reminds us of the efforts to blame October 7 on the Israeli Prime Minister.

It does not matter if the reasoning is lame. The effort to blame Trump for an attempt to assassinate him did not require the exercise of anyone’s rational faculties. It was an exercise in stupidity, a chance for certain radicals to affirm their commitment to the cause.

From the top down, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris declared Trump to be an existential threat to democracy, to America and to everything we hold dear. 

Funny thing, I had thought that climate change was the ultimate existential threat.

Naturally, calling someone an existential threat doesn't mean that we should defeat him in an election. That would be far too democratic. It means, as Rep. Dan Goldman, ultimate Congression nepo baby, that Trump must be eliminated.

And Stacey Plaskett, non voting delegate to the US House of Representatives declared:

He [Trump] needs to be shot.

And then there is David Plouffe, currently a Harris campaign advisor. In 2016 Plouffe wrote this on Twitter:

It is not enough to simply beat Trump. He must be destroyed thoroughly. His kind must not rise again.

Of course, we are not talking about democracy. We are seeing eliminationist rhetoric. And yet, Plouffe did not know what Trump presidency would bring, but we all do, and, dare we say, the Republic is still standing. Those who think that their political opponents should not be defeated in elections, but should be destroyed are thinking like dictators in banana republics.

Other commentators have taken the occasion of the assassination attempt to show us how stupid they really are. Lester Holt at MSNBC declared that Trump had provoked the attempt by speaking ill of the Haitian immigrants who have been settled in Springfield, Ohio. You see, Trump and JD Vance had said that these migrant were eating family pets and, one understands, that suffices to set one Ryan Routh off the rails.

The fact that Routh has been contemplating his action for quite some time now does not seem to count.

So, someone created an environment where a deranged roofer could seek fame and glory, to become a hero of the revolution, by shooting the former president.

Please do not use the word democracy any more.

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