Is It Over?

I have a friend in Amarillo. He was my chief photographer during my ill-fated sojourn as a News Director for easily the worst station owners in the business, whose management I was eager to escape. I have never met a guy with a better eye behind the camera, or as amiable a companion in a news vehicle on a long drive to some story. Though I am gone, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, we have remained friends on Facebook/Meta or whatever it's called now. And he sent me this on Saturday.

"Get used to this photo, You'll be seeing it everywhere soon. Donald Trump just clinched the election with this one photo."

Now, I don't know anything about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, other than what has dribbled out in the press. He was 20 years old, a registered Republican, though he once gave $15 to some lefty group, and his Dad apparently bought him the AR he used a couple of years ago. That's not much, but enough for the conspiracy theories to already grow like kudzu on the left and the right, with the AR-15 providing fodder for gun control proponents and opponents to expound on as well.

All we need is Alex Jones to weigh in with some "false flag" claptrap.

It's the perfect storm in what Firesign Theater called "These days of modern times."

And, it works for both sides, too, though more for the right. For Democrats, it takes the spotlight off of President Gramps and the kids fighting over the will. For Republicans, it's the growing interest in Project 2025, the truly troubling plan for a Trump administration, put together by those overbearing despots at what is jocularly called a "think tank" called The Heritage Foundation. Since I took on President Biden last time, in the interest of fairness, let's dive headfirst into the shallow end of the gene pool here.

Heritage was founded in 1973 by a group of "thinkers," including Joseph Coors, who reportedly wasn't drunk when he wrote the check, who thought Richard Nixon had just become too much of a pinko fellow traveler, and they wanted to take the GOP back to, oh, the 1920's or something. Nixon, for crying out loud!

Well now, a number of former Trump Administration accomplices have taken over the group and put together Project 2025, a blueprint for a second term. Forgive me for posting the Wikipedia summary here with links, but the breadth of their lunacy is truly awe-inspiring...

Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to the government, particularly economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production. The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts,  though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism.

Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other agencies or terminated.  Funding for climate research would be cut and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reformed according to conservative principles.  The project seeks to cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid  and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care.  The project seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception under the Affordable Care Act  and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills nationwide.  

It proposes criminalizing pornography,  removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs  and affirmative action  by having the DOJ prosecute "anti-white racism."  The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement. It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of those sentences.

May I use the 43rd President's description of Trump's inaugural address in labeling this, "Some weird shit."

Donald Trump has said he doesn't know much about it, but that is simply a lie. Project 2025 partners employed over 200 former Trump administration officials, and CNN found that at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in the plan, including more than half of the people listed as authors, editors and contributors. Six of Trump's cabinet secretaries are authors or contributors, and about 20 pages are credited to his first deputy chief of staff.

In the Mandate's foreword, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts writes, "The long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before."

See, he worked in that most tiresome term "weaponized" and even got a Mao reference in there with the "Long March."

He also said that the revolution will be bloodless if the left permits it. Damned decent of him, I'd say.

What was already going to be a coronation this week in Milwaukee will be a giant carnival/revival and as my friend in Amarillo pointed out, that photo will no doubt replace the flag as a backdrop. The disciples in the hall, and acolytes watching at home, will end the week with a messianic fervor that will rival Swaggart at his moment of peak dampness.

Given that the Prez is doing the decent thing in these indecent times and pausing any campaigning in the wake of the shooting, the focus will be solely on Trump the martyr.

Lest you think I don't take this assassination attempt seriously, I do. I only wish folks would have this degree of outrage when a classroom of 2nd graders is shot up. I am glad the former guy is OK, and the wound wasn't serious. He escaped death by a fraction of an inch, and for that we must be grateful.

Having covered 3 national political conventions in my career, I have seen FBI snipers in the hall, and you can be sure there will be more from here on out.

But this is already partisan with one legislative crank from Georgia tweeting, or in his case twitting, that Biden ordered it. No really, ordered it. That seemingly bipolar suck up, J.D. Vance, in a last-minute attempt for the VP nod, has also blamed Biden for a nutty 20-year-old with a rifle.

And, though none other than John Kennedy once opined that it's almost impossible to stop an assassin who is willing to die, that knee-jerk instinct in Congress to call for immediate hearings of some sort where everyone can preen for the cameras has already been issued.

Others blame Biden's "incendiary rhetoric" for setting the mood. Wait, I thought he was a walking gaffe machine, and now he's Goebbels? Have they actually looked at the online ravings of Mrs. Putin whom they are about to formally nominate?

Now, we have a storied history of shooting at our leaders, or candidates in the Grand Old Republic. We actually shot and killed four Presidents, tried with FDR, Truman and Ford and shot Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Robert Kennedy was shot and killed and George Wallace seriously wounded. We've been here far too many times.

And after each, there was a period where the nation paused and/or grieved, and took stock about who we are and what this means. I can guarantee that won't happen now. In the era of frankly, deadly partisanship and with social media to supercharge it, we won't miss a beat. And the beats will be louder than a Buddy Rich solo.