Saturday night in Butler, PA

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Well, I have officially lived through a second presidential assassination attempt.  I was living in South Korea in 1981 when John Hinckley attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan.  This was well before the Internet age and cable TV.  There were three news networks. News from back home arrived slowly and in irregular intervals.

When we first heard about Reagan, many of us thought the worst.  We were in the middle of The Cold War.  The North Koreans were a hop, skip and a jump away.  So were the Red Chinese. Could it be the start of WW III ?

Thankfully, it was not.

Here we are in 2024 and are bombarded with information from all directions. It’s on our phones, TVs, computers, from the mouths of close friends. Everyone wants to be first with the “scoop.” Being right is often a distant second.

As a veteran in the journalism game, I can tell you that the hours and days following a major news event — like what happened in Butler — are fraught with chaos and confusion.  You have all kinds of law enforcement agencies talking to all kinds of people and looking at all kinds of things.  There is a lot of stuff floating out there — often unconfirmed and contradictory.  We’ve heard the shooter was a registered Republican.  We’ve heard he donated to ActBlue. We heard he was an Antifa activist.

Instead of running on-air with every tidbit that comes over the transom, give the professionals a reasonable amount of time to sort it all out.  Spitting out everything you’ve heard in real time stokes fear and distrust among the public.

KEEP IT ALL IN PERSPECTIVE.  It was great to see President Trump bounce back so quickly from the attack.  It was even better to see that he was up this morning in time to make his 9 AM tee time. (I don’t know if I’d be ready for the golf course less than a day after being shot.)

Lost in a lot of the coverage was the story of a local father seated behind Trump when the shooting started.  He dove on top of his wife and daughter to shield them from the bullets. That act of bravery cost him his life. It’s hard to imagine how attending a speech could turn into a life-ending situation. But it did for this family.  It was good to see that the Trump campaign has set up a GoFundMe page to help this man’s family, and the families of two others who were critically wounded.

CRITIQUE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT.  The Secret Service typically only gets feedback when things go screwy.  Granted, I am bothered by the report that the suspect was allowed to sit unchallenged on that rooftop with line-of-sight on Trump for quite a while.

I have friends who are current and former military as well as state and federal law enforcement.  They tell me the ranks of their current (and former) employers have been decimated thanks to political nonsense like DEI and COVID mandates.  Federal law enforcement and the military, I’m told, are quite short-handed these days.  An awful lot of experienced, skilled employees – who might very well have hung around a lot longer – have decided to call it quits and cash out earlier than originally planned.  The activists and politicians pushing these mandates are happy with themselves.  But we all lose in the long-run.

SELF-EXAMINATION NEEDED.  An awful lot of political pols — and compliant driveby media types — take great pleasure in painting election contests as Good vs. Evil or God vs. Satan.

I’m actually able to work with, socialize with, and even worship with people who support candidates that I don’t.  But there are far too many people who see support of someone other than who they support as abject disrespect or blasphemy.

You also get people like THIS in the wake of the Trump assassination attempt:

 

 

You also get stuff by veteran NC  Democrat operatives (who should know better) and useful idiot RINOs:

 

(Gary, that borders on elder abuse. Or at least taking advantage of a failing old man.)

 

Or you get stuff like THIS on Twitter:

 

 

We already have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against politicians we don’t like: the vote.  Sadly, far too few of us take advantage of it.

Stuff like what happened in Butler, coupled with the crap you hear on TV from drivebys and amoral politicos, does a great job of chasing good, quality people away from public service.  Who wants to put up with the nonsense?  The threats to you and your family? 

Our country is at a tipping point.  We can bet it all on Trump and work with him to pull our economy and our society back from the precipice.  Or we can stick with what we’ve got, and go down with the ship.