Best Not Miss: Trump Assassination Tango

 Best Not Miss
Trump Assassination Tango

Jim Kavanagh

The first and worst thing to say about the attempted assassination of Trump is that it is going to divert attention from the much more important and horrific mass slaughter of Palestinians that is taking place daily in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the constant Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Syria. Nothing that did happen, or could have happened, to Donald Trump or any American politician supporting that atrocity is worth an ounce of concern that should be going to the killed and amputated children of Gaza. In that context, it’s particularly sickening to witness the spectacle of politicians across the US political spectrum proclaiming the unacceptability of “political violence”—meaning violence against establishment politicians—while they vie to manage the country MLK correctly called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”

N. Pelosi: political violence is unacceptable

J. Fetterman: political violence is unacceptable

L. Austin: political violence is unacceptable

A. Blinken: political violence is unacceptable

J. Biden: political violence is unacceptable

Gaza’s 2M people: u bigoted hypocrites

— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) July 14, 2024

Sat morning: Israeli massacre, Western politicians in full support

Sat afternoon: Israeli massacre, Western politicians in full support

Sat night: Trump’s ear shot, Western politicians denounce all violence

Sun morning: Israeli massacre, Western politicians in full support

— Tiberius (@ecomarxi) July 14, 2024

Nonetheless, I’ll succumb to discussing what is, however ultimately diversionary, an unavoidable event that’s symptomatic of the present, tense, American political paradigm and of the peculiar, fascinating history of such events in American history. It’s impossible to ignore, and kind of fun to discuss, presidential-level political assassination.

So what are we dealing with here? What we seem to know now is that shots were fired at Donald Trump—a volley of three evenly spaced shots followed by another volley of five more quickly spaced shots; Trump was injured, either directly by a bullet or indirectly by the glass of a shattered teleprompter that was hit by a bullet; a spectator was killed and two others critically wounded; a man, identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was seen climbing onto a roof with a rifle by witnesses who pointed him out to police and Secret Service personnel, and was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper after shots were fired at Trump.

We know, from Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe, as interviewed by Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA-TV, that an armed police officer “had both hands up on the roof to get up on the roof, never made it because the shooter had turned toward the officer, and—rightfully and smartfully—the officer let go.”

Murder at a Discount: Pricing Lives in Israel

Here's an excerpt from the New York Times story, by Isabel Kershner and Jodi Rudoren, on the apparent revenge abduction and killing of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian in Jerusalem:

The Israeli minister of internal security, Yitzhak Aharonovich, urged residents to “lower the volume” regarding the suspicion of a revenge attack by Jews. “There are attempts to make a connection between the two incidents and we are still checking all directions,” he said on Israel Radio. “There are many possibilities, criminal and nationalistic, and everything is being examined in a responsible manner.”

Is this what the Israeli government did when young Jewish kids went missing? Did the Israeli government "lower the volume" regarding its "suspicions"? Or didn't they—on the basis of pure suspicion, before anyone was known to be killed, before any suspect was identified or charged—raid, bomb, destroy homes, abduct and arrest hundreds, kill at least six people? Did they not, without any evidence, “make a connection” and use the incident to it as a pretext to attack a political party (Hamas)?

The Reluctant Imperialist

Obama: "I may assume the right to attack any country, and kill anyone, anywhere in the world, whenever I want, but at least I'm all thoughtful and conflicted about it.  Just as I know you are in supporting me."

This hurts me more than it hurts you?  He's the victim, the focus of our sympathy, here?

He is fast winning the prize for the most manipulative and deceptive president I've ever seen.

Another fine analysis by Glenn Greenwald (see also, this at FireDogLake, and this at Miami Herald)..

Excerpts:

The hallmark of a skilled politician is the ability to speak to a group of people holding widely disparate views, and have all of them walk away believing they heard what they wanted to hear. ... I've personally never seen a politician even in the same league as Barack Obama when it comes to that ability...

what should be beyond dispute at this point is that Obama's speeches have very little to do with Obama's actions, except to the extent that they often signal what he intends not to do.
What Obama has specialized in from the beginning of his presidency is putting pretty packaging on ugly and discredited policies. The cosmopolitan, intellectualized flavor of his advocacy makes coastal elites and blue state progressives instinctively confident in the Goodness of whatever he's selling, much as George W. Bush's swaggering, evangelical cowboy routine did for red state conservatives. The CIA presciently recognized this as a valuable asset back in 2008 when they correctly predicted that Obama's election would stem the tide of growing antiwar sentiment in western Europe by becoming the new, more attractive face of war,.. However bad things might be, we at least have a benevolent, kind-hearted and very thoughtful leader doing everything he can to fix it.

The clear purpose of Obama's speech was to comfort progressives who are growing progressively more uncomfortable with his extreme secrecy, wars on press freedom, seemingly endless militarism and the like.  No progressive wants to believe that they placed such great trust and adoration in a political figure who is now being depicted as some sort of warped progeny of Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney. That creates internal discomfort and even shame. This speech was designed to allow progressives once again to see Barack Obama as they have always wanted to see him, his policies notwithstanding: as a deeply thoughtful, moral, complex leader who is doing his level best, despite often insurmountable obstacles, to bring about all those Good Things that progressives thought they would be getting when they empowered him...

the speech was heavy on feel-good rhetoric, mostly designed to signal that unlike the mean and simplistic George Bush - who presumably pursued these policies thoughtlessly and simplistically - Obama experiences inner turmoil and deep moral and intellectual conflict as he embraces them. ..
Obama may do things you progressives find distasteful, but at least marvel at how thoughtful and torn up he is about it all. ..

Benjamin Wittes similarly observed that Obama's speech seemed written to align the president "as publicly as possible with the critics of the positions his administration is taking without undermining his administration's operational flexibility in actual fact." In other words,... "the president sought to rebuke his own administration for taking the positions it has — but also to make sure that it could continue to do so." ...

That's what makes it such a classic Obama speech. And that's the point: his speech had something for everyone, which is another way of saying that it offered nothing definitive or even reliable about future actions. ... Until one sees actual changes in behavior and substance on those issues, cheering for those changes as though they already occurred or are guaranteed is the height of self-delusion.

Creating Enemies

Unbelievable.

(Even though thoroughly consistent with analysis of Syria in posts here.)

Set up the "rebellion," in order to attack the "rebels"! Could it be any clearer that the foreign policy of the United States has come to creating enemies in order to perpetuate the "war on terror" everywhere and forever.

Did I mention that they're going to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for this? ("DC’s Worst-Kept Budget Secret: Lots Of Democrats Support Entitlement Cuts")

From Los Angeles Times:

CIA begins sizing up Islamic extremists in Syria for drone strikes

Tree-Huggers for Drones

Stephen Colbert on the Eco-friendly assassination program.

The Colbert Report

Double-O bama: License to Kill

Self-Issued.

The unbelievable has become the norm.

From Glenn Greenwald:

"As always, it's really worth pausing to remind ourselves of how truly radical and just plainly unbelievable this all is. What's more extraordinary: that the US Senate is repeatedly asking the Obama White House whether the president has the power to secretly order US citizens on US soil executed without charges or due process, or whether the president and his administration refuse to answer? That this is the "controversy" surrounding the confirmation of the CIA director - and it's a very muted controversy at that - shows just how extreme the degradation of US political culture is."

Read full article.