CSotD: Conspiracy Theories: Vast & Half-Vast
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You do understand, O Best Beloved, that people in developed nations don’t live like this, right? Morland sums up how we’re viewed from abroad, and if you pay any attention to life in other countries, you should find it hard to argue with him.
Guardian writer Rachel Leingang wrote “Instead of a speech stacked with heated barbs against the media, the event ended like many in the US do: with gun violence,” which seemed terribly judgmental, except she also observed
“Every few months, Americans are asked to resume their banquet and pretend a shooting didn’t just happen,” one commentator on Bluesky wrote after the correspondents dinner. Another account responded: “Well, in fairness, that’s what we ask of school kids.”
Ohman is not the only observer to recognize our failure to come to grips with the gun lobby and with the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment, an obsolete vestige of the post-Revolutionary period that had for years been as vestigial as the Third, militias having proven all but useless in the War of 1812.
This is the third attempt to assassinate Donald Trump, but even having the guns turned on a conservative target won’t shake faith in the idea that unlicensed, unregulated gun ownership is a foundational American right.
The view from Australia is much like Morland’s view from Britain: Guns are seen as a chillingly normal part of American life, with Rowe transforming the eagle from a symbol of strength to a pathetic menu item, the difference being that Morland suggested fear while Rowe shrugs it off as an accepted reality.
However, the most chilling observation comes from another Aussie, who quickly caught on to the vast, paranoid conspiracy theories that would spring up around the event, and most certainly have.
To be fair, it’s possible that the event was staged.
It’s also possible that Elvis Presley tired of living in the limelight and faked his own death, and that Richard Nixon staged a Moon landing on a movie set to impress the Soviets with our alleged technical prowess. It’s even possible that JFK survived his assassination attempt and lived in a persistent vegetative state on a Greek island, and that Jackie pretended to marry Aristotle Onassis so she could stay by her husband’s side.
There are people who believe all those things, and why not? They’re certainly possible, just as it’s possible that Trump has arranged three attempted assassinations in order to cement his status as dictator, though if three were enough to secure permanence in office, the 13 attempts on Barack Obama’s life would have kept him in power and none of this would have come up in the first place.
We’ve had an attempted assassination about every four of our 250 years.
When I was 13, I read a biography of Andrew Jackson and thought it would make a good science fiction novel to have a time traveler go back to 1835 and attempt to change history by killing him, only to have both pistols misfire.
But even at 13, I knew that (A) strange things happen and (B) that certainly wasn’t one of them.
A lot of strange things surround the assassination of JFK, but, then again, what were the odds that the wife of a voyageur Lewis & Clark hired for their trip would turn out to be the sister, kidnapped as a young girl, of the chief of the band of Shoshone with whom they needed to trade for horses?
Or that a girl who borrowed my sweater would turn out to have died several years earlier? Oh, wait, no, that didn’t happen.
Still on the topic of things that didn’t happen, the assassination attempt at the WCHA dinner wasn’t planned as a distraction from the distraction etc. etc.
If nothing else, we’ve seen how smoothly things go when Dear Leader tries to stage an event, and while it’s safe enough when someone is supposedly delivering hamberders, I sure wouldn’t try to set up an imposter with guns, and, if I did, I’d have him suddenly arise like James Bond, not charge in like somebody out of Monty Python and get tackled a floor above and well away from the people he was supposed to intimidate.
And the Unabomber was a much better writer of manifestos, possibly because he was taught by Dear Leader’s uncle, or possibly not.
Dear Leader doesn’t even surround himself with good liars. Doordash Grandma aside, some nincompoop on his staff faked this demonstration of how Trump had fixed up the Reflecting Pool and not only forgot to change the clouds but has the same ducks swimming in the same formation years later. Their little feet must be exhausted!
There is in all this, however, an echo of that old joke about two fellows fleeing a hungry lion, one of whom says, “You can’t outrun a lion!” to which the other answers, “I only have to outrun you.”
Trump doesn’t have to fool everybody. He only has to fool the kind of people who have never been to a banquet and find something odd and nefarious about someone grabbing a bottle of wine on the way out.
Social media lit up over this, as if opened bottles of wine were going to be recorked and sold again, or as if the gunman were in the room despite having never even gotten as far as the correct floor of the hotel.
Which tells you how Dear Leader got to be president in the first place. We the People elected him!
Juxtaposition of the Day
Howsoever, let me give Dear Leader credit for being fast on his feet, and on the grift. It took him about half an hour to turn an attempted assassination into a promo for his ballroom.
The gunman didn’t get any closer to him at the Hilton than he would have in the White House, but this isn’t about safety. As German suggests, it’s all about ego, including his assumption that the WCHA would agree to hold their banquet at his place.
As if they don’t take enough grief about kissing political tuchas at this thing without letting him host it.
All’s well that ends well. Resume whatever you were up to.
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