I Blame Trump

Just a few non-random thoughts:

I am glad that neither Donald Trump nor anyone else was injured or killed.

I am suspicious about the White House’s official version of events, so far, and will remain suspicious until the facts are independently verified.

I feel bad about the item above. I detest having to constantly suspect my government of lying. I blame Donald Trump. At this point, for example, I tend to wincingly accept the word of the ayatollahs of Iran over Donald Trump’s word.

I dislike the fact that there have been at least three separate attempts on Donald Trump’s life. I blame Donald Trump. No, I do not accept his explanation that it is because he is an “impactful” person. (This happens, he said self-importantly, to people like himself and Lincoln, “the most impactful people, the people that do the most.”) No. Trump has encouraged and fed a climate of fear in this country, a philosophy of grievance and retribution and violence. He is the defender and protector of, and apologist for, the thugs of January 6. He stokes chaos. He wallows in it.

I am glad the event was cancelled — at least for now. I continue to feel that the White House Correspondents organization made a terrible calculation in inviting Trump to speak. He was going to humiliate them to their faces in a further broadside assault on freedom of the press, and the media’s docile complicity in this would seem to normalize and justify his bullying. I think it is telling, and awful, that it was Trump — not the White House correspondents — who announced that the dinner will be rescheduled. He thinks he owns the media, now. He might be right.

I think we are in for more of this. I fear violence will become a defining characteristic of the next few months, leading up to the midterms. It is the lexicon of what now passes for debate in the Trump era.

—

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Okay, that’s it. Have a good Sunday. I plan to buy 15 tomato plants.

—