... Do You?
The obligatory post-shooting post
I suppose I’ve set myself up for this, as someone who expresses political opinions and publishes essays regularly. It feels like it’d be weird if I didn’t address the attempt on Donald Trump’s life this weekend. But I’m finding myself hollowed out and devoid of hot takes on this one.
For one thing, I don’t care. Norms dictate I should. I don’t know enough about what happened, or why it happened, but unless I get remarkable new information in the coming days, it’s hard to treat this incident as anything but one more symptom of a decade of disease. It would be disingenuous to pretend I am invested in the well-being of a singularly destructive man at the helm of a corrosive movement.
I don’t think people should be shot. Is that innocuous enough? I take no pleasure in the fact that a careless, vindictive, incendiary man was momentarily put in danger. The people hurt or killed in his presence did not deserve what happened to them. I will choose not to engage in gotcha ironies about the accessibility of assault-style weapons or the consequences of reckless and relentless rhetoric.
Now the onslaught of talk about unity and lowering the temperature has begun. To what end? Am I supposed to believe this is going to be a mutual and belated reckoning on both sides of the aisle, and that the people who’ve been yowling and brandishing weapons and demanding the right to run over protestors in the street since 2008 are gonna realize we’ve all gone astray and come in for a hug with their fellow Americans?
Or, as has happened every time the shoe winds up on the other foot, are these “fuck your feelings” alpha cretins gonna suddenly clutch their pearls and swoon at the ghastly vulgarity of it all? There’s a lead-paint-chip-eating level of cognitive dissonance required to dismiss all of Trump’s veiled and unveiled calls to violent action as “out of context” and “gotcha journalism” while in the same breath fixating on Biden’s use of the word “bullseye” once as ironclad proof of “sending the orders” to assassinate. But I’ve read exactly that thicket of mental gymnastics in multiple online comments in the last 36 hours.
The CEO of StickerMule sent out a missive claiming people are “terrified” to admit they’re Trump supporters. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and presume the thousands of customers using his services to print “fuck Joe and the Hoe” stickers for their trucks would beg to differ. I think what he means is, that he wants all the vile shit a second Trump term promises, but still wants to be invited to parties where Kid Rock isn’t the entire playlist.
If you don’t want the general public to know what you stand for, it might be time to think about what you stand for.
And say we do reach some Coke-commercial moment of unity and temporary civility. Biden and Trump shake hands on the White House lawn. Trump goes against literally every public move he’s made in 78 years and says something conciliatory. A few talking heads on a few news channels lower their voices a little.
Then what? Do we converse more politely about mass deportations? Stick our pinkies out as we mull over whether to gut the administrative state and strip legal protections and civil rights from a bunch of our fellow citizens? Have a beer together and watch fireworks on the town square as the transfer of wealth from everyone else to the obscenely rich becomes even more baked into the system?
I’m happy to be proven wrong. If Donald J. Trump gets up at the GOP convention this week and apologizes to the nation for pretending the 2020 election was stolen, asks forgiveness for stoking the flames of insurrection, and pledges to honor the results of a fair and routine vote in November, I’ll start listening with new ears and I’ll concede that the ship of state could yet be righted, even under an administration I disagree with.
Short of that, I don’t care about what one fucked-up kid managed to do in the last stupid moments of his wasted life. I don’t care about Biden fumbling a debate and needing naps. I pre-emptively don’t care about whatever happens this week or next to knock this out of the news. It changes nothing.
I’m tired, deep down queasy ache-in-the-bones tired, of being asked to give a shit about flat tires while the bus is on fire and careening off a cliff.