I posted on a diary immediately after the shooting that I thought that this wasn’t really an assasination attempt but collateral damage from a fight in the audience. Now I believe that this was an attempt on Trump’s life but the motives of the shooter are becoming clearer as I learn more about his character and struggles. He was bullied in school and was a loner. I get it. I was much the same in school. Children can be very cruel in school especially to someone who is perceived to already have lost favor to their clique. Bukkies tend to have a following of cowed individuals who feed of of the bullies deneaning of others. And we all know what happens when someone yells “FIGHT” in a schoolyard. It attracts a crowd that immediately begins egging on the violence giving an audience to your humiliation. The shame from that ostracization can deeply wound someone but their sense of powerlessness will keep it hidden but it never goes away. It it sits there and simmers and grows as more humiliation is piled on you till one day it explodes in rage.
Another aspect of this is we bullied tend to live in isolation avoiding all the social events of adolescent growth because we fear that humiliation. I know I did. This leads to us not developing coping skills that are learned in interacting with our peers. It also deprives us af the joy of accompishment that goes with achieving acceptance by our peers. We become angry and sullen thinking of ways to retaliate but are stymied by our fear until we find other means to carry that out. Many do not go down that road before we graduate and have to start fending for ourselves. We move on but that humiliation lives on in us waiting for that next bully to trigger our pent up rage. That employer who thinks he owns you and expects you to do his every bidding. That ambitious coworker who is a given some power by that employer and becomes a petty tyrant. The constant social push that puts us in constant comeptition with each other. Sometimes just for the entertainment of our betters.
Make no mistake, Trump is a bully. Ever since he decided to run for president and captured the media I have felt triggered by his bullying attitude. As this picture of him raising his fist as if to strike you illustrates. His famous reality show The Apprentice was all about him bullying people without any consequences, a bully’s dream. That was why I could never watch it. But the fact that it was a success tells me a lot about what is wrong with this country. Much like a homophobic may be a gay man who is trying to cover it by denouncing other gays people who have been bullied want to see others suffer the same fate. It makes them feel less ashamed of themselves but it is only temporary until they are again targeted. Targeted,it is a frightful way to live when you feel that you have a target on you that bullies seem to have radar for, especially when the bully is surrounded by a crowd of cowardly sycophants.
So we have this 20 year old man/boy who has been bullied all his life in school but is still looking for a way to impress his peers in one “I’ll show you” event. This is the profile of a school shooter not an assassin. He clearly had not planned his action very well. When he was discovered by that officer who saw him on the roof he clearly panicked and let loose a fusilade of bullets to try and hit something and ended up killing some innocent bystanders. He aparently hadn’t considered how rapidly he would be killed by the Secret service once he began shooting. He was dead in seconds. We still don’t know for sure is Trump was wounded by a bullet or just flying debris. I’m still reading stries that say it was a bullet that hit his ear. It may be that that officer that surprised the shooter may have saved Trump’s life causing him to reveal his position before he could zero in on Trump. One thing is sure, he has placed his stamp on history and may have made his bullies give a sigh of relief that it wasn’t them. Maybe all those girls and boys who demeaned him now are reconsidering their opinion of him, but sadly he’ll never know.