Like him or not, July 13, 2024 is the day Donald Trump won the 2024 election. It’s a good thing that Donald Trump was not assassinated; it would have been a bad thing if he had been killed, or even wounded worse than he was. I hate the guy, but I’d hate even worse to live in a country where elections are decided by assassins (instead of the oligarchs who usually decide them). One can look back, for instance, at Japan in the early twentieth century for a country where many elections were decided by assassination. More recently, the election in Mexico was plagued by assassination. The point being, no good can come from such a state of affairs.

I could also spew some boilerplate about how this was a tragedy, both for the nation and for Trump’s family and loved ones. But lets be real, neither his enemies nor his allies care about that. This was immediately interpreted through a political lens, whether it was the people publicly celebrating and joking that they’d wished the assassin hadn’t missed, or the people privately celebrating because they know that this was going to win Trump the election and allow them to push through their plans.

Because Biden sucks, and this was becoming more and more obvious to more and more people, I was predicting that Trump was going to win even before July 13, but this has made his victory a near certainty. Because Trump couldn’t have asked for a better boost to his campaign, I know people who, already on July 13, were saying that this has to have been some kind of inside job by Trump’s people to gain him sympathy (and, let’s keep our eyes on the prize here, win him the election). This is unlikely. Not only is such a conspiracy theory improbable in the same way most conspiracy theories are (too many moving parts, too much incompetence, too many ways things can go wrong, too many people needing to be involved to keep it a secret), but the margin of error on the near miss of the shot was just so small that such a plot would have been an enormous risk that even a narcissist like Donald Trump would be unlikely to take it in order to gain sympathy points.

Conspiracies arose on the right as well, with people wanting to blame Biden. The riposte to this is obvious in light of recent supreme court rulings: even if Biden did order the assassination of Donald Trump, then Biden has executive immunity and so was legally allowed to do it. The fact that the U.S. now has a veritable king with such privileges is staggering, and should worry people all across the political spectrum, but that is a whole topic unto itself.

Regardless, once the assassin committed themselves to the act, only one of three things was going to occur. The best, obviously, would have been if he was caught and stopped at some point prior to pulling the trigger. But, given that the assassin was able to pull the trigger, there was one of two possibilities: he hit his target (which, presumably, was Donald Trump – that much, I think, is uncontroversial, regardless of motivations) or he miss. Had he hit, this would have likely resulted in a great deal more political violence. That he missed, though, does not preclude more political violence, but it at least allows even a small window of time for cooler heads to prevail. I’m pessimistic that the declining U.S. Empire will avoid political violence in the long term, but had the bullet struck its target, then we’d likely already be living with it now (or, at least, a significant and noticeable uptick in it).

At the time of writing this, the true motivations of the would-be assassin are still hotly debated. But the assassins motives are not as interesting as how the political left and political right are trying to spin the narrative in their favor. Both sides want so badly for this man not to be one of their own. This is rank cynical partisanship, but it makes sense from this hyper-partisan point of view. One of the first thoughts I had upon hearing about this assassination attempt was that the narrative practically wrote itself: “the gunmen may have pulled the trigger, but every American left of center is to blame.” It did not take long for me to see headlines saying as much. And the thing is, that narrative is not completely wrong, as the left has been trying to do whatever it can to (politically and legally) take Trump down for nearly a decade now, even concocting their own vast conspiracy theories about Russian collusion. Which means that if the left can show that the assassin was not politically motivated, or better (from their point of view) that the assassin was a Republican and motivated, perhaps, by some fringe rightwing ideas, that would exonerate the left, and maybe even allow blame to get passed to the right.

Either way, one of the outcomes of this is that the right now has its own version of January 6, 2021. Now, any time anyone wants to criticize Trump (whether legitimately or not) the right can point to this assassination attempt as a form of whataboutism: “Trump did such-and-such? Yeah, but at least he didn’t try to have his opponents assassinated!” Or “All you’re stoking more political division!” Or “Why wouldn’t Trump do the thing you’re criticizing him for after someone almost killed him!” In other words, sympathy for almost being killed will be wielded as a shield to deflect any other criticism.

But having an assassin accidentally miss someone does not make that person fit for office. Donald Trump is not fit for office, and no attempted assassination is going to instill in him competence or a sense of civic duty. Not getting shot will not inspire Trump to devise a sound fiscal policy or economic plan. It will not deliver to him the ability to negotiate an end to the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Israel/Palestine. No solution to the looming bankruptcy of social security was written on the side of that bullet. At best, what we could hope for is that the experience will encourage humility and self-reflection, but I’d wager good money that Trump’s narcissism will prevent any such thoughtful introspection. More than likely Trump and his associates will capitalize on this to score political points and elevate his own status. What politician wouldn’t?

Trump is a divisive figure and he’s not completely innocent in the rising political polarization infecting so many Americans. At least a portion of the political tensions can be blamed on him and his cult of personality. It is of course fun and exciting to watch as someone barges into the halls of pompous politics-as-usual and start breaking with the norms and conventions that aid in disguising the garden variety wink-and-nod corruption. It gives the impression that someone is cutting through all the cynical grandstanding, two-faced artifice, and perfidious pandering that is rampant within the political establishment. As often as Trump utters falsehoods, the way he says it makes it ‘feel’ like the truth, like someone finally being authentic, when compared to the way most politicians lie. This is because he spouts bullshit, not lies. The truth has become collateral damage to the hydrogen bomb of Trump, rather than the target of a precision strike.

Again, it is a good thing that Trump was not assassinated. But that does not mean it will be a good thing when he is elected president this coming November. Don’t take my saying that to mean I’m some kind of Biden supporter. I will not be voting for him, either. Both parties are awful, their partisans deranged, and our republic doomed. This assassination attempt serves to exhibit just how swiftly it’s crumbling.