There’s nothing funny about political assassination — except, of course, when a fantasist incites one and ends up couch surfing. It's even funnier when the bloody call comes from a George Mason University PhD in economics who certainly knows better.
Surely, he does now.
You've probably already read about Nicholas Decker's April 16 Substack essay titled "When Must We Kill Them?" so I won't go into all that again. Suffice it to say that anyone urging violence "as part of a coordinated strategy" against "the rot of the present administration [that] runs deeper than one man," then they've cast themselves far beyond the pale of civilized discourse.
"Update [to] internet lunatics," he posted to X on Friday, "my landlord has evicted me on account of your threats." His landlord, he said, accused Decker of "Endangering the peace and quiet enjoyment of the property."
"She wants me to make very clear that I do not reside at that address as well."
Can you blame her?
The replies from some of my compatriots on the Right were priceless.
"Perhaps the real reason was your apparent desire for a civil war where your political opponents are slaughtered," Cynical Publius wrote.
"Good," my friend Bruce Carroll wrote. "You’re a terrorist."
Finally, Amish Dude asked, "So, threats of violence are bad?"
Decker can also sometimes be seen wearing a dress and advocating minors' legal access to pr0n.
This is when most people take their X account private or even delete it, but give Decker credit for having the courage of his twisted convictions. On Friday, young Master Decker added a new introduction to his piece.
"Violence is a last resort, not a first resort," he explained. "It must come after the exhaustion of all possible remedy. It is not, moreover, appropriate for decisions which are merely unwise or disastrous. It is to be employed only in defense of our Constitution, and of democracy. If it is resorted to, it must be narrowly targeted."
Translation: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent POTUS?"
There's a striking difference between now and the time of Henry II. King Henry II blurted out, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" in a fit of frustration with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket — who had also once been his close friend. Four knights took Henry's outburst as an instruction and quickly dispatched (and martyred) Becket, believed to be to the King's deep regret.
Nicholas Decker, on the other hand, put quite a lot of thought into his 850-word missive in favor of political assassination. When called out on it, Decker doubled down. There's nothing of the tragic rivalry between former friends Henry and Becket. There's just a young PhD student with masturbatory fantasies about achieving political dominance through "targeted" violence.
Assassinate a president and maybe a cabinet member or two, and the rest of you MAGA mouthbreathers will snap into line, don't you know. Decker's would-be targets might be narrow, but his message is broad enough to cover tens of millions of Americans who beat his side at the ballot box.
In Revolutionary France, the Jacobins practiced what Decker preaches — and for our Founding Fathers, there was no worse insult than "Jacobin." They would recognize Decker's kind. They wrote a Constitution to defend us from them.
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