People keep asking and speculating about Thomas Matthew Crooks, the kid who fired on Trump Saturday. We know he was a smart kid, good at history, quiet, a bit awkward, possibly bullied. I have my own theory, based on his shirt.
It’s a safe assumption he knew he was about to die, knew he would soon be one of the most famous people on the planet. When you’re dressing for that gig, you put some thought into it. So why that shirt?
Demolitia … you can’t quite miss the word militia. It’s sold off a YouTube site called the Demolition Ranch, which has eleven million subscribers. The site is well known at gun fairs, a place where a lot of young people come into contact with the militia movement. Not all militia in this country now are MAGA Republicans, though most are. But you can get so far to the right that Trump becomes as unpopular as Biden.
The site features gun videos, several with titles referring to snipers and assassins … the best guns for the job. The best bullet. This isn’t a site for hunters and homeowners. But you can’t put the blame on that one website. As the owner points out, they leave politics out of it.
Trump’s new running mate places the blame squarely on Biden’s shoulders. He has a valid point, Even Biden said that his statement about putting Trump in the bullseye was a mistake, he shouldn’t have said it. But that saying Trump is an enemy of democracy, and other statements were fair.
�That’s crap Joe. I mean I’m a Biden supporter and if he’s still unfortunately running come November, I’ll vote for him. But we all know, even the shooter knew what Biden meant when he spoke of bullseyes. It was a metaphor. We all also knew that the part about being a threat to democracy, to our country, that’s the dangerous part. Democrats know because we’ve been saying the same thing about Republicans since Trump first ran for office.
A famous question asks “if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he started his march to madness, is it wrong to do so?” Most of us would say no. So in this kid’s mind, he was acting as a patriot.
As Biden says, Trump has made his intentions, and why he’s a threat to democracy quite clear. It broke my heart when the Democrats starting running on fear instead of ideas. Sure, it worked for Trump, destroy people’s belief in the media, in our institutions, then make us fear each other like we never have before. So only law and order can keep us safe. Because we can’t trust our neighbors.
So you can’t blame the website, you can’t blame Biden and you can’t blame Trump. There is no single cause for what happened. It’s a perfect storm of hatred and fear sweeping our country. What strikes me is all the people saying political violence has no place in America. Whoever says that has no knowledge of our history, or chooses to believe we’ve somehow outgrown it.
I’ve know a few people involved in one way or another with militias over the years. They consider themselves patriots, are in all respects intelligent people. Are mostly good people. But aren’t shy about professing the need to put a bullet between the eyes of a leader who is a threat what they see as American values. “An armed man is a citizen, an unarmed man a subject.” In their eyes, Trump would stir as much hatred as Biden.
Keep in mind, this is not unAmerican. It’s as American as apple pie. We say there is no place for it here, but that belies our nation’s history. That doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s just the way it is.
Crooks was a history student. In class debates, he staked out a hard conservative position and stayed there. He was no liberal by all reports. I’m sure he was familiar with the following letter Thomas Jefferson wrote.
Jefferson could have been speaking of Trump when he wrote “Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves.“
That leads like prophecy. What he wrote next has stirred people to act ever since.
“If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
We call them whack jobs, but keep in mind … in all likelihood, Timothy McVeigh had a higher IQ than you do. He wanted to start a revolution. So did Chuck Manson. Revolution … Even John Lennon sang in the song of the same name, “But when you talk about destruction, Don’t you know that you can count me out, in.”
They shot him too.
So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around. They’ll call the kid cracked, but perhaps what is crazy is believing either political party at the moment. Judging from how we all seem to fear, and quite honestly hate the other side now, we’re all kind of cracked.
As Mercutio said in Romeo and Juliet, as he died from a rivalry he had no real part of, “a plague on both your houses.”