The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Violence Was Inevitable’

Posted on | July 14, 2024 | 1 Comment

Instant classic photograph by Evan Vucci

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” I say, every time there’s a shooting, bombing, some other incident where people on social media start rushing to place blame, before any definite information is available. In my first update Saturday, at 6:55 p.m. ET, I said: “We still know nothing about what actually happened, and I urge everyone to avoid promoting unsubstantiated speculation.” Twenty minutes later, I added:

Don’t jump to conclusions. To call it “an apparent assassination attempt” is fine, but appearances can be deceiving. Until we have more definite information, we don’t know what happened, and should avoid pretending as if we do know. Patience!

Nothing is gained by excessive haste. Probably my attitude reflects the fact that I spent more than two decades in print journalism. Unlike TV, print journalists don’t have to “go live” and then keep talking to fill the airtime during a breaking news event, so we have can afford to take time to make sure we only publish facts that are fully confirmed.

So, we now know that this was an attempted assassination, and we know that the shooter was 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks but — this is very important — so far we don’t know his motive. Yes, obviously, the gunman wished to kill Trump, but as to why he wanted to kill Trump, I have to insist that we still don’t know. It would seem to be the simplest common-sense deduction to say that the would-be assassin’s motive was political, but does the name John Hinckley ring a bell?

In 1981, he tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan: “Hinckley was reportedly seeking fame to impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had a fixation after watching her in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver.”

That’s not a political motive. That’s just plain crazy. And it is too early to rule out the possibility that Thomas Matthew Crooks was just plain crazy.

“He was always bullied. Every day. He was just an outcast.”

Think back to the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords. Liberals tried to blame Republicans and the Tea Party — especially Sarah Palin — for Jared Loughner’s murderous shooting spree in Tucson. But the truth of his motive was something much different:

The two-hour video is anti-Christian, anti-American and anti-capitalist, and Jared Lee Loughner became obsessed with it. Zeitgeist, a conspiracy-theory documentary released in 2007, has spawned its own cult following. According to Loughner’s friends, the accused Tucson gunman was one of the cult’s most zealous converts. And many of Loughner’s otherwise inexplicable obsessions — from his fascination with currency to his rantings against illiteracy to his paranoid fears of “mind control” — parallel ideas promoted in Zeitgeist.
The first disclosure of the movie’s influence on the mass murder suspect’s beliefs came in an interview Wednesday with ABC News. “I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in,” Zach Osler, 22, told ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield. Osler’s father confirmed that influence in an interview published Sunday by the Arizona Republic. “He wanted to watch [Zeitgeist] all the time,” George Osler told the Phoenix newspaper. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
The Zeitgeist connection may be the most crucial clue to understanding the bizarre ideas that seemed to crowd Loughner’s disordered mind in months leading up to the Jan. 8 shootings that left six dead and 12 wounded in Arizona. By the time he latched onto the conspiracy-theory film, Loughner was already a very troubled young man. . . .

Go read the entirety of my 2011 American Spectator column, in case you’ve forgotten about that. As common-sense as it must have seemed to liberals — a Democratic congresswoman targeted for assassination, and therefore, the gunman must be a right-winger — the truth was, Jared Loughner was just plain crazy and, insofar as there was a political motive for his shooting spree, it was much more clearly left-wing.

Given my experience in debunking false narratives in such situations, readers will understand my reluctance to assume that what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks to target Trump was the over-the-top rhetoric of Trump’s political opponents. That may yet prove to be the case — it’s certainly what Occam’s Razor would suggest — but so far we can’t say so for certain. Nevertheless, I found myself nodding in agreement with Austin Ruse’s column today at Chronicles:

Good Lord Almighty, that man is a legend. He gets shot, gets up almost immediately, with blood running down his face, throws his fist in the air and shouts “fight, fight, fight.” Donald Trump is a legend.
As the Secret Service covered him with their bodies, even putting their hands protectively over his head, as they helped him to the car, the crowd could be seen turning to the media in the back and giving them the finger. They knew. They knew who did this. The left did this. The Democrats did this. The gutter press did this. The #NeverTrumpers did this.
What did they think would happen after months and even years yelling at the top of their lungs that Trump is Hitler, that Trump will be a dictator, that Trump is an “existential threat to our democracy?” Violence was inevitable.
Just a week ago, Biden said Trump needed to be put in the “bullseye.” In 2022, he said Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the “soul of our country.”
Last November, The Washington Post ran a column that said “every conceivable measure” must be taken to stop the “end of our democracy.” It said, “When a marauder is crashing through your house, you throw everything at him—pots, pans, candlesticks …” It said the next Trump administration will be filled “with Hitler’s gauleiters.” What did they think would happen?
Go to the NeverTrump Bulwark website founded by Bill Kristol and see they are nearly constant in their shrill cries that Trump and not just Trump but you and me are out to end “Our Democracy™.” What did they think would happen? . . .

Read the whole thing. As I say, I’m hesitant to place blame without clear evidence, but emotionally? Yeah, I’m as angry about this as anyone else, and giving the finger to the media is OK with me.



 

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Category: Conspiracy Theories, Crime, Donald Trump, Media Bias

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One Response to “‘Violence Was Inevitable’”

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