Calm the Hell Down!

Note: I shoved this baby out fast, so please forgive the inevitable typos!

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A horrible thing has happened, and way too many grown-ass adults who should know better went completely ‘round the bend looney toons bonkers and god, I wish they’d stop!

Reality

What happened is a crazy guy shot at former president Donald Trump and killed at least one bystander. This is terrible. Political violence is anti-democratic and dangerous. It must always be unequivocally condemned. I happen to dislike Trump, and I am horrified that anyone would try and kill him. That is immoral and dangerous for our nation. Any other reaction is evil or stupid or both.

Like this obscene tweet from popular streamer Destiny (currently with 4.4k likes). A man died, a human with a family and loved ones who will mourn him, and Destiny tosses off the tragedy with a childish edgelord tweet. I understand how people end up seeing the lives of their fellow Americans as mere check marks on an “us” or “them” team roster, but I reject this inhuman mindset.

I’m sure Destiny is a decent guy in other contexts. He probably hugs his girlfriend and buys his buddies goofy birthday presents.¹ I’ve heard him speak passionately about peace in the Middle East. But he’s got full-on partisan brain, and like most of us, he’s pretty good at dehumanizing anyone on the other side.

Conspiracies have a field day

A big thing happened, so of course, there were the conspiracies, and spreading conspiracies is very, very, very bad!

This guy puts it well.

Well said, Mr. Wise!

Not like this guy.

Oops. Same guy. Awkward!

Lots of people don’t really hate conspiracy theories. They just hate OTHER people’s conspiracy theories!

And man, what a bonkers theory this one is. No, it was not a fake assassination attempt. Trump operatives didn’t hire some loser to climb on top of a building even though he had to know he would certainly die after he fired a bullet from FOUR HUNDRED FEET AWAY that was somehow guaranteed to only nick the president so he could then make his iconic fist bump of victory.

“Hello, sad, unbalanced loser who happens to have amazing aim with a rifle?”

“Yessir!”

“We have a little job for you.”

“I’ll do it, sir!”

And guns don’t work that way. Yes, I’m told a good marksman can hit a target at 400 feet, but there’s going to be a little randomness, wind, target movement, hiccups. Your circle of accuracy is gonna be a couple of inches. Do you think Trump is really going to risk that bullet being one inch off target? Fuggedaboutit.

“You’re right, Carl. That’s a dumb theory. The reality is the Democrats deliberately tried to kill him.”

Oh my. I hope there aren’t any fringe randos spreading THAT theory!

No randos. Just the richest man in the world, racking up half a million likes for batshit nuttery.

Look, this theory is a hair better than the first one because some people do want Trump dead, but it still has the problem of finding that loser and convincing him to commit suicide for your cause. Then add in all the people who’d have to be on the payroll to make sure everything went according to plan. And THEN add in the idea that they’d all keep their mouths shut because humans are so damn good at keeping secrets.²

Musk’s incompetence argument is better but far from proven.

Guarding a president is HARD. Four presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy), and others came pretty close to dying. (If Hinkley had been a slightly better shot, President Reagan would have been number five.) The Secret Service is supposed to be good, but they don’t have unlimited manpower. They can’t drop 1,000 agents onto every field to cover every single approach. Yes, after the fact, it seems pretty dumb that they left that roof open, but it’s easy to see holes after someone’s gone through them. There’s a fair chance they marked that area as local law enforcement’s responsibility, and then the po-po messed up. Or maybe it was a Secret Service screw-up. We just don’t know. Let’s wait for the full investigation before we start using our mad Photoshop skillz to scrawl little red circles and arrows on satellite maps.

It’s the media!

Lots of people were raging over early headlines like this one:

Yeah, that seems kinda dumb, but you have to remember this was in the early moments after the attack. While an assassination attempt seemed the most likely reality, nobody knew for sure. When I first saw the video, I wondered if Trump was ducking in response to firecrackers. His reactions seemed too slow for it to have been bullets. Of course, I didn’t say anything like that because I know better than to jump to conclusions!

The smart thing for the media to do is to NOT jump to conclusions, even obvious ones, because they might turn out wrong! As they often are. Remember the Jussie Smollet attack? Or the Pulse Nightclub shooting? The first never happened, while the second turns out to have not been a homophobic attack.³ I don’t blame the media for getting those wrong at first, but it’s a reminder that taking care is always good.

Why did people want the media to rush to judgment? The most common argument I heard was that the media, for ideological reasons, was somehow trying to play down the fact that Trump had been shot, so they were saying things like he “fell.”

Seriously? You think the media wants to cover up a shooting? A shooting?!? A thing that will get them zillions of page views? Are you utterly mad? Do you think they would turn down free money? Editors salivate for adrenaline-pumping stories like this one! And even if they wanted to (madness), they have to KNOW there is no way they can play down PRESIDENT TRUMP BEING SHOT!

Yes, in the past the media has sometimes skewed stories out of bias. Liberal papers, for example, have often mentioned the race of a victim of police violence only when it wasn’t white. That’s bad. But if you think that means they’d play down an assassination attempt, you are living in Conspiracy Land! (Also, the shooter was white!)

Political implications

Maybe there are political implications. But do you really think you know what those implications are 15 minutes after the dude was shot? Do you really have to spew your theory that Trump is going to be president because of those iconic photos?

It was badass. I mean, c’mon, it was. And so? Who’s it going to thrill? His fans?

Sure, this dude is stoked, but I’m pretty sure he was going to vote for Trump anyway. My gut feeling is the attempt will help Trump’s chances, but I also know that America is incredibly divided, and most people’s votes are already set in stone. Biden could have been photographed holding the rifle, and Democrats would still vote against Trump!

It’s also bad taste to be talking politics while a tragedy is unfolding. Can’t you wait at least until the morning after?

And to all the “America is doomed” tweeters, an assassination attempt doesn’t mean America is over as a civilized nation. Scroll back up. We’ve had FOUR presidents actually assassinated, along with numerous other attempts. Poor Gerald Ford had TWO attempts on his life within a few weeks of each other! America survived all that!

Listen to Nick.

It was the heated rhetoric!

You know what? It might have been! There have been way too many nasty words funneled into our collective brain, and that can’t be good, and it’s obvious that we should all be calming the fuck down (although, sadly, we won’t).

But while some rhetoric goes much too far—do we really have to call Trump (or Biden) Hitler?—there’s no proof that any particular words set this lunatic off. Remember, one thing we know for sure is that the shooter was crazy (suicide by Secret Service is not a button sane people push). Reagan got shot because some guy was nuts about Jodie Foster. Do we cancel all her movies? (I mean, I think she’s overrated as an actress, but she’s done good stuff. I liked “Inside Job.”)

We should keep two things in mind. First, we’re allowed to criticize leaders, especially when we think they’ve done bad stuff! Not allowing us to lambaste important people is anti-speech! What if they actually did the stuff we’re accusing them of doing? Can’t we say that’s bad?

I know some of you think Trump didn’t do anything wrong, but Jesse disagrees! As do I! I don’t think Trump is Hitler, and gloating about his possible death is awful, but there is plenty of legitimate criticism of his behavior after his 2020 electoral defeat. That you may disagree with these critiques doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be heard!

And second, remember that a lot of that heated rhetoric is coming from inside the house! Is Trump posting a video with an image of Biden tied up in the back of a truck promoting calm, non-violent discourse? Doesn’t seem like it!

Calm the fuck down

So, could everyone just chill? An attempted assassination is bad. Gloating about it is bad. Drawing instant conclusions about it is bad. Conspiracy theories are very bad.

It’s been a maddening 18 hours, but one thing that soothes me is realizing that much of the madness is Twitter-centric. Yes, a lot of people off social media are also going a bit cray-cray, but most folks are going to spend today going about their normal lives. My bodega guy is still going to make awkward small talk with me. Delivery dudes will still bring your Seamless order. Your mother-in-law will still paste on that saccharine smile when she greets you at the door tonight. Normality continues.

And for those who still want to jabber? Maybe read Nate Silver’s post-assassination-attempt tweet and then go out for a nice long walk.

1. I’m thinking giant stuffed walruses or velcro business suits. The man is rich; he can afford some really funky gifts!

2. I don’t even tell my own girlfriend what’s hidden on the top shelf of my bedroom closet! If she reads this, I could be in trouble. Hi honey!

3. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/5/17202026/pulse-shooting-lgbtq-trump-terror-hate