As Ye Sow...

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump this past Saturday produced a flood of hot-takes and insta-reactions on social media. This, despite countless past examples of why it's foolish to do public and permanent id-dumps before your frontal cortex has had a chance to sort things out. The benign ones slide on by, mostly unnoticed in the cacophony, which poses the question - what did those commenters gain from hurrying to post? The... let's call them "less benign" comments, however...

Our id, our lizard brain, the place where the chemical reactions that influence our sensing and thinking and reacting, is where things we often would rather not share with the rest of the world form. The rest of our gray matter spends a lot of time keeping those things to ourselves, and usually does a good job. But, when overloaded, it can fail in its job to "best not let that out of its cage."

So it went with (too) many hot-takes after Trump got shot, especially in the political sandbox. The number of people who publicly lamented the shooter's failure isn't large, but it isn't a dismissible fringe, either, and includes way too many prominent names. I won't quote them here, you can find plenty of examples. Nor is the number of people declaring with great certainty and a whole lot of "I'm so much smarter" that this whole thing was staged by the Right to make Trump look good, or that there was some sort of conspiracy to deliberately leave that rooftop unguarded, or any variety of evidence-free theories.

On top of that, social media was suddenly the home of more ballistics experts and security mavens than I could count. Hey, y’all, give it a minute. There’s plenty of time to dissect the incident downstream, and you get no bonus points if you’re the first to put forth some evidence-free theory that, by luck, turns out to be correct after the fog has lifted.

The legacy media did themselves no favors in the moment, either.

Strike that, they utterly disgraced themselves.

When I first heard something was happening, I popped up CNN on my phone. I saw five headlines. None of them mentioned shots fired. Similar early reports from the AP, the NYTimes, and other left-leaning sources denied the obvious until the obvious was too obvious to deny. Leopards and spots and all that.

Now that the chaos of the incident has passed, enough facts have emerged to form a picture, and the id has been filtered, those of us in the commentariat (myself included) can assemble analyses and offer opinions that have a bit more foundation.

At least I hope so, though neither Trump Derangement Syndrome nor Trump Enchantment Syndrome will be denied.

The most obvious conclusion, to me at least (and pending more evidence as to the shooter's motivation), is that this assassination attempt is the fruit of the Left's incessant stoking of fear and hate toward Trump. Not content to argue policy, the narrative-writers opted to make Trump a bogeyman, a "Baba Yaga" that threatens to destroy the nation, turn America into some sort of dictatorship, build gulags, and drink the blood of puppies.

That the Russia collusion story that enraptured the Left and created political chaos for years proved to be a fabrication taught them nothing. That Trump didn't destroy the nation in his four years as President is proof of nothing. This time around, his victory would be the end of democracy in the nation. 'He must be stopped,' 'he is literally Hitler,' 'he has to be eliminated, 'it's time to put Trump in a bullseye,' - you've seen all this and more.

Among the many hot-takes that crossed my feed were a couple references to school shooters, with accusations of "not caring" and "preventing assault weapon bans" aimed at the Right. These are forms of "begging the question" fallacy, but since they open the "shooter" door, I'll step through it.

It has taken decades for the press to realize that its massive and obsessive coverage of school shooters, not to mention its misdirected ‘remedies’ and mislaid blame, is apt to feed the brains of other sick and demented individuals looking for notoriety. Finally, we see some sources refusing to name or picture shooters so that they don't get posthumous fame for their evil acts. But, the damage has been done, and when coupled with the overheated rhetoric about how evil the Right is and how a Trump victory would be the end of times, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to conclude that the Left put some ideas in the would-be assassin's head.

Honorable mentions to the broken public education system, the COVID lockdowns, and the infection of curricula with identity politics, tribalism, and wokeism.

He's dead now, so barring some manifesto or other recorded evidence of his motives, we may never know what prompted this, but the widespread calls to turn down the rhetoric tell us enough. Especially given the Left "projective" nature of late, as I recently blogged. Hint: Before you call on "both sides" to dial it down, first clean your own house. Yeah, that applies to the Right as well, but political violence has been overwhelmingly the Left's bailiwick in modern times, and yes, that includes the 1/6 riot.

As to what all this means going forward, what the political tea leaves suggest? Political strategists now figure that Trump is now a lock to win the Presidency, and I agree. The gambling markets bumped up significantly in Trump's direction, as well, and I could easily see Trump winning the Electoral College 345-203 - and carrying all of Congress with him.

Biden continues to insist that he will not drop out, the growing clamor (and my prediction) notwithstanding, but if he does, it's increasingly likely in my opinion that Harris will replace him. Beyond the matter of the $240M war chest that only Harris could use, there's the "who would run against Trump at this point" question. Should Newsom or Whitmer or some other Dem with high aspirations run and lose, that loss would pretty much kill any future chance at the White House. Should Michelle Obama or Hillary Clinton opt in and lose, the humiliation would be devastating. Even Harris might quietly wish Joe remain in the race, just so she won't go down in history as the second person to lose to Trump. Many Democrats are, I expect, resigning themselves to a Trump victory and strategizing how to best position themselves and the party for 2028, even at this early date. Oh, and figuring how to foment more chaos during a second Trump presidency. Because Trump.

I will wait and see how long the "dial it down" messaging from the Left lasts. And whether the Democrats finally reject their left wing's incessant yapping and biting, given how much damage that has done to the party's prospects (not to mention the nation itself). It is the bending of the knee to the progressives and the socialists, as much or more than anything else, that has positioned the Democratic Party to lose this year. From Trump Derangement to insane energy policy to the abandonment of the southern border to the excusing of crime and criminality to the rampant Jew hatred masquerading as anti-Zionism, the Left has been the nation's biggest destroyer. If the Democrats want to reconnect with the voters, they need to purge the hate-mongers from their ranks. That includes the DEI fanatics, who elevate identity above competence (I'll wait before passing judgment on the Secret Service from that angle, but it's not smelling good).

Time for the Democrats to abandon leftism and return to liberalism, and thus narrow the Overton Window to something sane.

Heck, even Bill Maher agrees with me.