HOUSEKEEPING
It’s less than a week since I finished my first silent meditation retreat. Fresh from putting my meditation money where my fool hardship-is-good-for-you mouth is, I still have the distinct— and novel— sensation of the real world seeping back into my consciousness.
Not that it’s something I’m looking to stave off. I’m a long way from it, but the zen proverb ‘enlightenment then laundry’ underlines both our inescapable material reality and the infinite lessons to be derived from it.
What is, perhaps not surprising, but still counterintuitive when you consider my relative level of physical activity, (any) interactions and broader engagement with the outside world, is that this feels less like returning to reality than leaving it.
More drifting off to sleep than waking up. A drowsing effect. Although not one as strong, evidently, as that experienced by those subject to hearing my stories about it. Fair warning that I’ll write about the whole experience in more detail at some point but I’m still processing it. Still recovering, in fact.
After ten days off-grid I’ve been playing catchup and while I did have a piece almost ready to go today, in choosing not to offset my meditative calm with any self-inflicted frazzle I’ve pushed it to next week.
Today I’m going off the cuff with news of the moment— and the first item of interest raised to me on my return to the real world last Sunday:
Did you know Trump has been shot?
And following a lengthy, gleeful pause to let that marinate…
But he’s okay.
No. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. And while suitably shocked I had two missed All Blacks test matches to catch up on so it wasn’t until I got the important stuff out of the way that I got to learning more about it.
Only the more I learned, the less I knew, because— beyond somebody wanting Trump dead— nothing makes sense here.
How does somebody with a rifle get to an elevated position within a kilometre, let alone a mere 150 odd yards with a direct line of sight to a presidential candidate?
The building itself was being used as a staging area for law enforcement but the barely sloping roof ruled it out for any security presence. Apparently. It should still have been secured from the rather less concerned with their safety— if not suicidal— types as we might assume those prepared to take a potshot at a presidential candidate might be.
Already noted as a ‘person of interest’ over an hour before the shooting, and with a rangefinder 40 minutes prior, Crooks was seen on the roof by people in the crowd who then advised local law enforcement at least 2 minutes before the shots.
Police were reportedly unable to get to him but, failing that, all one of them had to do was fire a shot in the air. There were snipers around so that’s a risky business, certainly, but you could hold your badge up in one hand, and fire one or more shots before putting the weapon down. That would have got Trump off stage and out of the firing line.
In any event— and all more grist for the conspiratorial mill— the shooter gets to the roof. He gets seen. And still gets off a volley of shots.
How does he then miss? I reckon if I had two minutes I could (not even demonstrate) but tell somebody who had never fired a rifle before how to make that shot from a lying position.
You make allowances for nerves, sure, but wind?—hardly. And nor was the rangefinder required. Look out a window— it’s the end of the street. Just over there. Ridiculously close for a rifle shot.
Then pandemonium. Which is to be expected from everybody except the Secret Service. But in keeping with their performance up to that point they looked just as well-drilled after. Their delay in getting Trump off the stage can, perhaps, be explained as an assessment of a chaotic situation, what can’t be, is their failure to secure Trump even then.
No doubt there’s some political opportunism behind those saying DEI was a factor here, but it’s hardly cynical much less misogynistic, but only reasonable to ask the question after a director has herself said diversity was a focus and then oversees a shit show like this on her watch.
This being precisely the corner you paint yourself into when you raise the idea of anything but merit getting you the gig in any domain, much less the big leagues. And, once again, how it’s those you purport to help that ultimately pay the price, as the all-male phalanx protecting Trump at his very next appearance in Milwaukee would seem to attest. Talk about damage the cause. Jesus.
In any case, it’s no time for niceties and you, sure as hell, aren’t taking directions—like, let me get my shoes— from your principal. If he’s not obeying instructions you are making him— with a headlock and forced march if necessary.
What you’re not doing is letting him stand up and stick his big head above the (bodyguard) parapet again. And then shuffling him offstage to a waiting vehicle only for him to do it again. Crooks had already been taken out and the close protection detail may have been advised of such via comms, but secondary gunmen are hardly unheard of and the now iconic images prove a shooter was offered at least two more opportunities.
Opportunities widely interpreted as courageous. I don’t suggest otherwise, but it would be more in keeping with his character to say defiant, or opportunist. Trump has long made the point he’s no politician and it was never more obvious: a politician would have stayed under cover. But whether by instinctive bluster or cold calculation, in true P.T. Barnum showman style, he capitalised on both.
Blood-smeared, fist-raised, flag-draped, fight. And by doing so has won this election 6 months out. And probably the next. I mean, how many election ads is that worth? And it will run for eternity.
There is nothing the Democrats can do now. Following the slow-motion-car-crash debate, I wrote that if Biden wasn’t replaced Trump would win. Even then, the question: replaced by whom?
All are either relative unknowns that would struggle to unite the party much less the country or have clear and exploitable points of failure.
Harris: every time she opens her mouth.
Newsom: The downward spiral of California under his governance
It’s also likely that rather than a straight pick they would go through the motions of a primary meaning a Royal Rumble-slinging match in which they spend two weeks of critical campaign time bringing all the reasons they are unsuitable front and centre, airing each other’s dirty laundry and giving Trump all the ammo you could dream of.
However unlikely, there was a joker in the pack. Not any more. The in-emergency-break glass situation has been and gone and Michelle Obama would only squander whatever political capital she might have by running now. She too, would lose. It’s game over.
If you think that’s farfetched: that people have a bit more common sense than to be swayed by the emotion even of an undeniably historical event, but one that, nevertheless, doesn’t change who Trump is and what he represents, you’re right.
About some people. And wrong about many more. And that would be so anywhere on earth. But Americans, God love ‘em, are a special case. In his fantastic 2017 book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, Kurt Andersen delves into the uniquely American psyche: one particularly susceptible to the power of stories and how it has led to a society where belief often trumps fact. America is founded on the back of two promises: Heaven and gold. And by people motivated by those stories to the nth degree, to act on them. And act on them seriously. Not merely religious but Puritan. Not just reading about the gold rush, but joining it. And who through self-selection— not the local church or going to work in the mines — but by setting sail for a new world, set the stage for a society deeply influenced by myths, dreams, and fantastical thinking.
Making this near miss with all its associated imagery pure nectar.
Trump is the chosen one. Some have always believed it, but those he lost through his stolen election antics, and many more undecided will come rushing back to the fold, because never before have we seen the anointing on live television and replayed ad nauseam.
Frankly, in light of the constellation of improbabilities that have given rise to it, it’s hard not to believe it. But then, that, above all is Trump. An inversion of reality. One impossibility after the next that, somehow, continually manifests into the real. The piece of toast deliberately dropped butter side down that forever flips right side up.
Nobody has done more to raise the spectre of political violence in US politics since he arrived on the scene. That he becomes both victim and beneficiary of it is but one more example of that textbook Trumpian reversal of cause and effect. If that doesn’t stick in your craw he’s now playing peacemaker and decrying political violence and can’t we all just get along?
Making a meal of it. He’ll revert to type sooner than later, he won’t be able to keep up the charade, nevertheless, Trump 2.0 is here and we better get used to it. And, in one respect, at least, be thankful for it.
I’m no fan, but with jaw on the floor last Sunday morning, in those few seconds before — he’s okay— was added, none of the implications playing out in my Trump-is-dead head were good.
We all dodged that bullet.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI