"If We Can't Win, Nobody Can"

Abusers never, ever, go down quietly.

Jul 17, 2024

*The Abuser-in-Chief: he doesn’t look interested in unity, does he?*

As expected, my entry covering the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump generated tremendous conversation. As it’s still the hot topic of the moment, I think I need to create a follow-up post to discuss points raised by readers.

But first, a few updates on the incident. Just how close did we get to Trump having a bullet go into his brain? It was much closer than I thought:

Goodness me. Honestly, I don’t know if I could live with the burden of knowing the difference between being alive or dead came down to something so random. Call it that, call it the Mandate of Heaven, but I can’t stress enough: if Trump died, the world would look, sound, and feel very different. It’s best that we didn’t have to face that timeline. There are a lot of people out there who still don’t take what happened on Saturday seriously enough and it comes down to the fact Trump didn’t die. Nobody would be saying, “How could the shooter miss???” (yes, people are saying this, people I know!) because, well, he’d be dead and there would exist footage of his head exploding. I hate to be so explicit, but I need to underline the gravity of the moment, somehow.

Let’s discuss the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks. He’s only 20 years old, but that shouldn’t shock anyone - many of history’s assassins were young men. John Hinckley Jr. was 25 in 1981 when he atempted to kill President Ronald Reagan. Sirhan Srihan was 24 when he killed Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and so was Lee Harvey Oswald when he killed John F. Kennedy in 1963. Nor is Crooks the youngest - Gavrilo Princip was only 19 when he shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, setting off the chain of events that would culminate in World War I. Like crime in general, assassination is the swim lane of young men.

Not much is known about him. From what little we know, he seemed the quintessential atomized young White male, with no strong social ties beyond his immediate family. It comports with the profile of others who have committed such acts in the past. His politics seem to be a matter of contention, with some saying he held conservative views, while others are saying that he was on the flip side.

Much has been made of the fact he was registered as a Republican, with many on the Left reveling in it. I don’t think it matters much since he still tried to kill the most popular Republican ever. Would it have mattered had he been a Democrat? Absolutely, since a clear ideological motivation could then be established. Even so, there was speculation many months ago that people were registering as Republicans just so they could vote against him in the primary or against other Republican candidates for other offices.

A better indication of Crooks’ political motivations may be that he donated money to Democratic Party causes. It’s not much, but actions speak louder than words. Either way, there’s just not enough to go by. If there was no explicit political motivation involved, it wouldn’t be the first time: John Hinckley tried killing Reagan to impress actress Jodie Foster, after all.

I’m afraid I don’t have much more to say about Thomas Crooks, other than to say he got what he deserved. For all we know, the Second American Civil War almost started because of him, and for what? Does he even have a reason? Thankfully, he no longer has the luxury of living long enough to be found not guilty be reason of insanity, released from psychiatric care 40 years from now, and starting a music career, like Hinckley did.

Does any of it get the Left off the hook? Not by a long shot. The Left has been talking casually about assassinating Trump for years and how he’s a threat to democracy. You don’t engage in such dangerous, inflammatory rhetoric for so long and then pretend like you had nothing to do with it. If you said for years that you wished someone in your social circle was dead and said person wound up dead, are you really going to be shocked to discover the police consider you a suspect?

Someone made the point that Crooks was only 13 when Trump was elected in 2016 (boy, that makes me feel old). That means, during his formative years, all he heard was a non-stop tirade of anti-Trump, anti-American vitriol. He’s not the only one. The idea that all this wouldn’t finally push someone to pull the trigger is obtuse, regardless of the ultimate motivation. The same way it becomes easy to bully someone considered an outcast, it’s much easier to rationalize killing the most hated man in a society.

Though misinformation is something to be avoided, I also think taking an overly factual approach, unless you’re trying to solve the mystery yourself, obfuscates more than clarifies. The following, from an otherwise reasonable voice on X, is an example of what I speak of:

So the dude who shot Trump was a registered Republican and reports from Pittsburgh media keep finding people who knew him and they all say he was a conservative. No idea why he donated $15 to Act Blue one time, but it's not looking like you can blame this one on the libs

Here’s the problem: most people who wanted Trump dead weren’t going to do the dirty work themselves. When leftists spoke of Trump getting assassinated, they expected someone else to do it. In my last entry, I explained that most people are unfamiliar with violence, which is why they talk about it so flippantly. So it doesn’t mean anything that you can’t place any tangible blame on the Left for what happened to Trump, because not only did the Left get what it thought it wanted this entire time, they always expected someone like Thomas Crooks to do it in their stead. Being rhetorically violent, but never having to get your hands dirty? Now that’s some serious White leftist privilege!

Bottom line: it doesn’t matter who killed Trump or tried to. It’s what they wanted and they almost got it. Now what?

One last point before moving onto reader reaction: I’m not interested in entertaining any speculation that this was a staged incident. However, I do want to address the fact that some think Trump’s reaction - raising his fist and yelling, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” was somehow irrational or something no reasonable person would do under similar circumstances. It’s a stupid argument, but I want to talk about it because it says something about our collective understanding of violence.

I frequently discuss the physiology and psychology of violence on this blog. Without getting too deep into the weeds, unless you’re a serial killer, violence triggers your body’s defensive mechanisms, specifically your “fight-or-flight” response. When that happens, a concurrent mental response is triggered. You become scared, but you also become angry. You can’t control these responses, not really. You can train yourself to a point where you consciously recognize your fight-or-flight response kicking in and temper it’s effects. But most people don’t train for this.

This is to say that our reaction to violence is often emotional. It’s not always rational. Yes, we’re responding to a threat, but we’re also responding to how we feel about that threat. Emotional reactions don’t always make sense. What you saw from Trump is an emotional reaction. That’s why it seems ridiculous to some people. It’s also the same reason why many of us, in response to trauma, behave in ways that we can’t explain or have difficulty rationalizing later.

X mutual Melissa Chen said about Trump’s reaction:

In near-death experiences, you are on pure autopilot. There’s really no thinking involved. That’s instinct.

This goes for triple when you’re stunned the way Trump was. He wasn’t thinking about getting shot until that bullet struck his ear. There was no time for his mind to process what was happening and then decide upon an “appropriate” reaction. What you saw out of Trump was about the most natural response he could manage. The fact that it was so defiant and powerful just might be what upsets his critics. How can someone I hate so much be so brave?

I can guarantee you: not only are his critics nowhere near as brave as they think they are, none of them have always reacted in a cool, calm, collected manner to a stressful situation, either. It took me years of living, years of experience, before I became a cool head myself.

I’ll give Melissa Chen the last word on this:

If human behavior was always logical, we wouldn’t be human. Anyway, I think more than necessary has been said on this topic, so let’s move on to reader reaction.

[ALL COMMENTS PRESENTED WITHOUT EDIT]

First up, from “Belte:”

I think most of the left is actually in shock. For the majority, I think it was their version of LARPing about assassinations and someone doing something “for the team.” Now the shock of bright red blood on the man whom they allegedly hated has stopped them cold in track. It’s like an abuser who goes a step farther than usual: a black eye rather than just a slap, a throw down the stairs rather than a black eye, etc. Like that abuser, they’re at first surprised by the power and impact. They didn’t technically mean for it to happen…it just sort of happened. Now the more rational ones will step back, not apologize but start to walk back the rhetoric as you said. The crazies though will have blood lust. The only thing stopping them perhaps is the absolute mockery that the soiboi shooter is facing and the clear disadvantage this caused their alleged side. Shooters want infamy not mockery.

The abuser comparison resonated with a lot of other readers, as it did with me. I explained in the last post how the Left’s “unity” tack won’t last long and how, within a month, they’ll come out of laying low, more defensive, more vicious, and more vindictive than they were before. This is how abusers behave. They’re first taken aback at how much pain they can cause, they feel some regret, and beg their victim to stay or to not get them into trouble.

Eventually, however, the abuser resorts to blaming their victim. “You made me do this! If only you weren’t so messed up, I wouldn’t have to be like this!” The abuser then returns to their old ways, resorting to even more vicious forms of violence.

Brian Villanueva

explains the dynamic:

The abuser analogy is right on the money. But just like lowlife man who promises “it will be different next time” after giving his wife a black eye, the shock won’t last. He still believes his superior judgement entitles him to rule over his wife and punish her for her overspending. The Left still believes it's superior morality entitles them to rule over us plebs and punish us for our racism and sexism.

Eventually, the abuse can become murder, especially when the victim decides not to put up with it anymore. Some readers may find this allegory grotesque, but the way the Left has treated this country is absolutely abusive. It’s abusive in the way they talk about the country, it’s people, the way they’ve destroyed lives with impunity over political differences and social faux pas committed years ago (“cancel culture”), or how it still insists on having its slice of the pie while otherwise doing what’s in their power to destroy the country.

Look at what the Abuser-in-Chief, Joe Biden, had to say when forced to confront his own rhetoric:

It’s really the sort of response you hear from an abuser, isn’t it? I didn’t mean it! I realize that Biden wasn’t literally calling for Trump’s head, but if the Left is going to constantly police Americans on their rhetoric, why shouldn’t the same rules apply to the Left? You cannot call Trump a literal Hitler and a threat to democracy without the logical end of such rhetoric being that Trump must be eliminated. Saying threats to democracy should be stopped at the ballot box is like saying your attacker should be fended off using the least amount of force possible. It makes no sense. Then again, politics rarely makes sense.

It only took two days, but here’s Biden attempting to shift blame to rural Americans who support Trump:

Why are they making me hurt them? is the message from Biden. Once more, you hear abusers rationalize their behavior like this all the time. I’ve never been one to scream “FJB!” or anything like that - I favor a more sophisticated approach to politics - but Biden’s assertion that harsh language is the same thing as calling someone a dictator who’s going to destroy democracy or a threat to national security is a reach. “I hate you!” is an awful thing to say to someone, but it’s still nothing compared to “I wish you were dead!”

More from Brian [bold mine]:

You’re correct -- we’re in for a very rough ride until Inauguration Day. (If Trump actually wins, the roughest will be between Nov 6 and Jan 20.) “Trump is a fascist” may have started as Democratic hyperbole, but some of the leadership appears to have convinced themselves it’s true, and they have certainly convinced their ground troops that it is. And no one can voluntarily turn over power to Hitler.

We’ll have to see what sort of tack Trump ends up taking during this second lease on life. But you can bet the Left is now petrified about not only what a second Trump administration might entail, but that he just might win it again. Abusers are terrified when their victims become empowered, often triggering greater viciousness. The stakes were already high in this election; the stakes are now downright existential, something that ought to concern everyone. Through its own rules, the Left has backed itself into a corner. We all know there are only two choices in such a predicament.

Next, we turn to

Alchemical Futurism

Commenter Belte likened the left to an abuser, and I’m going to borrow the analogy a bit.
Ricky Vaughn in 2016 tweeted something to the effect that Trump represented a return of the American spirit—the idea that the U.S. didn’t have to be the globohomo skinsuit it had become under Obama (and W. and others too).
Well, the abuser left couldn’t stand for that return of the American spirit—people thinking like that are focusing on fixing things at home, which might mess up trade deals and foreign wars, etc. So this American spirit, had to be snuffed out.
As much as all the psyops and dirty tricks in and after the 2016 campaign were about undermining Trump/his agenda, I think they were also about breaking this new American spirit. But this spirited resistance to the neoliberal project persisted, and so the violence, censorship, and lies constantly escalated from 2016-2020 trying to kill it.
That changed after the 2020 election was stolen and anyone daring to protest it was hunted by the feds. With every institution shown as corrupt and democracy revealed as a rigged game, that earnest spirit that America could be fixed was largely broken. The right’s spirit broken, the abusee finally knowing their place, the left could back off a little and focus on their wars and domestic scams, and not have things be quite so crazy.
That may change because that raised fist after surviving the assassination attempt might have rekindled the old American spirit. Before that, even with Trump winning, people were voting for self-preservation against leftist policies or to punish the left for their crimes—these goals are bad for the left, but do not threaten the left long-term as much as the fundamental reordering Trump represented and people thought possible in 2016. Institutional resistance to such an agenda can only be overcome with an implacable spirit. The image of Trump’s raised fist reminds one that there is good and courage in this world, and that with those things, perhaps America can be saved.
But if the abused right gets uppity again, believing and demanding that the managerial state and its globohomo assumptions be overwritten, we can expect something of the 2020 insanity starting to return. To the abuser left, the right needs to know its place, and deserves to be punished for stepping out of line. So lies and censorship and violence until their spirit is broken again.

The only thing to add here is that if you think the Left has become insufferable, it’s going to get much, much worse. They’ll spare no expense trying to get us to remember they’re the good guys in this Marvel superhero movie. If they can’t convince us, then, like an abuser, they’ll use violence to force us to. Abusers never, ever, go down quietly. If they have any virtue, it’s their unwillingness to take the loss and move on.

X mutual

Theophilus Chilton

compared the current situation in the U.S. to 1930s Spain:

Now, we might joke that nothing says “democracy” like assassinating your political opponents, but keep in mind that the Left actually does believe this unironically. The entire political program of the Left - and this has been the case since the “Enlightenment” - is perpetual revolutionism. “Progress” never ends, can never be satisfied. It must always move on to the next step of the program. Any obstacles to the advance of Progress must be removed by any means necessary. And Trump is one such obstacle.
To draw an historical analogy, the Left believes they are in Spain circa 1936 when the Left was in the ascendancy. For those unfamiliar with the history, the Left in Spain before, during, and after the 1936 elections made a bit of a habit out of assassinating Rightist political leaders, among other things. As with other left-wing revolutions that took place in the first half of the 20th century, the Spanish Republican revolution of 1936 saw a great deal of excess that was driven by the Left’s radical rhetoric translated into action. So we’re seeing here, and if there’s one thing that can be said about the low IQ, high time preference American left-wing and their Regime allies in the Uniparty, acceleration is their strong point.
That’s why the Left wants to disarm you and is even using the Trump assassination attempt in a cynical ploy to advance their agenda in this area. It’s a lot easier to foist a communist revolution off onto people who can’t fight back, after all. In recent years, the global Regime found out the hard way what happens when you don’t disarm your victims beforehand. Closer to home, this is why the left-wingers absolutely hate Kyle Rittenhouse. He is an ongoing reminder to them that even though he had basically no training, was still able to drop three baddies in a stressful situation, and they're afraid that this means that all of us might be able to do the same.
As we all know, the Spain of 1936 was eventually succeeded by the Spain of 1939. The Left has a funny way of provoking the very things that it says it fears, and if the Left continues on the course it is going here, they may well see the Caesar they dread. The ironic part is that it would be the result of their own ongoing provocations. Left to themselves, the Right largely just wants to be left alone. But the Left doesn’t want to leave us alone, which creates a bit of an impasse. Nevertheless, if there is to be violence it will almost assuredly originate from the Left. They’ve already revealed their proclivities along those lines, long before the attempt on Trump’s life. Expect to see more leftist stochastic terrorism in the months ahead, especially if it continues to look like Trump has a good chance of winning the election in November.

The point isn’t that we’re 1930s Spain. I sure hope we aren’t. The point is that the American Left behaves in exactly the same way the Left behaves elsewhere in the world and throughout the ages. Predicting their future behavior isn’t some big mystery.

Finally, like all abusers, the Left believes in totality: if we can’t win, nobody can. They’ll soon destroy everything than let any of us have even a tiny sphere we can call our own, where we live by our rules, not theirs.

Speaking Of Civil War…

Just to remind everyone I take the topic of civil war very seriously, let me share this brief X thread with you:

He followed up with another brief thread:

Up until now, I’ve said the Right needs to be less flippant on the topic of civil war. I’m going to extend that to the Left, who are collectively stuck somewhere between thinking the Right is going to start a devastating civil war and thinking a civil war isn’t going to happen, while abusing and provoking the Right at every turn. The Left operates with impunity, thinking they can say and do whatever they want without any consequence, but a civil war is exactly that: an environment where there are consequences for what you say and do. Someone who wants to kill you isn’t going to be swayed by your assertion of your civil rights. That’s true in both good times and bad. If the Right needs to understand they may not win a civil war, the Left must understand their usual shaming tactics and moral appeals won’t work in a civil war, either.

Josh Brooks of the war-centric website Funker 530 wrote a long X post on the realities of civil war. I’m sharing the key paragraphs:

A Civil War in the United States would look nothing like the Civil War from between April 1861 and April 1865. Dominantly because the lines aren't geographic for the strife in the country right now, but also because war has fundamentally changed.
The first thing you need to realize is that a vast portion of both the current Active and Reserve U.S. Military would defect or abstain from fighting on U.S. Soil over the current political issues. Large portions would also stay on-board however, and utilize those systems to fight in favor of whichever government is currently in control of that system.
This would happen dominantly because the U.S. Military is one of the most diverse institutions anywhere in the world with members coming from all 50 states in the Union. We saw a precedent set for this within the Free Syrian Army, where tens of thousands of Soldiers defected to fight for the defense of their home towns against units they were formerly a part of. Even with that, tens of thousands of more stayed on station to fight for the regime.

Syria is a long ways from here, but he’s correct that a civil war would fracture the U.S. military. It’s something that happens in every civil war. I think a lot of people on both sides would be unpleasantly surprised to discover who ended up on which side of the line.

Second, you’re not going to see organized military units acting in concert with one another like you did when the Civil War was between the Union and the Confederates. Instead, you'll see dozens of small localized groups fighting actively against occupational forces, and occasionally against one another.

I think this would be true no matter what form the civil war took. Most of the fighting would occur at a low level, much of it for the sake of surviving day-to-day. There won’t be many opportunities for glorious battles and major victories against the other side.

And:

If you’re standing on a platform of any size right now demanding a Civil War because politicians and people with a different opinion hurt your feelings, I suggest heading over to Funker530 and searching the key terms “Myanmar” and “Syria” for a preview of what you are asking for, which is decades of internal strife and the complete collapse of the world you live in today.
You won't need to worry about your Twitter engagement or YouTube following in a Second American Civil War. There's a roughly 1/50 chance that you'll die to the kinetic actions of your opposition, and that's if you don't starve and die of dehydration and our foreign adversaries on the world stage don't step up and start annexing large portions of the country.

If America is headed for civil war, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. That said, don’t ever get too excited about it. You’re not going to be s**tposting on X while it’s going on. It’ll just make you a target. Nobody will care about your right to free speech, either. Power does grow out of the barrel of a gun, after all. A woman losing her minimum-wage Home Depot job will seem merciful compared to the punishments doled out in a civil war.

How To Deal With An Abuser?

What are your thoughts on anything discussed? Any further reaction to the Trump assassination attempt? Do you agree with the abuser analogy? What are we to do in response?

Discuss in the comments.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!

Belte

Jul 17

I’m glad that the abuser analogy has resonated so well. In reading your excellent piece, I’m struck by another motif in popular entertainment of the abuser finally getting too old or weak while the abused realizes at the same time what horrors were inflicted on him or her during their childhood. The enfeebled abuser looks with shock and terror to see if the previously helpless target of abuse will turn the tables and enact a righteous vengeance upon the abuser so identified. Many times in movies or tv shows that happens (after a long speech tearing down the abuser and reminding them how the victim recognizes what was done in their formative years).

Looking at Biden, in his weakened physical and mental state, I see that type of abuser who realizes the tables might have been turned. When before, he might have expected crying from the victim, he now sees steady resolve and an icy pair of eyes staring at him. That is the true fear that the Left feels right now. Will the Republicans with their “fight, fight, FIGHT” anthem and seeming ascent use this power in the same careless and ruthless manner against their previous “untouchable” antagonists? Or will they let water pass under the bridge and go for reconciliation or at least a truce? That is what keeps them up at night.

Expand full comment

Mark Marshall

Biden has even waited a week to go back to abusing. He's already back to telling his Big Lies about Trump. What a disgusting excuse for a man.

1 reply

10 more comments...

We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here

"If We Can't Win, Nobody Can"

Abusers never, ever, go down quietly.

Speaking Of Civil War…

How To Deal With An Abuser?

Discussion about this post