Trump, Within Earshot, Bleeding Like We All

JOE BIDEN said all the right things. This is unacceptable. This cannot be allowed to happen. We have got to do better... We all play our parts, do what we can. And none of it matters. Violence remains a core American value, as always. I have spent nine years praying to God that I would find a way to not wish Donald Trump were dead.It worked like a charm. I want to be better than that, and, thank God, I am. I'll settle for his late retirement and quiet disappearance from the world stage. Problem is, it seems to be too late for that. I'll keep praying. Considering the lies and hatred Donald Trump doles out and gins up on a daily basis, its amazing that he hasn't been murdered. My prayers have been answered. Donald Trump is still alive, and I thank God, and am glad. Equally amazing is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are still alive; more amazing still is that Barack Obama is. The Secret Service, which does its very best, would concur. Nothing else changes. Donald Trump remains a criminally insane pathological liar, a damned lucky one, not a figure to be pitied. He victimizes others, with his words and deeds, much more than he is, ever has been, or ever will be victimized. His toxic life is harmful to the world. If he is smart, a highly questionable proposition, he'll refrain from making this a political issue, from making political hay, as we say. Blaming Biden, the Democrats, liberals, the media, is not a good idea. Should he and his huge MAGA cult gang try this, it may backfire, and they may regret it. Representative Vance, a prime vice presidential prospect, has already accused President Biden of ordering the hit. He'll regret his idiocy. He should already. Had Trump died, the Republicans would have been forced to select a more sane, less criminal, less hateful, less despicable presidential candidate, and perhaps would have ridden Trump's martyred coattails all the way to the American presidency against a weakened, vulnerable Biden. Trump avoided death by one inch. We all narrowly escape death every day, with every breath. Will a newly energized and motivated MAGA cult leverage this heinous act to victory? Perhaps, because they have clearly demonstrated their ability to sink to this disgusting low. If they parlay, package, and present their feigned victimhood properly, anything is possible in these United States of Advertising. Probably not, if they overplay their anger, and sanctimoniously call for retribution against their enemies, aka political opponents, the evil array of forces who dare to oppose Trump. If Trump holds to form, he will immediately begin to rant and rave against his political opponents as if they constitute a monolithic entity in pursuit of pure evil. If he overplays that, it may backfire in its obvious appeal to the base and the disgusting. After all, his potential murderer was a registered Republican. This is really nothing new, in the land of the freedom to choose violence. Andrew Jackson laughed at a man who put a bullet in him in a duel, and carried the bullet in his body the rest of his painful life. Abraham Lincoln concluded his habitual horseback ride one fine day during his doomed presidency only to find a bullet hole in his top hat. A harbinger, perhaps. Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the middle of a speech, and finished his speech, while bleeding. Donald Trump defiantly, theatrically shook his fist at somebody, perhaps everybody, three times in his understandable fear and outrage, but didn't even try to finish his speech. Perhaps, deep down, he understands that whatever he had to say simply does not matter, makes no difference. It never does. I hope to destroy him utterly, the right way, at the ballot box. President Biden announces that he intends to initiate an independent investigation of the incident. In Congress, congressional investigations are sprouting up like jonquils in mid March. One can imagine thousands of investigations, corporate, academic, public, private, all reveaing the same thing, what we already know: that an angry, alientated young man got hold of an assault rifle and took out his anger and frustration on Donald Trump. If not Trump, it would have been someone else, perhaps himself. In his seminal novel "In Cold Blood", Truman Capote's message is that everyone in a society is ultimately responsible for everything that happens, since society is a cohesive, organic whole. The Clutter family was, in a very real sense, murdered by all of us. Capote made claer that he did not believe in complete, absolute individual responsibility for the many individual acts of evil we do unto one another daily. No matter how many redundant investigations we decide to convene to cover our collective asses and to repeat ad nauseum what we all already know, no matter how deep we pretend to dig, we will never, ever in a million years get to the bottom of what really ails us all; namely, ourselves.