Shooting By Ear

This past saturday night, after a fine meal, the lady friend and I sat down to enjoy a classic sci-fi film, "The Terminator" circa 1984.

In case you haven't seen it the plot concerns a man from the near future (2029) who returns to his past, our present (In this case, Los Angeles, 1984) in order protect a woman who was key to human survival in a future war against "the machines". He succeeds but sacrifices himself in the process.

Afterwards we switched to the news and learned that Donald Trump missed being killed by gunfire by the very slimmest of margins. The assassin, a young white male, was killed in the process.

These two things immediately made me recall the oft-considered question "If you could, would you go back in time and kill Hitler before he became chancellor of Germany and started a war that ultimately killed 50 million people?"

We're currently embroiled in a presidential campaign where one candidate, Donald Trump, is embracing the populist techniques of Adolf Hitler and who has plans to transform the U.S. government into an analog copy of Nazi Germany or Putin's Russia, or worse. This is not hyperbole. It is the plan of the Republican Party.

To me, that young man who fired on Trump on Saturday was no different than his fictional analog going back in time to save this country from a disastrous future which would befall it should Trump gain the White House again.

That being said, the attempt on Trump's life was unacceptable, but it was also inevitable in a country where the Conservative party thinks the second half of the Second Amendment is sacred above all else and that there should be no limit to public access to weapons of war. This country has faced numerous failed and successful assassination attempts on the lives of our leaders and now we have a candidate for the highest office in the land who is openly fomenting civil war. So was anyone really surprised at the violent result that occurred on Saturday?

I am not angry at Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican, a gun owner. He was a product of his environment. He did what he felt he had to do even though he must have known his life was forfeit the moment he climbed on that roof.

But I am very angry at Trump, who is using this moment for political gain, for fund-raising profit, ignorantly raising his fist in triumph immediately after the shooting as though he had conquered a mighty foe when, in fact, a young man with a gun, a nobody, hardly old enough to drink, pointedly reminded Americans that the Emperor has no clothes.

Conservatives often quote Thomas Jefferson when he said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants". On Saturday they got their wish, just not the one they imagined.

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I wrote the sterling prose above on Sunday evening, once I'd returned home from a hard twenty-four hours of well-earned debauchery. This morning, Monday, I woke and did a bit more research about the ass-assination attempt and now I have many questions that leave me feeling we could be the victims of a charade.

Let's start with Michael Crooks being able to gain the roof of that building in full sight of a sniper squad that was facing his direction. Impossible.

Crooks was said to be a good shot and his rifle was equipped with both a tripod and a scope. He was able to squeeze off five rounds at a relatively modest distance before being killed and yet couldn't hit a stationary target. Unlikely.

Regarding the injury to Trump, it affected the side of his body away from the cameras. In a seemingly choreographed move he looked to his right, grabbed his ear upon hearing the rifle shots and then dropped. The dance that occurred afterwards defied Secret Service policy which dictates hustling the target of the attack away from the source as swiftly as possible. Instead, Trump screamed for his shoes(?) and then struck poses for the cameras that made himself an easy target for any other assassin that happened to be within spittin' distance.

Since the event Trumpworld has taken advantage of the massive outpourings of sympathy from the people of this country as a shield to further advance his party's grip on the throat of Democracy, adding that lunatic JD Vance to the ticket and luxuriating in Trump's vanity judge's dismissal of the classified document case. They're not even being subtle about it.

So here's how I really think it went down:

Trump's people found a dupe in Michael Crooks, a loner who likes guns and is a registered Republican. He was convinced that faking an assassination attempt would help Trump's chances in the election and all he had to do was crawl on that roof and go pew-pew-pew in the direction of the crowd. (All they had to do was remind him how well Kyle Rittenhouse has done in order to seal the deal.)

When Crooks started shooting Trump dropped to the ground and his security piled atop him, though not just shielding him with their bodies but actively engaged in doing... something to him, like maybe applying the fake blood.

This, to me, is the crux of the deception. They decided the ear would be the best place to claim a bullet strike as it's much easier to fake a wound there than in the limbs, torso, or head.

Think about that.

Meanwhile the snipers tied up the loose ends on that other roof. Sorry, Mr. Crooks, but everything Trump touches, dies.

Trump knew full well there were no other associates of Crooks in the area when he insisted on standing and posing for the benefit of his new merch to come.

So far no social media has been released revealing anything significant about Mr. Crooks. This is inconceivable in today's social media environment unless there's an official blockade of the data, perhaps being hidden from public purview until it's been sanitized for Trump's protection, or until the public forgets about it.

Yes, I know what this sounds like (and for those who've read this far I commend you for your ability to endure a cynical imagination suffering a splenetic core breech) but this is Trump we're talking about, this is the goddamn back-stabbing anti-Democratic Republican Party we're talking about, so the idea of a fusillade of bullets only resulting in the gentle grazing of one's ear is no more convincing to me than one of fairies dancing in the bottom of the garden on moonlit nights.

Trump and the GOP wasted no time using the attack for their own benefit, and just in time for the Republican National Convention, too. This attack also had the added benefit of ensuring Trump's future rallies get crowds much larger than the modest one's he's headlined lately.

After all, who wouldn't want to be there when another assassin strikes?

- Lefty