Wake Me Up When He's Finally Dead

It looks like someone tried to assassinate Trump…

Again…

The pundits will spend days talking it to death. Conspiracy theories will spin and spin, saying it was staged, calling it a false flag, etc. Countless politicians, celebrities, and “journalists” will make statements condeming the violence. And I’m just sitting here thinking, my god, this has all gotten so…

Absolutely, definitively boring.

You know?

Wake me up when this talking pig is actually dead. Otherwise, I’ve already seen this episode. I don’t care. The writing is poop. The acting is poop. The directing is poop. The soundtrack is poop. I have no interest in this whatsoever. I have a hundred more interesting things to do.

I’m sorry to swear, but hopefully you appreciate the sentiment. You get it. This is how you feel, deep down, right? Despite all the self-important podcastarati telling you that you should care, that this incident means something, that it has some relevance to you and all of your struggles, personal, financial, existential.

Raise your hand if you don’t care.

Perhaps it matters to the extent that it represents a further descent into political instability, assuming it was a genuine assassination attempt. Even if it wasn’t, even if every attempt on Trump was staged, it points to the same unraveling. Political violence has become the norm, politics is the new reality television, and it’s upending every event that attempts to bring any sense of normalcy to our shattered civic sphere. I’ve always hated reality television. I’m not about to start watching it now.

If there’s any meaning here:

It was always naive, even ludicrous, to think journalists could kick back and have a few laughs with the head of a fascist crime mafia. That was the insane part. The assassination attempt? That actually makes sense. Far be it from any of us to speculate on the “motives” of the shooter, but hear me out:

He wanted Trump dead, maybe?

Even for those among us who reject violence, who hasn’t secretly hoped Trump would keel over at some point? Who hasn’t openly hoped? I’m not even religious, and I remember praying for any god to take him back in 2020 when he got Covid. I’ve never hoped anyone would die as much and as many times as I’ve hoped Trump would die, via natural causes, via his own political violence.

Whatever works for me.

I’m not sure Trump really has staying power as a martyr. We thought Charlie Kirk would be a martyr, but instead, he became a meme.

I think Trump would go the same way.

Anyway…

No, Trump’s death wouldn’t bring order to the universe. It wouldn’t solve all our problems. But it would solve a few of the biggest, most immediate ones. Of course, it’s also worth acknowledging that Trump has fundamentally, permanently altered our politics. We’ll never get back to normal. We don’t know exactly what the world will look like without him, but we sure as hell know what a world with him looks like, and there’s a 99 percent chance it would be better if he died, because almost any road we take is better than the one we’re on now.

There are plenty of awful people out there, but it’s hard to imagine anyone more universally hated than this man.

So, no, after thinking about it for a few minutes, after the initial awe wears off, I’m left with a decided feeling of nonplussed. Unimpressed.

Even bored…

And honestly, a little disappointed…

The only surprising thing about this whole mess is how many times this scourge on humanity has managed to cheat death and defeat, how many times he’s declared bankruptcy, how many times his career has been over, and yet he keeps coming back. It’s really starting to feel like there might be a god after all, and he’s trolling us, he’s rolling on the floor laughing.

That’s what it feels like.

On a more realistic level, it confirms what some of us know: There’s nobody up there looking out for us. There’s no divine justice. There’s no karma. The only justice in this world is the justice we make. Evil only gets what it deserves if someone gives it to them. Regardless of what we hear over the next few days, we know this: If Trump were actually in jail, where he belongs, then people wouldn’t have to keep trying to kill him. In their own sloppy, misguided way, they’re trying to do the job that our politicians could never bring themselves to do.

There’s a pattern here, of course.

Like it or not, the system has failed. Everyone sees it now. That’s why Chamel Abdulkarim torched a corporate warehouse, incinerating $600 million. It’s why someone shot a healthcare CEO dead in the street.

Even the seemingly senseless mass shootings we see more and more of every year have their roots in a failing socio-economic system that no longer even pretends to take care of us, but instead grinds us up, exploits us, pays us starvation wages, makes us lonely, sells us poison, fills our head with self-righteous rage, drives us nuts, then does everything it can to load us up with drugs and guns. And they wonder why the violence is getting out of control?

Lol, okay…

That’s why I’m writing this up late at night on a weekend. It wasn’t my intention, but this thing happened, and I think you might like to know that while the internet is blowing up with every sensationalist spin on this assassination attempt, if that’s what it turns out to be, you’re not the only one who doesn’t care, like, at all.

Wake me up when he’s finally dead.

Otherwise…

Meh.

Thank you to everyone who reads this unpaywalled newsletter. If you value this content, please help the publication grow by sharing and supporting. I'll always do my absolute best to deliver high-quality, thought-provoking, practical content on a range of issues that matter to us in these unhinged times.