A shift in perspective

[aadler]

I don’t like conspiracy theories.

I really don’t. For decades I’ve watched them being used as a vehicle for projecting personal prejudices into the ‘judgment’ of events, superseding objective consideration of facts, probabilities, and basic logic. I feel that all too often, if not most of the time, they override actual thought and steer their advocates into unjustified blind alleys.

I haven’t changed my opinions on that. Unfortunately, reality has changed enough that I find myself uneasy and uncertain.

The facts coming out on the first day following the Trump assassination attempt — and let us never forget, an actual murder resulted from that — were already enough to make it clear: either the Secret Service was in on it, or they were too blindingly incompetent to continue in their jobs. Given the way DEI and other leftist ideologies have hollowed out so many institutions, including but not limited to government, even THAT MUCH incompetence was a long way from being impossible.

(Also, it seemed entirely plausible that the awful deficiencies in the security around Trump were the result, not of conspiracy to assassinate, but of deliberate, contemptful neglect: “Screw him, he’s Trump. Don’t give him any more than we absolutely have to, maybe shitty protection will keep him from campaigning quite as hard. And if something should happen to him … well, screw him, he’s Trump.”)

I continued to hold carefully to this position. Just a few days ago, I told my wife, “Okay, we can let go of any idea of there being any conspiracy that included the Secret Service, because now we know that Trump’s team had been denied any counter-snipers until the rally in Butler. If you were running a conspiracy, you wouldn’t assign counter-snipers THE DAY of the attempt.”

It would be nice to continue to hold to that assurance. But I can’t.

If there were a conspiracy, counter-snipers could in fact have a place in it. They wouldn’t even need to know anything was coming. If they were put in place — not the best place, but one where they could take a shot — and then prevented from engaging the recognized threat until he’d already cranked off several rounds and the target (Trump) had gone down … well, then they could be given the okay, “Take the shot!”, and BAM! the pre-prepped patsy would be dead before he could testify to anything embarrassing.

I hate this crap. I don’t want to be thinking this way, in the manner of people I scorned for so many years. But, damn it, the world has changed. Tulsi Gabbard winds up on a de facto no-fly list after leaving the Democrat party. BLM arsonists are released on bail (and then never charged), while people praying in front of abortion mills are sent to prison. Trump himself is convicted — 34 times! — for questionable reporting of what were later claimed to be campaign expenses, while Hillary Clinton commissioned the ‘Russian collusion’ dossier, filed that as legal expenses, and only had to pay a fine for the misreporting.

Was there a wide-ranging conspiracy to assassinate Donald Trump when his campaign began to actively threaten Democrat Party dominance of government? I don’t know. I don’t know. I still don’t believe it, not really.

But I can no longer — not with full confidence — simply dismiss such speculations. Because the known abuses of power of the Biden administration (and Obama’s before that, and the Obama holdovers during Trump’s presidency) have gone so far beyond anything previously believable, that there simply is no knowing the limits (if any) on just how far they will go.

I liked my blithe skepticism better. But this where we are now, and I hate it.