I suppose that some visitors to this blog are wondering why I have not commented on the Trump assassination attempt.
At this time the details about the protective measures are still sketchy, but those details garnered from various sources hint at failures in planning and communication that contributed to the circumstances allowing the attack. Questions also linger about the relationship between the parents and their would be assassin son. According to AI, they are “certified behavioral health counselors.” How do such specialists not have a hint that a would be assassin is living in the house? And then there are questions about the leadership of the Secret Service, questions about competence and motive. With regard to motive for protective levels, questions arise in the context of the White House’s (Biden’s?) denying secret service protection to candidate RFK, Jr., who has a family history of failed protection and who as a candidate has received death threats. (Protection, I recently heard, has been extended to him since the attempted assassination in Butler and the leak that Iran had plotted to assassinate Trump)
TDS
With so many unanswered questions in mind, I turn instead to the news coverage by MSNBC pundits. Their hatred of all things Trump is blatant. That they have minimized the seriousness of the assassination attempt because of the—as labeled by Fauci—superficial wound and that they have even questioned whether Trump was actually hit by a bullet, indicate a blind hatred.
Curiosity about this hatred led me to Wikipedia, where I found:
“The origin of the term [Trump Derangement Syndrome] is traced to conservative political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, who coined the phrase Bush derangement syndrome in 2003 …That ‘syndrome’ was defined by Krauthammer as ‘the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush'.[10][11][12][13] The first use of the term Trump derangement syndrome may have been by Esther Goldberg in an August 2015 in an op-ed in The American Spectator; she applied the term to ‘Ruling Class Republicans’ who are dismissive or contemptuous of Trump.[14] Krauthammer, in an op-ed harshly criticizing Trump, commented that—in addition to general hysteria about Trump—the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was the "inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and ... signs of psychic pathology" in his behavior.[13]"
Definition
"Fareed Zakaria defined the syndrome as ‘hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people's judgment.’
Historical Derangement Syndromes
Visceral responses to American political leaders are not new phenomena, as the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy and the attempted assassinations of Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, Ford, Bush, and Obama reveal (HInckley’s motivation in shooting Reagan was different). Did the Press have some role in driving those visceral motives? Maybe, but in the pre-social media eras probably not to the extent that today’s media drives hatred toward political leaders. And the difference in degree, if not in kind, stems from the ironic proliferation of false or distorted information in an age when more information is available to more literate people than in any previous era. However, distorted and false information itself is nothing new. Jefferson wrote that “"nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
To the mainstream media’s influence over visceral responses we can add today’s numerous anonymous commentators on social media who trumpet anti-Trump feelings. The plethora of “nattering nabobs of negativism,” to use VP Spiro Agnew’s term, floods the Web with hate for what or for whom they dislike, making this an Age of Hate that shows no signs of fading into peaceful oblivion.
Comedian Pundits’ Subtle Influence
The proliferation of anti-Republican comedians has been increasingly met with the rise of anti-Democrat comedians. The reason for mentioning this lies in the pundit-like influence comedians have over their audiences. The large TV audiences of the liberal-leaning late-night comedians has given them a venue largely unmatched by individual standup comedians not backed by networks. Comedy is a subtle way to spread influence. For example, SNL’s Chevy Chase made fun of athletic Gerald Ford’s slight stumble, whereas no late-night comedian has made fun of Biden’s numerous trips and falls, and the same can be said for late-night satirists making fun of VP Quayle’s misspelling of potatoes, but not satirizing VP Harris’s many tautological word salads and nonsensical statements delivered as profundities. ("When we talk about the children of the community, they are the children of the community”)
In the Context of the Last Five Decades of Punditry and Comedy
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, might have been the product of such broadcast hatred, but that is an idle and unsubstantiated speculation. Assigning blame to a hateful Press and entertainment industry is a risky business in the absence of direct confirmation. Yet, such hate was indeed the context of the outside world Crooks had known all his life. That he reportedly had registered as a Republican but given $15 to Democrats is hardly evidence that he was influenced to act by hateful punditry. He might have been looking for attention just as Hinckley sought attention from Jodie Foster when he shot Reagan.
So, assigning blame, even to Trump’s many enemies, is nothing more than idle speculation. The reality we know is that a young man seemed to have planned and carried out an attack without help, that authorities had weaknesses in their security plans and execution, and that it was a fortuitous turn of the head that saved Trump’s life.
And thus ends my “no comment” blog.
At this time the details about the protective measures are still sketchy, but those details garnered from various sources hint at failures in planning and communication that contributed to the circumstances allowing the attack. Questions also linger about the relationship between the parents and their would be assassin son. According to AI, they are “certified behavioral health counselors.” How do such specialists not have a hint that a would be assassin is living in the house? And then there are questions about the leadership of the Secret Service, questions about competence and motive. With regard to motive for protective levels, questions arise in the context of the White House’s (Biden’s?) denying secret service protection to candidate RFK, Jr., who has a family history of failed protection and who as a candidate has received death threats. (Protection, I recently heard, has been extended to him since the attempted assassination in Butler and the leak that Iran had plotted to assassinate Trump)
TDS
With so many unanswered questions in mind, I turn instead to the news coverage by MSNBC pundits. Their hatred of all things Trump is blatant. That they have minimized the seriousness of the assassination attempt because of the—as labeled by Fauci—superficial wound and that they have even questioned whether Trump was actually hit by a bullet, indicate a blind hatred.
Curiosity about this hatred led me to Wikipedia, where I found:
“The origin of the term [Trump Derangement Syndrome] is traced to conservative political columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, who coined the phrase Bush derangement syndrome in 2003 …That ‘syndrome’ was defined by Krauthammer as ‘the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush'.[10][11][12][13] The first use of the term Trump derangement syndrome may have been by Esther Goldberg in an August 2015 in an op-ed in The American Spectator; she applied the term to ‘Ruling Class Republicans’ who are dismissive or contemptuous of Trump.[14] Krauthammer, in an op-ed harshly criticizing Trump, commented that—in addition to general hysteria about Trump—the ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was the "inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and ... signs of psychic pathology" in his behavior.[13]"
Definition
"Fareed Zakaria defined the syndrome as ‘hatred of President Trump so intense that it impairs people's judgment.’
Historical Derangement Syndromes
Visceral responses to American political leaders are not new phenomena, as the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy and the attempted assassinations of Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, Ford, Bush, and Obama reveal (HInckley’s motivation in shooting Reagan was different). Did the Press have some role in driving those visceral motives? Maybe, but in the pre-social media eras probably not to the extent that today’s media drives hatred toward political leaders. And the difference in degree, if not in kind, stems from the ironic proliferation of false or distorted information in an age when more information is available to more literate people than in any previous era. However, distorted and false information itself is nothing new. Jefferson wrote that “"nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
To the mainstream media’s influence over visceral responses we can add today’s numerous anonymous commentators on social media who trumpet anti-Trump feelings. The plethora of “nattering nabobs of negativism,” to use VP Spiro Agnew’s term, floods the Web with hate for what or for whom they dislike, making this an Age of Hate that shows no signs of fading into peaceful oblivion.
Comedian Pundits’ Subtle Influence
The proliferation of anti-Republican comedians has been increasingly met with the rise of anti-Democrat comedians. The reason for mentioning this lies in the pundit-like influence comedians have over their audiences. The large TV audiences of the liberal-leaning late-night comedians has given them a venue largely unmatched by individual standup comedians not backed by networks. Comedy is a subtle way to spread influence. For example, SNL’s Chevy Chase made fun of athletic Gerald Ford’s slight stumble, whereas no late-night comedian has made fun of Biden’s numerous trips and falls, and the same can be said for late-night satirists making fun of VP Quayle’s misspelling of potatoes, but not satirizing VP Harris’s many tautological word salads and nonsensical statements delivered as profundities. ("When we talk about the children of the community, they are the children of the community”)
In the Context of the Last Five Decades of Punditry and Comedy
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, might have been the product of such broadcast hatred, but that is an idle and unsubstantiated speculation. Assigning blame to a hateful Press and entertainment industry is a risky business in the absence of direct confirmation. Yet, such hate was indeed the context of the outside world Crooks had known all his life. That he reportedly had registered as a Republican but given $15 to Democrats is hardly evidence that he was influenced to act by hateful punditry. He might have been looking for attention just as Hinckley sought attention from Jodie Foster when he shot Reagan.
So, assigning blame, even to Trump’s many enemies, is nothing more than idle speculation. The reality we know is that a young man seemed to have planned and carried out an attack without help, that authorities had weaknesses in their security plans and execution, and that it was a fortuitous turn of the head that saved Trump’s life.
And thus ends my “no comment” blog.
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