Happy Bastille Day, for those of you who observe it. Absolutely nothing of note has occurred lately, outside of the ongoing douchebaggery of Russia, Israel, and Hamas. Nope, nothing at all.
Obviously, that's a lie. Yesterday, somebody took pot-shots at Trump at one of his rallies. Current reports indicate it was a 20-year-old kid, registered Republican, who took an "AK-style" rifle to a nearby rooftop and tried to snipe Trump, in spite of wearing glasses, from a couple-hundred feet away. He's dead now, of course, so everybody has questions about who was he, why did he do it, that sort of thing... and the short answer is, it really doesn't much matter in the end.
On the motivations front, this was eminently foreseeable. You've got a presidential candidate whose previously shown his lack of aptitude for the job, who talks about being a dictator on day one if he gets re-elected, getting backing from gas-lighting congressional members and a supreme court that, until recently, maintained a facade of impartiality. Under those conditions, I'd expect at least one young hot-blooded sort to take a shot in any community, given the opportunity, be they military trained riflemen with an oath to uphold or "I'm pretty good at Call of Duty, I could make this work." The lucky thing for Trump is it looks like he got something closer to the latter here.
But, again, why doesn't matter much here. More important are the impacts of the act - which, again, immediately aren't much. Trump got an ear tagged, which shouldn't be in any way debilitating, unless you want to take the very long odds that a man who was wanting to lead an assault on congress is the sort to get spooked by a flesh wound. We've got a couple of dead people and a few wounded, but, while doubtless tragic for them and their families, only results in the loss of a couple of votes for the Republicans, tops.
Longer term, though? This guy just created a touchstone for the Republican party. Anybody who considers themselves a Republican for non-cynical, non-self-serving reasons, has a concrete event to point at and say that they are under attack from a shadowy "THEM". Doesn't matter that the kid was a registered Republican, any number of excuses, plausible or implausible, can be made for why he was duped, or wasn't really a Republican, or maybe he was acting under orders from Democrats/the Deep State/Joe Biden, that sort of thing. With the current pile of lies they're operating under, what's one more for the pile? But this one, it's visceral (almost literally). You've already got people like the Republican National Convention attendees talking about this strengthening their resolve to do what they were going to do already, and you know that, at a minimum, this will be used as a rallying point as Election Day comes closer to get people out to the polls. Past that... well, I'm hoping I'm wrong, but this could easily be the start of a spiral of tit-for-tat political violence, all egged on by either Republicans deciding "the gloves are off", or external influence like Russian misinformation campaigns, or both of those and more.
Yeah, I really hope I'm wrong on that last bit. Election season is bad enough without fighting in the streets over it.
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