Unfortunately, I remember quite a few assassinations and assassination attempts on the lives of American political figures. My first was the murder of President Kennedy as he traveled in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas in 1963, which, from my seven-year-old perspective, was astonishing for its ability to shut down the entire adult world if only for a brief period (see Business as Usual and A Fall Day in Dallas). That was also the first time I learned about motorcades and governors. I already had a vague sense of presidents as kings from children’s stories and myths.
Then came the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee in April of 1968 and Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles in June of that year. I also remember the attempts on Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1972 in Laurel, Maryland and President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in Washington, DC. I felt particularly drawn to the story of James Brady, Reagan’s press secretary, who was struck through the temple by the assassin’s bullet and left paralyzed for the rest of his life. That kind of suffering somehow aligned with the wounds of Christ as the suffering servant, at least in my mind.
Dallas continues to serve as my foundational experience for relating to and understanding political violence, especially murder. For me, it mixed spectacle with death, ritual with media, the archetype of a fallen hero with my personal religious experience. At the time, I was in the second grade in Catholic school. I remember my grandmother, who sang in the choir of her church, calling us frantically the minute she saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas police headquarters on live television. The drama never ended, including the traditional Latin Requiem Mass we attended at the school with black vestments and casket.
The attempt on former President Donald Trump yesterday afternoon at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania brought all of this back to me with its blood, crowds, and ensuing mayhem. By most accounts, a bullet grazed Trump’s right ear while an attendee to the rally lost his life from the shooter’s gunfire. The Secret Service killed the shooter, who apparently had fired at Trump from a nearby rooftop.
This kind of public spectacle and death are what make American political violence distinctive. Assassinations are public spectacles with elements of ritual, theater, sacrifice, and bloodshed. These are crucial to the experience, which can become transcendent. They drive the oft-repeated question, “Where were you when…?” The easier this can be answered, the greater the effect on the public and the ultimate sacrifice of the political victim. It also grounds the person replying in a permanent historical context. Everyone old enough to remember knows exactly where they were on November 22, 1963 when they heard the news about Kennedy.
Add extremist, ideological thinking to this, and what do you have? Actually, it would be hard to characterize the behavior of people who resort to assassination as “thinking” at all, but if you did, you might see it as similar to the French Revolution. The Jacobins’ hatred led them to eliminate anything and anyone who challenged their power, which could hardly be compared to the incompetent tyranny of the monarchy they overthrew. Their ruthlessness and savagery are legendary, which included thousands of public beheadings of suspected enemies on guillotines in Paris alone.
Thankfully, the Jacobins did not last, ending up eating themselves the way most extremists do. And while information about the Trump shooter is still forthcoming, one would assume that he isn’t right-wing, conservative, or a supporter of the former president. It should not come as a surprise if he turns out to be a modern-day Jacobin or at a minimum someone who feels threatened by Trump’s America first policies if not his bearing and demeanor. This is the so-called “derangement syndrome” that I have witnessed firsthand, and it is frightening.
This attraction to blood lust, ritual sacrifice, and near religious spectacles of violence doesn’t bode well for the republic. It could very well be that when we lose the sense of transcendence in one area, which has traditionally been the purview of religion, it resurfaces somewhere else. And why not? In this case with a Jacobean vengeance. It is, after all, le 14 juillet.
Image credits: “Shooting at Trump Rally,” Philippines; Trump tri colors by History in HD on Unsplash. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”
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didn’t get a confirmation notice of my last comment so I’ll repost and it will prob show up as a duplicate: I’m two years younger than you, but I remember my sense of appalling injustice on November 22, 1963 when I discovered that the Captain Kangaroo show had been taken off the air and replaced by the same boring funeral procession on every channel because of some grown-up nonsense. Why was I being punished with the loss of my favorite show because of some sort of adult derangement?
It appears you didn’t stay up on the news before you published this article as your projection that he is probably anti-conservative is dubious given that he’s a registered Republican. Like the Las Vegas shooter, he’s apparently left few digital bread crumbs, but those that he has left–an online query as to how far Oswald was to Kennedy and searches for Biden campaign events more likely (this is not a claim, just a speculation) means he’s an unhappy “incel” type or other misanthropic young male variant who wanted to take out a high-profile figure to make his murder-suicide more of a media splash.
When you mention that you’ve written about “derangement syndrome” it implies you’ve fallen into a polarized view of collective psychosis where you can recognize it only the other side of your polarity. What should be obvious is that we have a burgeoning collective psychosis affecting the left and the right in this country, that narrow AI in the form of social algorithms is the greatest amplifier of collective psychosis that mankind has ever created, and that it is causing a severe decline in reality testing for vast swaths of the population.
One of those swaths is those who have coined the term “Trump derangement syndrome” to characterize those who either rationally or irrationally criticize the most abnormal president in American history who, according to Reuters said just this weekend:
“Christians, get out and vote, just this time. . . You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
He added: “I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
This from a man who praises dictators while dissing the leaders of many democracies and who also in early December of 2022 posted on Truth Social:
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Just yesterday, Trump said that if he loses in 2024 it will be because of cheating. Trump cannot accepting losing. He frequently accused the Emmys of being rigged when the Apprentice didn’t win. For example, in 2013 he Tweeted: I should have many Emmys for The Apprentice if the process were fair.” When he lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz he said it was rigged. When he lost the popular vote to Hillary in 2016 he said that was rigged, etc.
Is criticism of this sort of dangerous behavior in a president and presidential candidate deranged, or soberly rational? Many psychological issues and psychosis variants generate projection, especially what Jungians call, “shadow projection.” To call rational criticism of Trump a derangement syndrome is a derangement syndrome.
Anyway, I’m back from travels so if you’d like to have a civil dialogue on this let me know. One sign of the collective derangement on both sides is an unwillingness to meaningful dialogue outside one’s bubble. As a religious scholar I’m sure you know about the problem of “belief conservation” where people react immunological to factual information that runs against their beliefs.
Remember all political problems, all economic problems, all wars, racism, etc. are 100% psychological artifacts. “Derangement syndrome” implies you recognize that polarized political differences are symptoms of psychological disorders. To discover such disorders in others without fearlessly examining ourselves is warned about in the Bible: “You can see the mote in your brother’s eye, but not the plank in your own.” How willing are you to look into your own eyes for derangement symptoms? Posting this comment will be one sign of willingness, but a live Socratic dialogue from a different point of view would be a much stronger one.
Jonathan, glad you are back from your travels. I answered your challenge about “civil dialogue” weeks ago in an email. Debating about Trump’s motives or psycho-social makeup isn’t on my radar right now. Sorry to disappoint.
In this post I am comparing those with an unbridled, irrational hatred of Trump with the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who ended up eating each other. I suspect the progressive wing (radical left) of the Democratic Party will end up doing the same thing. They have begun it already in cannibalizing President Biden, who was democratically chosen and the rightful candidate of their party. Now, they intend to substitute him with a travesty of a candidate in their drive to get rid of Trump. Not only is that insulting to most of America, but it has left me shaking my head.
Another travesty, though, is what you refer to as “rational criticism” of Trump. Such rational criticism has included calling him “Hitler,” “an existential threat to democracy,” and a “tyrant” who will enslave his political opponents like a Bronze Age war lord. I’ve noticed that the media types who accuse him of these practically foam at the mouth on their programs. You can even find Dick Cheney (aka Darth Vader) calling Trump a threat to world peace. Dick Cheney, for God sakes! How much chaos and destruction did he cause? Do you not see the hypocrisy? By the way, Glen Greenwald is a much more serious reporter and commentator on all of this than Bill Maher.
But we have something to measure these claims by. Did any of this happen during Trump’s first term? Where are the camps? The police state? As a student of Jung, you bring up projection and mass psychosis. Can you identify those at work right now? Who engages in censorship, cronyism, and the politicization of law enforcement? Better still, who has conducted business dealings with foreign governments for personal profit and used the judicial system to consolidate his power like a mafia don?
We can trade examples back and forth all day. That is not helpful, but when you look at facts rather than talking points or indoctrination (e.g., Mueller Report), you begin to see a pattern. That pattern is the continuous effort by people in power to eliminate the opposition by any means, including murder, and lying to the general public about it. The real problem is that they are not content to keep their efforts at the same level. They escalate. I imagine they will do so until Trump is either in jail, bankrupt, defeated in the election, or murdered. That no longer sounds like a conspiracy theory. Even Bill Clinton referred to “the people in power” behind his office.
That reminds me of the saw about it not being a conspiracy theory if they’re really out to get you!
Honestly, I am not a defender of Trump and do not want to be cast into that position. God knows, he has flaws, embarrassing ones at that (Dana White, really?), but I am certainly not going to accept whatever the media and DNC say as gospel. You, however, seem to accept what they say without question, projecting that same shadow you rightfully warn against onto others, especially Trump and those in his camp. That would be something worth exploring. The work, as you point out, requires “fearlessly examining ourselves.”
Have a good week.
I realize it’s hard to have a civil discourse about political polarities, but I feel it’s still important to try when we encounter someone who still has some degree of rationality. Here’s what you said when I challenged you to debate me on June 3rd, “Finally, given my writing responsibilities and projects, I will have to decline your challenge right now but look forward to hearing about your reading of Jung’s Civilization in Transition. Maybe we can have a substantive conversation afterward.” So, there was a maybe there, and I didn’t resume the offer until I finished reading Civilization in Transition. An interesting parallel is that Trump claimed he was willing to debate, “anytime, anywhere” and just last week said of course he was willing to debate Harris and that it was “important for the country,” but on Laura Ingraham last night he reversed that and said a debate wasn’t necessary and would just feed the “fake news.” Clearly, he fears going up against a former prosecutor and should, given how much his language and thinking skills have declined (as an English major you can vet this for yourself by watching any Larry King interview of Trump from the 80s when he had a much larger vocabulary and coherent sentence structure–the change is obvious and dramatic).
As far as comparing Trump to Hitler, which I don’t do, J D Vance made the comparison:
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016. When his Hitler comment was first reported, in 2022, a spokesperson did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance’s views. Vance also incisively described Trump as “cultural heroin” for the working class.
Trump seems to invite the comparison because of his blatant adoption of Hitlerian rhetoric including specific phrases such as his frequent avowals that his political enemies are “vermin” and that he’s going to rid the country of said vermin. His constant use of “fake news” is also from the Goebbels playbook and Hitler’s speech were peppered with the German version of the phrase Lügenpresse, or ‘lying press’, a term constantly used by the German National Socialist Party before and during the Third Reich to discredit the news media and to undermine public trust. https://grady.uga.edu/research/lugenpresse-the-lying-press-and-german-journalists-responses-to-a-stigma/
Trump’s ex-wife Ivana claimed in 1990 that he kept a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, in his bedside cabinet.
When you ask the question, “who has conducted business dealings with foreign governments for personal profit,” Hunter Biden is certainly a correct answer, though he never held public office, but a more relevant answer is Donald Trump. If you remember, throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump frequently stated that he had no business dealings with Russia. Actually, during that campaign, while he was making those claims, Trump and his associates were working on what would have been the biggest deal of his business life, “Trump Tower Moscow,” which included a proposed 50-million dollar penthouse to be gifted to Vladimir Putin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_Moscow
Trump didn’t build camps, nor did he build a wall and have Mexico pay for it, because like his business projects–six bankruptcies–he’s weak on organization (a major reason why Hitler comparisons don’t hold up)–but he did try to organize an overthrow of a legitimate election with fake elector schemes and pressuring Pence to deny the count. And talk about “eating their own” and parallels to the French Revolution, he did nothing to protect his own vice-president from a mob that had built a hangman’s scaffolding and was chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”
You also, as many do when I point out derangement on their side, assume I unthinkingly support the other side, which I do not. As a legitimate conservative said in 2016 on why he was going to vote for Clinton, “I disagree with Hillary on almost everything, but she’s within the normal range of being wrong.” You are supporting someone who is no conservative–he increased the national debt in one term more than any president had in even two terms, etc. and is anti-democratic—see quotes in my last comment–and who is far outside the normal range for being wrong.
Years from now, I may not remember exactly where I was when Trump was shot, but I can remember every detail of how I heard about JFK’s assassination, and almost every minute of the four days that followed. Maybe the first time leaves the indelible mark. I was 14 then, old enough to retain information.
I’m not sure a 20-year old kid with a high school education and a rifle is influenced by much in the way of political thinking. But deranged? Absolutely, for whatever reason and due to whatever cause infected him. There are people in life who can’t think clearly, and process information in strange ways. These we will always have with us, which is why we need to protect ourselves with greater urgency.
This brings us to the growing incompetence in government, which is supposed to protect us – not to wage unrelenting war on the opposite party. I’m certain that the Secret Service investigation will underscore the true dimensions of incompetency that result from government emphasizing all of the wrong things in society.
Thanks for this, Vic. I’m not so sure the FBI investigating the SS will uncover anything besides the usual suspects. And the SS investigating itself? You know the fox and the hen house?