It’s Republicans’ Fault Trump was Shot
The Right has been quick to blame the Left for the possibly real attempted assassination of Donald Trump. As is virtually always the case, they are so full of shit they’re bursting at the seams. They have accused Democrats of stoking division and promoting violent rhetoric, citing that as what led to the alleged assassination attempt. Yet they are the ones who are always going on about how there’s a war for the survival of the country and describing their political rivals as enemies of the nation, sometimes as literal evil demonic forces. Biden has been grilled for using supposedly divisive language describing Trump. If you can’t say that your political opponent is a fascist and a threat to democracy, when basically all they do is say fascist and antidemocratic shit, then what the hell else are you supposed to say? Granted, Biden also said something about putting a “bull’s eye” on Trump, which turned out to be an unfortunate choice of phrase, but the idea that he, the Democratic party, or anyone on the Left bears more responsibility for a rise in political violence is disingenuous, silly, and a cynical lie.
Putting aside arguments over whose guiltier of name-calling and more responsible for negative rhetoric, there is no question that the Right wing in this country, the conservatives, the fascists, the Republicans, are guilty of enabling, if not outright promoting and encouraging, actual violence. If not for their actions on behalf of the gun industry, the kid that took a few shots in Trump’s general direction would not have been able to get his hands on an AR-15. If not for them, all the other mass shooters of recent decades would have stayed anonymous weirdos, or at most the fodder for an unfortunate but brief story on local news, not making national headlines and attaining universal notoriety for their acts of idiotic infamy.
The Right thrives on fear and propagates the majority of hateful and violent rhetoric in the political sphere, and they are responsible for the mass proliferation and easy accessibility of every killing machine they can squeeze into a willfully distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment. They are responsible for much of the violence and gun deaths in this country, political and otherwise, and they are responsible for the potentially genuine attempt on Trump’s life.
It is the demonstrated position of the Republicans that anyone should be allowed to have any gun they want and do with it whatever they want. One could say it’s principled that Trump has vowed to continue opposing and dismantling any kind of sensible firearms regulations after he was personally supposedly almost shot in the head, or one could say that it’s asinine and pathologically destructive. Trump was the one who got shot at, but it’s Biden who’s calling for an assault rifle ban. That could be the product of cognitive dissonance, or just the power of corruption for politicians who so value money over life, they theoretically even put it above their own.
In a perverse way, that’s almost admirable. Even when one of their own is almost on the receiving end, assuming the whole thing wasn’t staged and damn it we can’t assume that, instead of children or innocent people, the Right still doesn’t renege on their owners in the gun industry. For all their lies and hypocrisy, that’s some display of loyalty.