"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action," goes one line of thought, and a conspiracy involves a close-knit group of plotters, goes another — but what if both notions are outdated?
I don't even have to ask you, "What if there was a conspiracy conducted in public in the news and on social media, 24/7, with even the most visible and powerful people taking part in it?" because you've seen it with your own eyes.
Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2024
He's a threat to our freedom. He's a threat to our democracy. He's literally a threat to everything America stands for.
This tweet bears the name of the alleged president of the United States and was posted two weeks before Thomas Matthew Crooks wounded Donald Trump and murdered Corey Comperatore. It's still there, even after Sunday's second attempt on Trump's life by Ryan Routh.
But Biden's post was just one of countless incitements over the last eight or nine years.
Here's the gory image of Kathy Griffin holding a severed Trump head that has the internet up in arms pic.twitter.com/xKjhwdH0ZC
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) May 30, 2017
We've been told Trump was a Russian agent, a tool of Putin. We've been told all kinds of things, often with the Washington's imprimatur.
In 2016, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Trump "is threatening our democracy." But that was just the start of an endless progression of big names on big media painting rhetorical targets on Trump's back.
That isn't to say that every assassin is ideologically motivated.
Recommended: I Have Seen the Future of Drone Warfare and It Is Frighteningly Beautiful
President James Garfield's assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was a lifelong misfit who believed (despite zero evidence) that he was due an ambassadorship to France after Garfield's election. John Hinkley tried to kill both Jimmy Carter (he lost his nerve after getting close in 1980) and Ronald Reagan as part of his long-distance courtship of actress Jodie Foster.
Neither Guiteau nor Hinkley was trying to save democracy or avenge the South or anything like that. They were nutcases whose delusions led them to very public acts of violence.
But these two Trump assassins, if what little we've been allowed to know is anything to go by, seem to be something new — a hybrid ideologue/nutcase. A given percentage of any population, however small, is susceptible to exactly this kind of violence-inspiring rhetoric.
Wind them up and keep winding until something snaps, no conspiracy required.
If nothing else, an assassination attempt (or two) keeps the Left's enemies (that's you and me, bub) on edge. If they can't get Trump killed, maybe they can foster enough civil (or not-so-civil) unrest to justify a crackdown that would make the Jan. 6 persecutions look like a warm-up act. Or enough to suspend elections. Or worse.
This isn't me being paranoid, or at least I hope not.
Still, not everything adds up. There are reports—unconfirmed as of yet—that Trump's decision to play golf on Sunday was last minute. Did someone tip off Routh? Or is this just one more rumor in a swirl of them? We may never know, and that's by design. Anything that corrodes confidence in our institutions benefits the Left's desire to replace them.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member