I have plenty to say right now, but…

[solarbird]

Let’s face it, anything too analytic I have to say about anything but the assassination attempt will get swamped. So here are a few thoughts on that, starting with what we appear to know Sunday morning:

• Yep, sure was a registered Republican. That’s solidly confirmed.
• White, male, apparently cis (certainly gender-confirming), thank fuck for that
• HOLY SHIT DEMOLITION RANCH T-SHIRT HOLY SHIRTBALLS WTF (YouTube gun enthusiast channel, look it up)
• There’s an image of an Instagram profile going around THAT COULD BE BULLSHIT, WE DON’T KNOW RIGHT NOW. If it is real, it paints a motive of a very Christian person who was very aware of Epstein’s crimes and could well have been set off by the Trump-Epstein connections, of which there are a lot. This one makes a lot of sense to me, but WE DON’T KNOW IF THAT SCREENSHOT IS REAL YET. But we will in a day or two. Maybe even later today. But at time of writing, we don’t.
• Various agents – directly Trumpian, Russian, Iranian probably, Mainland Chinese probably – are absolutely flooding the zone with shit, as Bannon likes to say, and as they always are to maximise confusion and anger. Remember that.

A few thoughts, all of which are blunt:

• PANICKY BASTARDS, please remember that this does NOT give Trump the election, like some of you are going off about. Nazi dickholes killing Martin Luther King, Jr. and RFK didn’t cost Nixon the ’68 election, now did it? Yeah, sucks to be on the “like Nixon” side of this comparison but it’s still worth remembering.
• RETURN-TO-NORMALCY NITWITS: There were a lot of assassination attempts on Hitler, too, a few of which came really close to success and were very obvious. This neither made him a better person nor calmed down either him OR his party. Trump’s still the same monstrously evil fuck he was yesterday and no plans have actually been changed.
• CONSPIRACY CRANKS: For fuck’s sake, this was not a kayfabe. Look, I understand the impulse, I do. I really do. But the man is a coward. He just is. There’s no way in hell he’d risk live fire in the direction of himself, or even near it. It is not a “shock” that an amateur, under- or self-trained sniper missed, it’s frankly more of a surprise that he got as close as he did. Speaking as someone who has been a member of a gun club and was considered a pretty good shot, it’s not as easy to hit those as television and movies make you think.

Over the next day or two, more of this will become better confirmed and more clarified. Until then, keep your shit together as we all try to figure out what and how. And most of all, remember:

None of this makes Trump a better person or more fit for the office.

None of it. Remind people of that. He’s still the Day One Dictator, the man promising – explicitly! – mass deportations and de facto military occupations of blue states that will target 20 million people or more. He’s still the man promising to ramp up climate change as far as he can for his oil company friends, survivability be damned. He’s still the man running on a platform to wipe out trans people and he’s still the man who absolutely will let the fash end abortion nationally and go after birth control.

None of that has changed.

Do not fucking surrender, and don’t let people forget who he is, because they will try.

Particularly not your Trump friends and family, who we all must still try to rope back into reality, or if we can’t manage that, at least … reel in a bit. Dampen their enthusiasm. Get them not to send that money, or encourage their friends to do the same.

Game’s still on. Take a day if you need to, but then get back out there.

113 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[jessie_c]

Cue up all the republicans screaming about needing gun control now that their drear leader has been shot at.

any

minute

now...

[solarbird]

You realise, of course, that that's the Republican third rail. You will not see it.

[jessie_c]

I expect that we'll see the same as we've seen when the Republicans celebrated his guilty verdict, or when they decried the Supreme Court's immunity decision.

[conuly]

Yep, sure was a registered Republican. That’s solidly confirmed.

They're gonna say that doesn't mean shit.

For fuck’s sake, this was not a kayfabe. Look, I understand the impulse, I do. I really do. But the man is a coward. He just is. There’s no way in hell he’d risk live fire in the direction of himself, or even near it.

I agree, though I wouldn't put it past one of those dipshits to think they were doing him a fucking favor and not bother to inform the man himself.

[armiphlage]

If they WERE going to fake an assasination, then we'd have seen two puffs from his chest as squibs ignited, then claims that his bulletproof vest stopped the rounds. Nobody sane would try to do it with actual ammunition.

[conuly]

> Nobody sane would try to do it with actual ammunition.

Nobody sane would use live ammunition on a movie set, not nowadays, and yet....

Again, I'm definitely not suggesting that the Trump crew set this up themselves. Somebody has to have enough good sense to kibbosh that, even if Trump wasn't, as noted, a scaredy-cat. (Well, can't blame him in this case.) But while I do think it's a low probability I wouldn't be that shocked it if turned out that one of his rabid followers, after obsessing over the idea that the "deep state" does false flag operations all the time and that a "good guy with a gun" has magical aiming skills, decided to put both those ridiculous ideas into practice on his own, figuring it would all work out.

Would that be the dumbest shit anybody ever did? Oh, fuck yeah. But people don't join strongman demi-fascist movements because they're so levelheaded or rational.

[conuly]

Of course, if that is how it shakes out - again, low probability but not zero! - then let's hope the doofus didn't write his plans down or the Trumpettes will jump all over that evidence as paradoxical proof that he was set up, that he only joined the Republican party as cover for his nefarious plans, that he was paid off, etc.

Better he should be a random gun lover with no reason that makes sense to anybody.

[jessie_c]

Nobody sane
...which would seem to exclude today's Republican Party given their track record.

[dewline]

I'm going to stay focused on keeping the Trudeau-Singh supply-and-confidence arrangement going up here in Canada. We've gotten a lot of good policy changes in place as a result, and despite my NDP cohort understandably wanting to actually form a government one of these federal elections...right now, it's still dangerously close to getting Pierre Poilievre - who wants very badly to be Trump's Canadian Crony-In-Chief - installed as Crime Minister of Canada next year. Knocking a few more Conservatives and Bloc Québecois people out of their seats in the House of Commons makes for a more realistic goal.