SAINTS PRESERVE US

Just a Shot Awry

Our world has reached the Platonic ideal of an existential state, filled with dread and threats both real and perceived. Absurdly, some of us wonder what happened and how we got here. Others, myself included, become cynical, jaded and, ultimately, numb.

Last Saturday some kid in Pennsylvania took his one shot at immortality, winging der Trumpenfuhrer in the ear as the former United States president and current Republican presidential nominee was speaking at a rally. The weapon used was an assault rifle, as easy to acquire in an open carry state as a Phillies or Pirates baseball cap. The result might’ve been very different had the shooter shelled out for a bump stock, a device which transforms an AR-15 into a machine gun.

I read the CBC New report while on a union break, five minutes for a cigarette on the front porch of the Crooked 9. I thought, “He missed.” It was an objective thought: just another gun incident south of 49. Ann, like me, is a reluctant and self-loathing news junkie. I assumed she’d seen the story. I didn’t bother mentioning it. I went downstairs and got back to whatever it was I’d been scribbling away at.

Sunday morning while we were enjoying our al fresco coffees Ann looked up from her iPhone doom scroll and exclaimed, “Somebody tried to assassinate Trump yesterday!”

Because I’m Canadian, I said, “Sorry!” I continued, “I thought you knew; it didn’t strike me as news.”

“Just another day in the USA,” Ann replied.

I said, “Yeah.”

From Kennedys to King, concertgoers, school children, religious congregations, nightclub patrons and even Batman movie fans for Christ’s sake, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America has exacted its toll. The depressing fact about a loaded gun is that like a directional arrow it can be pointed in any direction. The national carnage is self-inflicted. Its victims, some famous and privileged but most anonymous, are all equals now – just like the US Constitution’s preamble states. This latest and particularly odious survivor of gun violence (as of last week, so, stale data) during his first presidential run speculated that maybe “Second Amendment people” would address the problem of “lying Hillary”, sort her out – but he didn’t really know.

Ann read on, read aloud. Der Trumpenfuhrer’s post-incident statement, surprisingly non-combustible, expressed incredulity that such a thing could happen in America. Ann and I looked at one another and said to each other at the same time, “Really?”

How did it come to this? How could this happen? It’s only been bubbling under and boiling over for decades. If only those on the left side of the partisan divide would dial down their inflammatory rhetoric. By the way, thoughts and prayers for the collateral damage, the dead and severely wounded, innocent bystanders, “heroes” whose names have already been forgotten.

The Secret Service’s expertise combined with an IHOP edible petroleum product dollop of luck outside its secure perimeter averted a national catastrophe (“Tragedy” is not only an execrable Bee Gees song, it’s too strong a word) in the belly of the elephant next door to Canada. The nefarious and shadowy “deep state”, tacitly tied to the Biden crime family squatting in the White House, was foiled once more. Alternatively, der Trumpenfuhrer campaign’s brains trust could have been blinded by a light, a certain kind of light, a collective “Come to Jesus” epiphany following repeated viewings of Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘Em High: This time the sharpshooter will miss!

This week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee resembled a deranged tour of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. Simpering, sycophantic bandages of solidarity. The pathetic symbolism is important for a couple of reasons. Deaf in one ear obviously. What rankles is the bit of gauze, the bit of tape; the cultish gesture's props are as meaninglessly dramatic as the plastic flowers and teddy bears reverently placed at the sites of mass shootings: elementary schools, shopping malls, softball diamonds …         

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.