The Witness Chronicles, September 16, 2024

Advocating violence will bring violence to you

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

Another Nutty Dude With a Gun

He is a Nikki Haley supporter?

Good grief. As much as I dislike Donald Trump, I don’t want anyone to shoot him and I certainly won’t make ‘jokes’ about it like monster brain Elon Musk. But what are we supposed to do about weird loner guys who buy AK47s and decide to go shoot a candidate for president?

Well, first of all, don’t let people buy these things. No one needs an assault rifle because they are designed for…assaulting things. But I won’t win that argument, even after both Trump assassination attempts, because both shooters are/were obviously mentally ill.

And, inconveniently for Trump attack squads, neither shooter was a Democrat or an immigrant or an infuriated woman. It appears that both leaned right, if anything, and both have serious mental health issues, one a loner boy and the other just a serious wack job who apparently wanted to see Nikki Haley as the candidate.

Somehow I never would have seen Haley as the inspiration for an assassination attempt.

If you read me regularly, you know that I have come to expect another bizarre story to emerge every day of this election cycle, and it certainly has not disappointed. Yesterday it was JD Vance basically admitting he was willing to make up stories about migrants eating pets just to get media attention. And now some wacko sets himself up on a golf course with a gun and a GoPro video camera.

We also had Trump’s I Hate Taylor Swift thing, which struck no one as a useful statement but nothing he says these days is useful. Thank god it was not a crazed Swiftie out there on the course with a long gun.

This Monday morning, with this latest twist in the news, I have yet to see some MAGA chatter about how this is proof that Biden and the Dems are behind this, but it will be coming (that didn’t take long, Trump just made that claim). My suggestion for the Trump people is keep him off the golf course, though I doubt they have any ability to make that happen.

I would give an impassioned plea that shooting at people is not the way to get what you want from an election, but it wouldn’t matter because these people are not logical, they are mentally unstable. Unless a shooter is a professional, like in the movies, there is no logic behind this stuff.

There has been a predictable reaction from the Trump campaign. They immediately began trying to raise money from the news. No big surprise there. They see everything as a fundraising opportunity, a sad commentary on the state of political operatives in the US today. It’s always about the money.

I want this thing to be over and I’m not alone. We have actual real problems to deal with like the imminent government shutdown that Republican House members are doing nothing to resolve. And the weather, which those same Republicans seem to think is normal. It’s not.

If anything wins this thing for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, it may be this growing need for something normal. The Republicans and their leader are so far from normal that it seems they no longer know what normal is. To them we are living in a dystopian hell, though the rest of us are not really seeing it.

Do I really think they believe that? No I don’t, but they made the choice to run with that and now they are surrounded with it. But these two attempts on Trump’s life seem to have their origins in his own speech and his own vision of vengeance and fear and the need for attention at any cost.

This has to stop and he has to be stopped. But not with a gun.

This is from a reader supported newsletter. Please consider helping out by upgrading to a paid subscription or donating a small amount through Buy Me A Coffee, a site for small financial contributions. Thanks, ME