By Rick Wilson
There’s an Eastern parable about six blind men discovering an elephant in the forest. Each approaches the elephant differently, touching the first part they come across. The under-appreciated American poet John Godfrey Saxe wrote a verse about the parable of the blind men and the elephant in the mid-19th century.
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The first blind man finds the elephant’s tusk and declares, “The elephant is hard and smooth, like a warrior’s spear.” The next finds the trunk and declares, "This elephant is much like a thick snake." The third reaches its ear and declares it like a broad fan. The man whose hand found a leg says, “It’s like a sturdy tree trunk.” The blind man in the group's center reaches the elephant’s broad flank and declares, “Why, the elephant is like a high and strong wall!” The last man feels its tail and reports to his colleague that the elephant is like a rope.
And so, the shooting of Donald Trump this Saturday has become America’s parable of the elephant and the blind men, a Rashomon moment of imposed definitions to fit political ends.
My assertion will likely get me in trouble, even though MAGA already spent the weekend blaming me for the attempt on Trump’s life because I’m mean to him in the media. (I kid you not.)
I don’t think this counts as political violence like most do.
The target was definitionally political, but the motivation was the same that leads dozens of lost, broken, sad boys raised in the era of video games, shit-talking 4Chan boards, and profound alienation into wander into churches, synagogues, mosques, and schools, armed to the teeth and desperate to have their cruel, vicious final acts remembered.
I think this tragic story is as much about the lost boy on that rooftop as Donald Trump as a target.
It’s about Thomas Matthew Crooks.
I think it’s about growing up small and goofy and being relentlessly bullied. He was a lonely young man registered to vote as a Republican but had no meaningful footprint in the world. He is reported to have had “no friend group.” He wasn’t brilliant, and he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t clever, athletic, or social.
He was lonely and lost, living in a society that treats young men with mild disregard on its best days. He was not a member of Antifa, a left-wing radical, politically active, or, to our current knowledge, very politically aware.
One classmate said, “He was just an outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.”
Sadly, we do.
They take a rifle to shoot a President, a celebrity, or a grade school student.
They increasingly feel little hope of achievement, love, partnership, or meaning. Their one moment of imagined glory is in the deaths of others, hoping for a “high score.” They seek meaning, even when meaning takes them in the darkest direction.
Scott Galloway has written and spoken extensively about this heartbreaking pathology.
The elephant of this shooting has many facets:
The MAGA Cult
For MAGA, this is the moment of martyrdom, the ascent of Trump to “God’s chosen” status, a man whom even an assassin’s bullet won’t stop. The cult had already hardened in the belief that Trump is their divine instrument of social retribution, and this cements it in a Kim-style North Korean juche.
The MAGA cult describes the shooting as a product of the left, center, and center-right criticism of Trump, with no memory of his various incidents of violence, his role in the January 6th attack, his us-or-them I-am-your-retribution Waco-launched campaign. He wanted permission to act like an authoritarian leader with none of the rebukes that role should naturally earn in a civilized nation.
The MAGA cult and culture see this moment as utter vindication of the God Emperor Trump, a remedy for all his moral and personal sins. The nick on his ear from either the bullet or shattered glass from the bullet striking the teleprompter is Trump’s Wounds of Christ. For them, it’s religious.
The Media
The media — fueled by a guilt trip engineered by the more clever of Trump’s minions — are bullying themselves even deeper into bothsiderism. It wasn’t hard to convince the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets that Trump was shot by a leftist filled with anti-Trump hatred because they’ve been too harsh on the man who would gleefully imprison every one of them. Of course, none of that is true, but the right knows how to play the refs.
By the way, this will work. They’re already scoring Trump as the 2024 winner and are eager to “preserve their relationships” with the man who will be King.
The Democrats
Joe Biden’s remarks have been spot-on, but the muttering in the Democratic circles that maybe it’s time to tone down and fight Trump on policy is their usual suicide pill campaign strategy.
Conspiracy World
The conspiracy world defies ideology, and for them, the shooting was fungible in its meaning. One Never Trumper, desperate for relevance, got too deeply into her Chardonnay trough and spent the weekend promoting the theory that this was a Bob Roberts-style set-up by Trump and his team, betraying a lack of understanding of firearms, planning, or conspiracies.
On the MAGA right, the storyline was that the Secret Service was in on it, allowing the shooter to approach so closely because of…I kid you not…DEI. The alternate reality industry is in overdrive and will be so for generations.
The Electioneers
Given the sweeping news of the last two weeks, the political prognostication industrial complex is spinning out of control. We’re hearing it all: “Trump will inevitably win!” “This means nothing!” “Trump is going to win 9000 Electoral College votes!” “Biden must go!”
Lots of polling noise and little signal so far. My own opinion is that the election is still a referendum on Trump and that Trump’s behavior will erase the moment because he always does what Bad Donnie tells him to do in the end. The Democratic rebellion ended this weekend except for the diehard Obama bros, who increasingly resemble those Japanese soldiers years after World War II hiding out in caves in the Pacific.
The answer here is “We’ll see.”
A Final Note
A final note on the shooting itself: be grateful the shooter was raised on video games and not actual shooting in the field. From what I can determine of the angles, distance, and wind direction, he didn’t account for windage, and the bullet thankfully passed to the right of Trump’s head. We were extremely fortunate Crooks didn’t understand his weapon: the 5.56/.223 rounds from his AR have pretty shoddy ballistics and likely drifted 1.5-2.5 inches from his point of aim.
For the Secret Service… allowing a shooter so close is unthinkable. 400 feet is nothing. I’ve put rounds on steel at 400 meters, albeit with a much heavier round. Also, what in hell were the Secret Service and local law enforcement doing that day? I’ve been to dozens of Presidential events, and the Secret Service is the most vital element in protecting the President. Local law enforcement does most perimeter work, but this seems like a massive, epic failure.
If I may wrap up on the epilogue from Saxe’s “Elephant and the Blind Men”:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen.
