Huey Trump

Huey Long was a 1930s governor from Louisiana 1There are a couple good articles about the Long here and here. Strangely, I’m having a hard time finding many recent books on him.. He was a rising star of left-wing politics, known for his extreme populism and radical, rousing speeches. He was further left of FDR, opposed the New Deal as insufficient, and advocated for wealth redistribution.

He was impeached by the LA legislature for abuse of power in 1929, but those efforts fell apart. They contended his policies were authoritarian and conducted an insurrection in 1935.

Before he could make a run for the White House in 1936, he was assassinated in the state house.

Do some of these footnotes sound familiar? Time is a flat circle.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump, while on the stump this past weekend, was nothing short of game-changing, shocking, sickening. It had all the hallmarks of recent political and social nightmare:

  1. Mass shooter trauma. Young man, armed with AR-15, opens fire on a crowd.
  2. Real-time catastrophe trauma. Like 9/11 or January 6th, we all got a front row seat for the violence and horror.
  3. Haziness of mass media. The event spawned a million conspiracy theories because it — like all violent tragedies — didn’t play out perfectly like a movie. If there was even one moment that seemed odd or coincidental, there is room for a host of theories and doubters 2On the left, there have been theories that the event was staged, while on the right there are theories that Biden himself ordered a hit..

Zooming out, I was struck by a few other thoughts:

  • I did not, nor did anyone else, see something like this coming. There has been a looming dread about this election season for many months now, but this was a genuine surprise.
  • The rhetoric of Trump has long been provocative, fatalistic, pessimistic. These are all predictive of an autocrat; claim unceasingly that the country is collapsing (when it is demonstrably not) such that the autocrat is the only remedy.

Rhetoric, propaganda, and misinformation produces cumulative trauma. For those on the edge, or predisposed to violent paranoia, this type of indoctrination can encourage them to do something about their fears. Whether it be Jan 6 “patriots” pumped up with jingoistic fervor, or a lone assassin convinced of his righteous cause, the outcome is the same: political violence.

My reaction to the assassination attempt took me right back to January 6, 2021. It was sickening. It was abnormal. It was irreversible.

Footnotes

  • 1
    There are a couple good articles about the Long here and here. Strangely, I’m having a hard time finding many recent books on him.
  • 2
    On the left, there have been theories that the event was staged, while on the right there are theories that Biden himself ordered a hit.

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