A Sickness In Our Souls, But Get Your "Bulletproof" T-Shirt Now

Whew. In this quicksilver, "terrible moment," be careful what you wish for. Amidst our pious assertions political violence is always wrong, the tinpot candidate of ever-erratic political violence who's celebrated, advocated, excused and craved violence just got it in unexpected ways. Relishing his martyr's moment - and clad in a little "ear diaper" - he shows no sign of slowing his fascist march to power, proclaiming to supporters, fist in air, “I am Donald J. Trump. FEAR NOT!" Actually, we think we'll fear.

After Saturday's shooting, Biden echoed other Dems, did the sober, responsible thing and declared, "There is no place in America for this kind of violence or for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions." The founders, he went on, "created a democracy that gave reason and balance a chance to prevail over brute force. That’s the America we must be...Violence in America like this is just unheard of." Sadly, not so, writes David Frum, who notes that "assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history." Now, "Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others," entirely, historically apt when "fascism feasts on violence." "Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message," says Frum. "Fascist movements are secular religions (that) offer martyrs as their proof of truth...The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance."

Thus did Trump, with his showman's flair after having possibly, barely been grazed by a random bullet or more ingloriously nicked by flying glass from his teleprompter, respond not with checking on others or seeking to calm them, but with a histrionic fist in the air and clarion call, three times, to "Fight!" - the same word he used on January 6. Similarly, predictably, did inveterate grifters rush to hawk rock-band-like assassination merch - mugs, stickers, sweatshirts, trading cards. Within hours came Amazon's No. 1 best-seller "novelty t-shirts," emblazoned with that instantly iconic image - the flag, the blood, the fist - blaring "Bulletproof," "For God and Country," "Legends Never Die," "You Missed," "Impeached, Arrested, Convicted, Shot, Still Standing." Just as quickly, Trump's campaign set up a shiny new fundraising site featuring the same flashy image shrieking, "I am Donald J. Trump. FEAR NOT!" Also, "I will always love you for supporting me. Unity. Peace. Make America Great Again.”

Alas, the plea for "unity" and "peace" was as self-serving as it was short-lived by a party who've embraced anger and violence in their messaging and a leader who blithely, viciously uses threats of and incitement to that violence to quell opposition. The bland calls to lower the rhetorical temperature were met with a sick rush of threats, taunts, and crackpot charges, though the shooter was a Republican fan of Demolition Ranch videos about guns and explosives and his parents were flagged in 2016 by the Trump team as "strong Republicans" likely worried about gun rights. The "rhetoric of the radical left," Republicans raved, "led directly" to the shooting. Georgia Rep. Mike Collins: "Joe Biden sent the orders." Some blamed fake news - Fox chyron: "MEDIA LAYED (sic) GROUNDWORK FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST TRUMP" - or a complicit Secret Service led by a "DEI hire," aka woman. Whatever: Wingnuts on social media declared it their "last damn straw." "Let’s give it to them," one snarled. “CIVIL.FUCKING.WAR."

In truth, Aaron Rupar notes, "Multiple things are true about Trump's shooting. Political violence is wrong, and nobody has done more to worsen the climate of political violence in this country." He's spewed ceaseless violent rhetoric, threatening countless "others," aka anyone not a MAGA freak. He urged rally attendees to beat up protesters, Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by,” "2nd Amendment people" to attack Hillary Clinton, police to "don't be too nice" to suspects, fans to "go after" New York A.G. Tish James, the military to "just shoot" BLM protesters and migrants, Gen. Mark Milley be executed for a phone call he didn't like. He belittled an attack on Paul Pelosi and a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. He vowed "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," "there has to be retribution," "you'll never take back our country with weakness," "big, big trouble" if he's indicted, and "a bloodbath" if he loses the election. He watched Jan. 6 with glee, champions its insurrectionists as "hostages" and promises to pardon them.

Cult members, often armed, have followed ugly suit. A Kansas fundraiser offered a Biden effigy to punch, Don Jr. touted an image of Biden bound and gagged, Kari Lake warned millions of NRA members "are going to put on the armor of God, and maybe strap on a Glock," Tom Cotton urged MAGA-ites to "take matters into your own hands" to get "pro-Hamas mobs (out) of the way," Matt Gaetz urged "we hunt down" BLM "terrorists," Ted Cruz said his job is to "grab a battle axe (and) fight the barbarians," Mark Robinson said, "Some folks need killing." House Repubs wore AR-15 lapel pins or sent "kinda murdery" Christmas cards of loved ones cradling assault weapons. GOP candidates ran bonkers, vengeful ads featuring Dems in Klan hoods, armed thugs "hunting RINOs," AR-15 "liberty machines" to stay "safe from looting hordes in Atlanta or a tyrannical government in Washington"; Klan Mom MTG, who once urged Nancy Pelosi be executed, hefted a big-ass gun and "blew away the Democrats' Socialist agenda." They all seem nice.

In MAGA's us-and-them world, they're all good with targeting the “them” - migrants, trans kids, Marxists, people with weird names or skin any shade suspiciously darker than their own. Because Trump has always denied his deadly rhetoric contributes in any way to the country's divisions - "It brings people together" - his acolytes can argue straight-faced his innocent victimhood at the lunatic hands of the latest AR-15-fueled, much-aggrieved white guy. "Almost any criticism of Trump is already being spun by MAGA as an incitement to assassinate him," writes Edward Luce of the Financial Times. "This is an Orwellian attempt to silence what remains of the effort to stop him from regaining power." It's also a good way to distract from his wildly unpopular authoritarian plans and the fact - see wildly unpopular - the only way Republicans can gain power is by lying and cheating while celebrating his Nietzschian powers of shamelessness. "They try to jail him. They try to kill him. It will not work," raved Greg Abbott. "He is indomitable.”

He is also, arguesThe New Yorker's David Remnick and other sane people, "the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics," a "man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others," a wannabe authoritarian who wants to destroy democracy running on an openly authoritarian platform: "This isn't a smear, it's a fact." A clumsy pot-shot from a sick kid does nothing to change that, Remnick notes, "nor does it absolve him of his past misdeeds." Unlike earlier fringe outliers from Joe McCarthy to Islamic Jihadists posing a "radical challenge" to America, Trump has formed "stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders," from colonizing one of two major parties to transforming SCOTUS into a fiery pit of Christo-fascism; he's also defeated or stalled every legal impediment to his rise and brought his thugs and felons into "the summit of the American elite." Now, a grazed ear "secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises."

The shooting has prompted "appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life," notes Remnick of "polite hypocrisy" and conventional calls for unity that are socially useful but singularly dangerous by giving Trump an unseemly sheen of legitimacy. "The familiar practice is (to) proclaim Americans have more things in common than (those) that divide them," he writes. "Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now. 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" - and even as he and his right-wing collaborators rush to exploit a gunman's folly "as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones." As a result of rightly denouncing violence, "We are extending an implicit pardon... absolving and inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021."

It's easy to see and hear how emboldened Trump et al now feel in their goose-stepping parade to power. After Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed his classified documents case in a ruling "so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd" - Lisa Needham: "Special counsels are unconstitutional if they make Trump sad" - he gleefully celebrated the dismissal of a "Lawless Indictment (as) just the first step" and noxiously called for ditching "ALL the Witch Hunts - the January 6th Hoax, Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (and) Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call." Jesus. In what was deemed a "shocking" announcement after coyly pretending he knew nothing of and nobody from the fascist Project 2025, he promised to give an Administration post to career cop, former ICE thug and primary author Tom 'Epic-Flood-of-Illegals' Homan. "I have Tom lined up," he beamed. "We have the greatest people" - the evident descendants of his infamous "best people."

Then he tapped "naked authoritarian," spineless opportunist and "alarm bell in the night" J.D. Vance, an anti-abortion and America First zealot with "all the fascist instincts of Trump but a better brain," to be VP and toss out election results they don't like. Despite having called Trump a "cynical asshole," the "fruit of the party's collective neglect," "loathsome," "cultural heroin," and most famously "America's Hitler," Vance stepped boldly up to charge that Biden likening Trump to Hitler "led directly to Trump’s attempted assassination." An authoritarian piece of work, he's raged against the "childless left," called rape "an inconvenience" and universal day care "class war," praised Alex Jones as "a truth-teller," and opined "the devil is real." Tell us about it. Hear a scorching, hilarious Trae Browder, who once hung out with Vance trashing Trump as an "existential threat to America," on "a Machiavellian sycophant with less integrity than a Boeing 737" only good at "when, where and to what precise angle he should bend over. Fuck J.D."

Fans (again) claim Trump's magically pivoted into a somber, presidential figure - Tucker Carlson: "Getting shot in the face changes a man" - but he seemed the same arrogant asshole as he lumbered into the first day of the GOP convention "like he just survived the Tet offensive." As Lee Greenwood sang "God Bless the USA," he was met with cheers that lit up his lumpy face like an 8-year-old basking in the love he'd always wanted from his Nazi dad but never got. He wore an oversized bandage on his war wound - "the doctor said he never saw anything like it" - widely mocked as an "ear diaper" and a Mr. Pillow mini-pillow he reportedly didn't wear golfing the next day; still, rabid fans donned their own "Maxi-pad of courage" in solidarity. As the warrior hero entered, many in the crowd chanted, “Fight, fight, fight!" with arms straight up, Nazi-style. Soon he was seen asleep. "Should we be traumatized by his shooting?," a viewer asked "for a nation tired of double standards," "or just pretend it was a school shooting and get over it?"

Unsurprisingly for a convention of bigots, yahoos and Putin apologists offering nothing but hate and fear, the lofty "let's lower the temperature and unite" shtick quickly evaporated. Wisconsin's Ron Johnson opened the speeches by blasting a Democratic "radical far-left agenda" that poses "a clear and present danger to America," only to later mumble it was a pre-shooting attack mistakenly loaded into the teleprompter. But he did unapologetically trash "biological males competing against girls," the "sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” and the fact we're "horribly divided and it's all about Critical Race Theory," thought it's unclear how a white Republican man shooting a white Republican man fits that charge. "Democrats wanted this to happen," MTG screeched of the shooting. ”The Democrat (sic) Party is flat out evil (and) they tried to murder President Trump," but God saved him, also "there are only two genders." Tim Scott: "A devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but a lion got back on his feet and he roared.”

While the event's general refrain was "Fire the Biden/Harris regime," each day had a theme. The first was "Make America Wealthy Again," wherein people raged about "Biden's inflation" and touted Trump's (fictional) "rip-roaring economy," which even before COVID was disastrous: The worst jobs president ever, he oversaw soaring unemployment, cratering GNP and fat-cat tax cuts that caused most of today's inflation. Hate-and-fear-mongering seeped in around the edges. Repulsive Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, born to a rich family in Colombia who immigrated here as a child, said "the American dream I lived is under attack" from Biden's "millions of illegals...They’ll destroy America if we don’t stop them." Improbably, they all just got more loathsome, from vicious and whining Don. Jr to Ted Cruz - "Your family is less safe" - to Kari Lake - "Build the wall!" though it doesn't work - to MTG: "They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday!" Cue booing hordes and smirking Marge.

In the end, everyone drank the Kool-Aid and kissed the ring, from Rod DeFascist to Nikki Haley: "We have a country to save." Some reality TV person wailed her parents were serving time for millions in fraud because of "rogue prosecutors" and what about Hunter? Mike Johnson lauded his "law and order team" headed by a 34-count felon, and quickly walked off the stage when a teleprompter broke even though he'd just blasted Biden for needing a teleprompter. Keynote speakers included a puppy killer and a model who preaches Satanism, Dems were "far-left lunatics fueling ludicrous hysteria," trans jokes were told, Rudy Giuliani fell drunk to the floor, a bickering Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy almost came to blows after Gaetz kept interrupting and taunting MCarthy, probably because he insisted Gaetz be investigated for sleeping with a minor, until an exasperated bystander repeatedly urged Gaetz, "Don't be an asshole," a big ask. A good, nasty, toxic, other-hating time was had by all.

On Tuesday, about a mile from a convention patrolled by about 4,000 law enforcement but within its "operational zone," five police officers from Columbus, Ohio shot and killed an unhoused man fighting with another man in an unrelated encounter. One of them may or may not have pulled a knife; when they began scuffling, witnesses said both men were startled to see over 100 cops quickly appear. The man killed, nicknamed Jehovah, was well-known in a nearby tent encampment where about 70 people live; he had a pit bull later seen being loaded into a police van. A volunteer worker said Jehovah had used an on-site showerthe day before, and when he left he said, "I love you guys." "He was a person. He was human," she said. "This is more trauma on top of trauma." The same day, police arrested a Florida man with mental health issues for making multiple threats against Joe Biden to "slit his throat." Both events took place on the convention's second day; its theme was, "Make America Safe Once Again."

On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a pained, eloquent Robert Kennedy spoke to the Cleveland City Club about the "mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land (and) our lives." In a "mournful cadence," writes David Remnick, Kennedy urged we remember that "those who live with us are our brothers....Surely we can learn (to) look at those around us as fellow men and begin to work a little harder (to) bind up the wounds among us." Kennedy decried "a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity," the access to weapons to "men of all shades of sanity," the urge to find scapegoats or conspiracies, the mob that's "only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people." "Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer," he argued, "Only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul." Two months later, he was shot and killed at 42.