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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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I think the odds of Trump being assassinated are low, but there's some value in speculating about it.

Any updates on your thinking here? Am absolutely curious.

What happened was even more improbable than assassination, because the bullet missed Trump's head by fractions, famously caught on camera, and then created the conditions for an even more iconic picture, one of the greatest pictures in American history. This is basically extremely impossible, it defies prediction, it's one of the greatest meaning-making moments of American history.

In another sense everything I've written above is extremely exaggerated, because the assassination "doesn't mean anything" and "nothing ever happens". But in some primal monkey caveman grug brain unconscious level (, the only level that really matters) -- Donald Trump was literally just saved by God in front of the entire world. That is incredibly incredibly powerful. It doesn't "mean" anything, there is no mechanism by which having a chunk of his ear blown off translates into better personnel or policy. The direct consequence is that Trump is renominated and probably wins the election. But in a fundamental way the whole global consciousness is different.

Trump is a great historic figure like Caesar or Napoleon. I am not trying to crudely exaggerate. His whole self is now deeply bound up with the age in which we live, his personality strengths and flaws have deep consequences for the future. Trump isn't important because of any specific things he's done (which is really quite a lot of things). But he represents, for better and worse, the deep American spirit. Something was ratified this week. This was basically impossible to anticipate, despite any rational calculations about rhetoric and civil war and violence and likelihoods and odds. And I don't think people will stop talking about this any more than they stopped talking about Napoleon escaping from Elba or Caesar at Alesia.

To put it in perspective I try to imagine sending that picture back in time to 2016 /r/thedonald, where it would be considered a little too over the top.