CSotD: Marching to Shibboleth

Eric Allie (Counterpoint) promotes “they,” the imaginary political scapegoat currently being used to exploit the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

It might have been a reasonable guess in the early going, but it’s increasingly obvious that there is no “they” and that Thomas Crook was no more a political operative than Lynnette Fromme.

In fact, he may have been less of one. Fromme at least had the semi-political motivation of killing the president as revenge for the prosecution of Charles Manson.

Crook was apparently also checking out Biden, Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray as potential targets and it appears he simply wanted to shoot someone famous.

To be fair, the current flood of uninformed lunatic speculation is bipartisan, with both rightwingers and leftwingers promoting the notion that the shooting was faked or that there was a second shooter or that Crook had magic bullets or whathaveyou. Between paranoid delusions and half-understood reality and that ever-present urge to know more than anyone else, there’s no lack of nonsense to be had, as is usual in the wake of any major event.

Still, those who are paid to voice opinions have an obligation to at least attempt accuracy. Those who promote the concept that there is a “they” behind this event, or even just that Thomas Crook had a coherent political mission, should provide at least a fig leaf of evidence.

Yes, Trump’s opponents have painted him as a threat and as a bad person, but so have Biden’s. The level of hateful rhetoric is high on both sides, but they is we as you are he and we are all together. See how they run like pigs from a gun, and, BTW, John Lennon’s assailant wasn’t inspired by partisan political rhetoric either.

There was, in the wake of the shooting, supposed to be an effort to calm things down at the RNC Convention the next week, but, as Matt Davies suggests, it was hard to put a soft tone on intentions already established for a potential GOP administration.

Juxtaposition of the Day

Keith Knight

Marty Two Bulls

Trump has been evasive about the connection between his candidacy and the extremist proposals of Project 2025.

As Knight suggests in a piece that appeared on July 10, and as Trump had expressed in a speech some time ago, he was enthusiastic about it until, as Two Bulls says, it began getting pushback, at which point he claimed not to even know it exists.

Juxtaposition of the Day #2

Chip Bok — Creators

Ann Telnaes

Politics makes strange bedfellows, and you’re unlikely to see a more surprising combination than Bok and Telnaes, but they both note how Trump’s speech at the RNC was supposed to cool things down but, instead, he went right back to his usual divisive rants with dubious claims and nasty insults.

Bok calls the speech boring while Telnaes goes for labeling it unhinged, but they agree that he went off the rails. To have the pair agree on anything is unsettling and suggests that things have come to a disturbing point of clarity.

Michael Ramirez (Creators) doesn’t seem to find anything amusing in how the RNC Convention played out and adopts a somber tone to announce the death of the traditional Republican Party.

I guess you had to be there.

Martyn Turner suggests that the GOP pool has become remarkably shallow, at least in terms of credible members who could serve as a running mate for Dear Leader.

Fortunately, Dave Granlund points out, what JD Vance lacks in character and experience, he makes up for in ambition, which may not be as good as loyalty but functions much the same.

Brian McFadden’s usual long-form cartoons often force him to mix strong and weak panels, but in this case, he makes even more points than usual and scores repeatedly.

Vance is not so much the elephant whom six blind men judge differently depending on what part they seize, but, rather, a collection of statements and positions any combination of which could be seen as disqualifying.

The claims of a middleclass, suburban-raised Yalie to hardscrabble Appalachian roots is consistent, Pat Bagley would agree, with the GOP’s overall claim to be part of blue collar America, despite its being firmly in the pocket of major corporations and well-backed plutocratic PACs.

Elsewhere on the Political Spectrum

If the Republicans are no longer the Party of Lincoln or any of its giants, Lalo Alcaraz (AMS) points out that the Democrats are still very much the Party of McGovern and Dukakis, determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I’ve become agnostic on the issue of whether Biden steps down, but the longer the question hangs in the air, the more I think of Thomas Eagleton and how in 1972 McGovern declared “I’m behind him 1000%” just before tossing him, and Democrat chances, into the oubliette.

At least Democrats then had the dubious excuse that Nixon’s ratf***ers had successfully wiped out Muskie and other credible candidates and left McGovern as the sole survivor.

This time around, as Dave Whamond suggests, they’re facing a candidate who poses an obvious threat to the nation’s political system as well as to large portions of the electorate, but rather than making that the issue of the coming campaign, they’ve chosen instead to divide and conquer each other.

I’m not an expert in political strategy, but “Our Man Can’t Possibly Win” just doesn’t seem like a good campaign slogan, and I’m not convinced that “Never Mind: How About This Guy?” is much of an improvement.

Obama often said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” but Democrats continue to search for the perfect candidate. It’s not a question of whether Biden should be running for a second term. It’s a question of whether they should have raised the issue a year ago rather than now.

Is there someone they could nominate this late in the game and still have a chance of winning? Absolutely! But the courts would have to rule, because Taylor Swift turns 35 in December, after the elections but before Inauguration Day.

We’re stumbling towards forming a united country where, as Christopher Weyant observes, “unity” means believing as it was written: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”