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<\/p>\nCue the Conspiracy Theorists and Projectionists. Items today about yesterday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump, and which side is the one that actually promotes violence.<\/p>\n
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Well, I didn’t suspect that so many on the right would blame the *left* for inciting the would-be assassin of Donald Trump yesterday. Based on no evidence whatsoever, of course, except the reflexive projectionism whereby conservatives especially seem to imagine that everyone else operates to their (low) standards of morality and therefore attributes their own tendencies to everyone else.<\/p>\n
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The Atlantic, David Frum, 14 Jul 2024<\/strong>: The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator<\/a>, subtitled “Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then\u2013House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked<\/a>. One of Trump\u2019s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims<\/a> that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.<\/p>\n After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted \u201cLock her up.\u201d Trump laughed and replied<\/a>, \u201cLock them all up.\u201d<\/p>\n Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election\u2014many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence\u2014Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them<\/a> if returned to office. His own staffers have testified<\/a> to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Good piece. A later para:<\/p>\n Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Meanwhile, some headlines from my favorite aggregate site.<\/p>\n And how many times recently have I noticed Republican appeals to violence? The most prominent one has been from the Heritage Foundation, author of Project 2025. Noted 6 days ago<\/a>:<\/p>\n Media Matters, 2 Jul 2024<\/strong>: Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: \u201cWe are in the process of the second American Revolution\u201d<\/a>, subtitled \u201cKevin Roberts: \u2018We\u2019re in the process of taking this country back \u2026 we ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The phrase comes at the end of the long statement from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts that this piece quotes.<\/p>\n And so I come full circle on this response and just want to encourage you with some substance that we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n Are there any comparable statement by anyone on the left? Given the efforts by some media, like the NYT, to bend over backwards to be “fair” to both sides, I think if there were, I would have heard about them.<\/p>\n So once again: so far, this early Sunday evening, we know nothing about the shooter (except that he was 20 years old and Republican) or his motives. Yet Republicans compulsively attribute all sorts of motivations to him. While it may turn out he was nothing more than a lonely boy searching for fame, as John Hinckley Jr.<\/a> was, who in shooting Ronald Reagan, was trying to impress Jodie Foster. People who do these things are not rational.<\/p>\n \\\\\\<\/p>\n More items on this same general theme.<\/p>\n NYT, Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti, 13 Jul 2024<\/strong>: Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat<\/a>, subtitled “Mr. Trump\u2019s allies are preparing to try to short-circuit the election system, if he does not win.”<\/p>\n The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s allies have followed a two-pronged approach: restricting voting for partisan advantage ahead of Election Day and short-circuiting the process of ratifying the winner afterward, if Mr. Trump loses. The latter strategy involves an ambitious \u2014 and legally dubious \u2014 attempt to reimagine decades of settled law dictating how results are officially certified in the weeks before the transfer of power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\<\/p>\n Washington Post, Hannah Allam, 13 Jul 2024<\/strong>: Pro-Trump Christian extremists use scripture to justify violent goals<\/a>, subtitled “As Donald Trump is deemed a ‘spiritual warrior,’ extremism researchers warn of the menace embedded in Christian nationalist rhetoric”<\/p>\n To his most zealous Christian supporters, Donald Trump\u2019s campaign is a crusade against \u201cevil\u201d liberal forces that must be vanquished by any means necessary to save the republic.<\/p>\n Democrats aren\u2019t opponents, but enemies to be \u201csmited.\u201d Vice President Harris is depicted as Jezebel<\/a>, the epitome of womanly wickedness who meets a grisly end. Teachers, librarians, drag queens \u2014 all perceived as introducing dangerous ideas to children \u2014 are condemned to drowning with millstones around their necks, a la Matthew 18:6.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Spiritual warfare is a central theme of Christian nationalist movements that are reshaping the GOP by preaching that the country\u2019s theological identity is under attack and in urgent need of a revolution to put the faithful in charge. Their rhetoric has been galvanizing crowds at conservative gatherings all year, and is likely to be woven into messaging at the Republican National Convention, which starts Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n (The above two pieces were published on the 13th, before the assassination attempt.)<\/p>\n \\<\/p>\n LA Times, Robin Abcarian, 14 Jul 2024<\/strong>: Column: The once-secretive right-wing ideology emerging as an overt threat to American democracy<\/a><\/p>\n Last week, Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley admitted something that might have once shocked his party.<\/p>\n \u201cSome will say I\u2019m calling America a Christian nation,\u201d Hawley told an audience<\/a> at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington. \u201cAnd so I am. Some will say I\u2019m advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. My question is: Is there any other kind worth having?\u201d<\/p>\n Conservative Christian supremacy is on the march.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The piece ends:<\/p>\n No one has captured the warped ethos of the Christian nationalist movement better than the white supremacist homophobe Nick Fuentes, who appears briefly but memorably in \u201cBad Faith.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cF\u2014 democracy,\u201d Fuentes says. \u201cI stand with Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n Except, you know, he really doesn\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\<\/p>\n NY Times, news analysis by Peter Baker, 14 Jul 2024<\/strong>: An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart<\/a>, subtitled “The attack on former President Donald J. Trump comes at a time when the United States is already polarized along ideological and cultural lines and is split, it often seems, into two realities.”<\/p>\n The propulsive crescendo of disruptive events lately has led many to compare 2024 to 1968, a year of racial strife, riots in the cities and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Protests over the Vietnam War helped prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson to drop out of his race for re-election that year.<\/p>\n Until now, there had been one important difference. \u201cOf all the similarities between 1968 and 2024, the lack of political violence this year has been one of the key areas where the years diverge,\u201d said Luke A. Nichter, a historian at Chapman University and the author of \u201cThe Year That Broke Politics,\u201d a history of 1968. \u201cThat is no more.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n The title is an allusion to personal circumstances, nothing else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cue the Conspiracy Theorists and Projectionists. Items today about yesterday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump, and which side is the one that actually promotes violence. * Well, I didn’t suspect that so many on the right would blame the *left* … Continue reading \n
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