He might have zero military experience, he could've dodged every draft for every war in American history. Thanks to his quick media savvy, Donald Trump has cemented his image as warrior martyr president.
Trump really has had some incredible luck with his campaign, though mostly it's had to do with misguided strategy on the Left. The insistence on going with the safe choice of sitting president Joe Biden as candidate has backfired. Continued, elaborate P.R. wars against Trump have only served to make the Left look dishonest. It's all played so perfectly to creating a beleaguered martyr narrative for Trump, I'd be tempted to call it a conspiracy, though part of the Left's aggressive P.R. war has been to repeatedly label conspiracy theorists as unhinged nutcases. Every time I see one of those memes I get a sick feeling that I'm seeing evidence of a conspiracy.
Of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term "vast right week conspiracy". Is it really so crazy to think people occasionally get together and plan the things they do? I mean, I'm all for spontaneity, but come on.
But the narrative that's accumulated around Trump almost seems better than human beings could plan and execute. For all the rhetoric about the violent Right, it's the Right who keep getting shot. There was Ashli Babbett, the unarmed woman shot and killed in the January 6th riot (yeah, I know she had a pocket knife). Now Trump himself has been injured and one of his supporters killed.
Last week, there was another story about a shooting in the U.S.--all charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin for his part in firing the gun that killed a cinematographer and injured a director during rehearsal for a movie in 2021. The case was dismissed because the prosecution had withheld evidence. The prosecutor at fault, Kate Morrissey, was asked on the stand if she had referred to Baldwin as an "arrogant prick" and a "cocksucker". She denied this, saying that she appreciated his politics and his work on Saturday Night Live. I imagine she was referring to Baldwin's famous run on the sketch comedy show playing Donald Trump. Well, at least she didn't shoot him.
President Biden said the attempted assassination of Trump was not representative of who were are as a people. I'm not sure about that. Of course, I live in a country, Japan, where a former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was successfully assassinated two years ago at a train station just forty-five minutes north of me by train. I would say that when open, intelligent, critical debate has been broadly devalued and discouraged, it might have something to do with the fact that violence and manipulation are seen as increasingly valid alternatives.
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