Extreme Heat, Assassination Attempts, VP Picks And Supreme Court Job Interviews
Publisher’s Note
In a way, time is standing still at the moment as the general public attempts to digest the events of the past several days. Quite a bit is going on. Here are what we believe are five big major events everyone should be and is focused on at the moment, whether they’re admitting it to themselves or not …
Trump was shot by, based on initial reports, a 20-year old white male who was a native resident of Pennsylvania. We don’t known the motives. Yet, despite that, conspiracy theories and political angst are on the loose.
A Trump-appointed federal judge - who was, in an unprecedented move in 2020, pushed by then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a lame duck session confirmation - just dismissed the stolen classified documents case against that same Trump, citing the Special Counsel appointed to prosecute him was unconstitutional.
Mainstream media journalism is, in the aftermath of this shooting, engaged in some very bizarre maneuvering that is as perplexing to the general public consuming it as it is to the pundits and prognosticators who are an extension of it.
The Republican National Convention has started and Trump just picked his VP.
Record-shattering, climate crisis-fueled extreme heat continues to back the nation and most of the planet for that matter. Lots of people are dying from it. It also dropped a massive and historic Category 5 hurricane on much of the Caribbean and Houston, a major U.S. city, where more than 300,000 people a week later are still without electricity.
This note is going against our initial instinct to avoid commentary altogether on the subject of what seems like political insanity at the moment. But we do feel conversation and analysis is necessary, as well as an attempt to research and understand historical parallels and trends. Some subsequent thoughts …
Trump’s tone, which has been encouraging political violence since the day he started running for his first term in 2016, hasn’t changed since getting shot this past Saturday …
Hence, we shouldn’t for one moment, classify or file the assassination attempt into a “both sides” conversation, or soften the critical discussion about how we avoid broader political violence and factional conflict. We should absolutely collect the facts. But as we collect the facts, remember one important fact: Trump and those working for him or aligned with his interests have been responsible for pushing aggressively for these types of scenarios.
Extremism and domestic terror Barbara Walter talks about this in her new book (a recommended read) “How Civil Wars Start” and she’s spot on with the assessment of what we’re dealing with here …
Countries that factionalize have political parties based on ethnic, religious or racial identity rather than ideology, and these parties then seek to rule at the exclusion and expense of others. Leaders [choose] to activate ethnic and religious identities and then [seek] total domination …
This part especially resonates. Sound familiar? …
Countries that are considered “factionalized” have identity-based political parties that are often intransigent and inflexible. Boundaries between them are rigid, leading to intense competition and even combat. The groups that are competing are often about the same size. In fact it’s this balance of power between the two groups that creates such fierce rivalry; the stakes of winning or losing are high. These parties can also be personalistic in nature, revolving around a dominant figure who othen appels to ethnic or religious nationalism to gain and then maintain power. A coherent policy platform is often absent.
Granted, there is quite a bit of panic. Everyone is attempting to analyze how this event changes the contours of the race. There’s a few key questions: Could this give Trump a pre and post-Convention polling bump? Will there be a growing “sympathy” vote for Trump? How does that evolve and translate in terms of polling, fundraising and mobilization? Some say there will be a bump and others are saying that people have already made up their minds and just want the election to be over with already. If you were already quietly making up your mind that you’d vote for someone as insidious and clearly unstable as a Trump, and the instability that follows him then it doesn’t sound like this recent event has changed your mind one way or another.
Derek Thompson in The Atlantic offers a good take on this, cautioning against too much prediction on how the assassination impacts polling …
The legacy of failed presidential assassination attempts in the U.S. should temper expectations that this past weekend was a world-historical event. Theodore Roosevelt was shot in 1912 campaigning for president in Milwaukee and, with Paul Bunyan heroism, continued his speech after being struck; he still lost. During a three-week span in 1975, two women tried and failed to shoot Gerald Ford. He lost his upcoming election, too. When Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, a brief spike in his approval rating disappeared within a matter of months.
It is hard to say that any of these failed attempts had a lasting effect on polls or politics in general.
What we do know is that Americans are increasingly irritated, nervous and a bit scared about the possibility of political violence …
Which makes this more recent Vice Presidential pick by Trump a bit more daunting as Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, well-known for his political grandstanding, is also someone who is very skilled at articulating violent rhetoric for populist appeal and electoral gain. This pick doubles down on that.
What’s been more alarming is the open placating of Trump and an unhinged Republican Party as their convention unfolds in Milwaukee by a number of entities and brandnames: mainstream media outlets pressed to alter their news coverage in a way that’s softened and not recognizing who’s responsible for the increase in violent political rhetoric. Celebrity figures, even those who’ve been reliable opponents against the prospect of fascist domination, either cozying themselves up to Trump in open shows of sympathy or as smoke signals of negotiation in the event that Trump wins. Industry executives and wealthy elite, either afraid of being finally forced to pay their fair share in taxes or the need to rein in the dangers of unregulated innovations like AI and cryptocurrency, opening up their pockets to Trump electoral efforts. A labor leader, for the first time, speaking before the Republican National Convention despite all the existential dangers that side of the aisle has represented to workers rights. Their is this alarming acceleration of a contortion act that’s happening where various players are all conspiring at once to help Trump and a growing entho-factionalist movement win or hedging their bets if they actually do.
Meanwhile, Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon dismisses the stolen confidential documents case against Trump, ruling that the appointment of a Special Counsel was unconstitutional. Clearly, she’s going after the next Supreme Court vacancy in the event Trump wins and one becomes available. This is how the game is played.
Also buried beneath all this breaking news, political gossip and prognostication: we’re still not talking about or prioritizing the extreme heat issue. We really could be and should be making this the top issue of our lives and of such events as this 2024 election. The choice really is ours. We really need to stop treating extreme heat days and waves as just another bad weather day. We have established that extreme heat is deadly and that public officials are severely under-counting the number of people dying from it. We have established that some policymakers, irresponsibly, are altogether denying the fossil-fuel triggered crisis that causes extreme heat while many others just refuse to adequately respond to extreme heat beyond "Code Red" alerts and cooling centers. The rest of us just sweat, blindly misled by joking meteorologists who are too afraid to even say there is a climate crisis, and go about our daily business. Many without air conditioning suffer way more than others in quiet silence; others go about their daily business on summer vacations and just check the forecasts for more rain. We could do a lot better on this. We could start holding policymakers more accountable and stop letting them off the hook. We could be demanding the immediate full blown activation of clean energy accessibility to all, and stop waiting around for markets to decide that for us. We could be demanding the type of inexpensive and easily implementable solutions that could reduce that heat by 5-15 degrees F. We could be designing and building equitable spaces that put us on a much less destructive path.
But what’s important is that those who are rightfully opposed to this level of backsliding and insanity shouldn’t panic. We should be focused on full mobilization against it. What’s your plan? Everyone not on the same page as a Trump and the creators of insidious plans such as Project 2025 should be having a conversation about how they’re voting, how they’re organizing their families, friends, neighborhoods, communities and others to vote. If there is a fully maximized vote or a situation where everyone who is eligible is voting against this, there is absolutely no way Trump and those who support him wins. We believe that storm is building up.