Twenty years ago when the Republican National Convention was held, delegates mocked then Democrat President nominee John Kerry by wearing heart-covered bandages. They were criticizing Kerry who had served in Vietnam War and gotten wounded thus receiving the Purple Heart. He actually received three Purple Hearts. The tasteless side of the Republican Party didn’t start with Donald Trump. Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh were some of the forefathers of the current GOP. But it’s exploded into an epidemic with Trump because these things happen if they’ve been festering for decades.
On Saturday, Trump was reportedly the victim of an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa. To be blunt, Trump didn’t have to be there. He really shouldn’t have been there. He should’ve been in jail. But the U.S. Supreme Court saw fit to that. After being convicted of 34 felonies, he was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, but that was passed. This typically happens in court cases. The RNC is scheduled to begin on Monday, July 15. Unless the Republican Party pulls it head out of its ass and decided to go with someone else, Trump will be the Republican nominee.
Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies and is currently charged in three separate cases in Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. will be the nominee. A man who the courts have ruled is liable for sexual assault will be the nominee of the Republican Party. A man who is forbidden to do any business in the state of New York and just had his liquor licenses revoked at his New Jersey locations will be the nominee. And we know this assassination attempt will be spun by the Right and Christians to show why he is needed to not just the nominee but the President.
Within hours, there were reports the T-shirts were being sold. That’s American capitalism in its sleaziest and truest form. People are already saying Trump will win just on this alone. Maybe if it was the October surprise, I would consider that a possibility. But it’s July. And Trump, pardon the pun, will shoot himself in the foot between now and then. Hell, he will probably do it before this time next week. When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, everyone thought it was over for Barack Obama. And then we learned more about Palin.
To be honest, Trump has brought this violence upon himself. He has encouraged it at previous rallies. I wasn’t be surprised the identity of the shooter was Thomas Matthew Crooks was more far right leaning than left leaning. But the Republican Party long before Trump has encouraged violence and belittled empathy. What was his reasoning we don’t know at this time? We may never know. It didn’t take long for people to wonder if it is real or not. We’ve gotten to that point in our society where people believe the Earth is flat and birds aren’t real.
Need I remind any of you about what happened after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre? Or how they tried to say the Boston Marathon bombing was fake? Imagine if Democrat delegates appeared at the 2008 Democratic National Convention mocking the five years McCain was a prisoner-of-war at the infamous Hanoi Hilton where he was held by his arms that in chains that it caused permanent disabilities. Of course, it wouldn’t happen. But Karl Rove and others with George W. Bush’s campaign tried to make people think he had fathered an illegitimate black child to sway South Carolina voters in 2000. Republicans would eat their own young. That’s why I laugh every time Meghan McCain defends them.
Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high.” And the Right has and continues to trash her at every opportunity they get. Maybe it’s because Michelle is a black successful woman, she’s used to it. Nothing scares white people ever more. Hell, Tyler Perry makes movie just to belittle black women who go to college or don’t need a man or Jesus. But the bar has been set so low, a seed tick can’t even crawl underneath it. At every opportunity, they have repeatedly trashed everyone they can to show they’re not meek. But they are. Only weak-willed people will point the blame at someone else, no matter what.
Trump called for the death penalty of the Central Park Five. Don’t believe me? Here it is.
And he has never backtracked on his comments. Remember how they trashed Obama for apologizing. They never apologized. They just spin the words to make it sound like an apology but it’s really something to point the finger at something else.
When Paul Peloski was assaulted, the GOP and conservatives went after Peloski even though they had encouraged violence toward Nancy Peloski. They even tried to pass misinformation that Dave DePape, the man who assaulted him, was a lover of Paul’s. And DePape admitted he was targeting Nancy. And Trump, himself, had a lot of fun criticizing and mocking the attack.
Here’s what someone assembled for the Internet and has been sharing:
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was the target of a kidnapping and possible murder plot by right-wing fanatics. Hell, during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, people with armed guns stormed the Michigan State Capitol. But the Right defended them. When Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines and shot people, they defended him.
Time and time again, conservatives and right-wing pundits as well as Christians, which is so fucking ironic, have condoned violence. Earlier this month, Kevin Roberts with the Heritage Foundation, said the Left has to submit to a second American Revolution or else it will be bloodless. But it goes back way before. In early January 2011, Gabby Gifford and others were shot by Jared Lee Loughner in Tuscon, Ariz. Palin had put Gifford’s district in a crosshairs image on her website. It was taken down. But six people were killed.
Even the John Birch Society was hostile toward John F. Kennedy. It’s been suspected that Gen. Edwin A. Walker, a vocal opponent to Kennedy, had distributed flyers saying Kennedy was wanted for treason mere days before the assassination in Dallas. Walker was a huge fan of the Society and there’s been rumors they were involved with the flyers. However, the Warren Commission cleared Walker and those associated with him of any involvement.
For generations, the Right has openly advocated violence against anyone they don’t agree with. When I was working in Wagoner, Okla., a local businessman would constantly make jokes about the death and killing of Obama. As far as I now no one ever called the police. As usual, it was the the grin and bear it style that exists in small-town America. Or others agreed with him. Even after Osama bin Laden was killed by Seal Team Six, I saw posts on social media of people joking it was Obama who had gotten killed.
And look at all the people who were shot and killed at Uvalde, Texas, Parkland, Fla., or Las Vegas. That awful bitch of a person Marjorie Taylor Greene harassed David Hogg, one of the survivors. Her and the rest of the Republican Party don’t get to play the victim now, which sucks is because that’s the only thing Greene, Lauren Boebert and especially Trump are good at. Even after the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection coup attempt, they were too chickenshit to call it what it really was. Greene’s fellow Georgia Republican Congressman Mike Collins said in a post that it was Biden who sent the orders.
There’s a reason Markwayne Mullin looked like this:
He knew good and well the insurrectionist didn’t know him from Adam. They would’ve gone after anyone. They had zip ties. They were going to do some deadly violent things.
The right is responsible for this. Now, just like on Jan. 6, they’re trying to backtrack on their rhetoric and say that there’s no need for political violence. I’ve lived for over 18 years downwind from a cattle farm. I know bullshit (and horseshit because they have those too) when I smell it. A bystander, Corey Comperatore, a got killed along with the reported shooter. Comperatore was a firefighter who shielded his family from the gunshots. Others, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, were injured but reported to be in stable condition as of this posting. Trump’s right ear was injured.
I’m not condoning violence. And I detest everything about Trump. Yet, I don’t think he should be killed. However, I don’t think it will radicalize the right as much as people are saying. One theory could be that Crooks may have thought if he shot Trump and killed Trump before the RNC, they would nominate someone else who could defeat Biden. I don’t know. Who knows? People sometimes don’t have a clear understand of our government operates. That’s why many of them believed Trump’s lies that the election was “stolen” and stormed the U.S. Capitol Building.
If anything, this is the time for the left and the Democrats to shut the fuck up about Biden’s age and focus on the rest of the campaign. Gerald Ford was the victim of an assassination attempt and he didn’t win in 1976. The Democrats can still be compassionate toward Comperatore, Dutch, Copenhaver and even Trump while still attacking his policies. This isn’t a Get-Out-Of-Jail Free card. And anyone who thinks it should be needs to go back to school.
Some people are theorizing that it could’ve been staged. And I admit the timing of it, two days before the RNC and after the backlash following Project 2025 is odd. I’m not a big supporter of bad coincidences. But sometimes shit happens. I will say someone who was a few inches off from an immediate face-to-face with Saint Peter shouldn’t have been throwing his fist up in the air like he is defiant. This is a poor job of the Secret Service because during all active shooter scenarios, you’re supposed to assume the worst. Hell on 9/11, I was about a 15-minute ride away from Plains, Ga. and we didn’t know at the time if terrorists might target former Presidents as well.
Reports are coming in from the BBC that eyewitnesses saw Crooks and tried to notify the authorities. CNN reports that Cross was a few hundred feet away from Trump. That’s about the length of a football field. For someone to get that close from an elevated position at a campaign rally where security should be watching everything does seem hinky. In the Fall of 2001, it was like 3-4 weeks after 9/11 and I was covering the Plains Peanut Festival where Jimmy Carter was present. I glanced around and there was a law officer on top of every building within eyesight of the stage that had been erected as Carter stood next to a young boy who sang the National Anthem. I even noticed a Secret Service agent was eyeing me as a hawk because I would walk around taking multiple pics from multiple angles.
I wouldn’t put it past Trump to use this is a major campaign fund-raiser as well as selling a lot more of merchandise. I’m sure the suit he was wearing is already being cut up into pieces to be auctioned off. The timing does seem strange as Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025 also has Agenda 47 which is almost as worse. And even though Trump’s name doesn’t appear in the just released files in regards to Jeffrey Epstein, they were constantly seen together. Some may not like Biden but they’re not going to vote for Trump because of that.
And you know if the Democrats used an assassination attempt to make their candidate look better, the Right would smear them every way they could. They would call it fake. They would say it’s a hoax and accuse the people of being crisis actors. And especially if Biden pumped his fist that would immediately be called out as an opportunistic act. I know the Christians have come out with their “Pray for Our Nation” stuff and I’m hoping it’s in good faith of the other people who were shot as well.
Instead, what they are wanting to do is blame the Democrats or CNN. But they offer no examples. They just point the fingers because it’s easier to fix the blame than the problem. They want to act tough when something bad happens to the Left and tell them to grow a pair or “man up.” Yet, when every bad thing happens to them, it’s someone else’s fault. It’s a conspiracy by the Left. And if they can’t sell that horseshit, we get the obligatory, “Pray for Our Nation” bullshit. Or “America Under Duress” or “America Needs God.”
It does seem suspect. And Hollywood has had a field day with paranoia about politics. Look at Wag the Dog where the President’s Administration uses spin doctors to fake a conflict in Eastern Europe to draw attention away from the President possibly sexually assaulting a minor. In The Parallex View, Warren Beatty plays a journalist who finds there’s a group that commits political assassinations but blames it on innocent people. And then Tim Robbins wrote, directed and starred in Bob Roberts, a satire as a conservative who may or may not have faked an injury from an alleged assassination attempt to win an election.
People have been immediately speculating from the moment it happened because Trump and the GOP have told us to question everything ourselves. And let’s face it, there were so many silly photo ops Trump has done that we all know they’re not true. Even that kid who wanted to mow the White House lawn was a PR stunt. What does the Right expect for us just to believe someone who has lied since the moment he was speaking not to have staged his own assassination attempt?
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Trump and the GOP has encourage and condoned violence that now it’s happened at their own rallies. Whatever politics and mental status the shooter had, it’s a direct result of the Trump and GOP agenda. They want to blame victims at schools, shopping malls, concerts and even fucking church for not carrying a Glock at all times. They don’t get to bask in the victimhood this time, especially when they have had a “Fuck Your Feelings” attitude. Violence begets violence and it has no politics, preference or bias.
Ted Nugent has openly talk about wanting to shoot Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at his concerts. Jason Aldean, just a year ago, sung a song “Try That in a Small Town” that advocates violence and lynching if someone doesn’t agree with you. Trump even said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. People have been harassed and threatened outside polling places on election days. On July 6, one week before the Butler shootings, there was a demonstration by a white nationalist group Patriots Front in Nashville. It was later condemned. But they are harassing and intimidating people.
I went to go the store a few weeks ago and there was a domestic disturbance at a house about a mile away and just about every single law enforcement officer on duty was there. The county sheriff deputies, the highway patrol troopers, and even Cherokee Nation marshal service as well as the police from the Grand River Development Authority and Hulbert Police, which is several miles east. Why did they all respond? Because firearms were reported at the residence.
The Right has made gun enthusiasts love them that laws exist where you don’t even need a permit in many states to open carry. I stopped in at the QuikTrip in Wagoner on the way to my disability hearing and saw two men in a store with matching shoulder holsters and guns. I didn’t see no badges. State law says guns shouldn’t be taken into places where money constantly changes hands. But businesses can allow them.
People who take guns out in public are just looking for problems. The question is how did Crooks get so close to Trump with a firearm. For those who say they respect law enforcement, they’re putting harder work on them because they have to access every hostile incident as if the worst of the worst is going to happen. How will a cop know a “good guy with a gun” from a bad guy with a gun?
Maybe all those people who want to make posts about God and Jesus at this time, maybe they should look at the teachings for a minute and realize how stupid and wrong it is to continue to advocate violence in the name of their religion.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 