Thomas Crooks as American Hero?

 A protester outside the RNC had a sign that read Thomas Crooks, American Hero:

And apparently a number of people, as above, took selfies of themselves with the picture.

Of course, the poster-bearer and selfie-takers have been widely condemned, as has Crooks himself.  Even those who almost certainly secretly wish Trump were dead -- including Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership, and the left- leaning media -- tripped over themselves to proclaim Crooks' act to be "sick," "horrific," and otherwise unacceptable.  

I hope nothing I say below will minimize the death of Corey Comperatore or the suffering of David Dutch and James Copenhaver, Crooks' other victims (the latter two, as of two days ago, have improved somewhat -- from "critical" to "serious" but stable condition).  To be sure, I'm a bit skeptical of Pennsylvania politicians' statements that Mr Comperatore died protecting his family -- from the tapes I've seen and the shots I've heard, I don't see how anyone could have reacted that fast.  But from everything I've seen, he was a decent guy who did not deserve to die.  And if he did die protecting his family, he truly was a hero.

It will be interesting to see how things turn out if Trump, as expected, wins the Presidency.  If, as many seem to think, he's going to destroy the country and/or the world -- for example, by ignoring the threats posed by climate change and artificial intelligence, or starting World War III -- then perhaps the judgment on Crooks will change, since his goal fairly clearly was to spare us all of that.  

I'm not comparing Trump to Hitler, but let's suppose there had been a failed assassination attempt on Hitler before the Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934) showed how dangerous he might become.  The attempt probably would have been widely condemned in both Germany and the rest of the world, because, at the time, Hitler was a democratically-elected leader of a sovereign state.  But I'd guess that long before 1945 that assessment would have changed -- people both inside and outside Germany would have ruefully found themselves wishing that the attempt had been successful.

The chapter on "Power" in Rutger Bregman's "Humankind" is relevant to this discussion.  Bregman points out that, based on studies of 48 contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, leaders in pre-historic hunter-gatherer tribes were likely selected based on how generous, brave, wise, charismatic, fair, impartial, reliable, tactful, strong, and humble they were.  And the leaders had to stay that way, for fear of being booted out of the tribe, or receiving an arrow in the backside.  In other words, the possibility of assassination was an important check on abuse of political power.  

Bregman also explains that all this changed after the agricultural revolution led to the emergence of armies that gave leaders the ability to suppress and/or kill anyone who opposed them.   Although we in the United States live in a democracy (which Bregman cleverly calls an "elective aristocracy"), those who are in charge still back up their power with violence.  As a result, the possibility of assassination is no longer a significant check on abuse of power, since the would-be assassin knows that he or she will likely be instantly killed.

Things have gotten even "worse" in this regard. With the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK in the 1960s, and the subsequent attempted assassinations of Ford and Reagan, security for presidents and other high ranking officials has improved to the point that political assassination in the United States is virtually impossible.  As we've seen, Crooks's near-miss was only made possible by a plethora of mistakes by those responsible for providing security for that event (I'm  not sure we have a complete picture of who was responsible, but it's clear that mistakes were made).

I recognize that a large portion of the US population supports Trump, and to be honest, I don't necessarily blame most of them.  They are reacting to the conditions they find themselves in -- they quite rightly wonder why, after all the technological progress we've made in the last 50 years, the real standard of living has been steadily declining such that people have to work harder than ever to support their families, buy homes, and to pay for needed healthcare.  They quite rightly blame the entrenched "elective aristocracy," and the two political parties that continually provide us leaders who care foremost about maintaining their own power, which can best be accomplished by permitting corporate short-term thinking to run the country slowly to the ground.

But I'm also with those who think Trump presents a signicant risk to the future of the United States and the world.  Just ask just about anyone who worked with him during his first term:

Mike Pence (Vice President): "Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President"

Mark Esper (Secretary of Defense): "I think he's unfit for Office"

John Bolton (National Security Advisor): "Richard Nixon looks like a choir boy next to Donald Trump"

Ty Cobb (White House Lawyer) "The gravest threat to democracy that we've ever seen"

Mick Mulvaney (Acting Chief of Staff):  "He failed at being the President when we needed him to be that"

Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State) "Doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports"

H.R. McMaster (National Security Advisor) "Absence of leadership, really anti-leadership"

General Mark Milley (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): "Wanna be dictator"

Bob Barr (Attorney General):  "He shouldn't be anywhere near the oval office"

General John Kelly (White House Chief of Staff): "A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators.  A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the Rule of Law"

James Mattis (Secretary of Defense): "The President has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader"

Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State):  "He's an f'g moron"

I got all of the above quotes from a recent Daily Show episode (start around 16:40):

Many politicians and pundits have broadened the point from a condemnation of political assassins to "political violence" more generally, and I've seen articles that seem to be arguing that both January 6 and this assassination attempt are examples of a growing tolerance of political violence in the country that must be ressisted.  

But doesn't that go too far?  Political violence has deep roots -- as already noted, a despotic and unpopular prehistoric hunter-gatherer leader could well expect to end up with an arrow in his backside, and the shooter might well have become the next leader, by popular acclaim.

Killing one's political rivals became fairly routine after the agriculural revolution, and from time to time -- as in the assassination of proto-emperor Julius Caesar -- it could be justified based on democratic and/or republican principles.  Indeed, many of the assassinations of subsequent Roman emperors (think Caligula and Nero, but there were many others) were perfectly justified, even if the motives of the assassins might be questioned.

Renaissance thinker Juan de Mariana made waves when he rejected the doctrine of the "divine right of kings" and argued that in certain cases, regicide, even by private citizen, was justifiable.  The "absolute" rejection of political violence against politicians today weirdly echoes the invocation of the "divine right" of kings that Mariana was reacting against back then.  

We should also remember that the CIA has long admitted that the US Government participated in several attempts to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, and occasionally considered the pros and cons of killing other leaders, including Congolese President Patrice Lumumba.  And of course, all of the foreign regime changes and revolutions that the US Government has supported and/or resisted over the years have caused the deaths of numerous foreign political figures and civilians.

And let's not forget that our catastrophic invasion of Iraq was sold to us on the basis that we needed to "take down" Saddam Hussein, on the trumped-up and demonstraby false basis that he posed some kind of a nuclear threat to us.  Was Thomas Crooks less justified in thinking that Trump is a threat to our country and the world than we were in thinking that Saddam was?  And yes, Crooks hurt some innocent bystanders, but nothing like the hundreds of thousands of civilians whose deaths we caused in the course of "taking down" Saddam. 

Was Joe Biden's support for taking down Saddam -- by advocating for doing so long before the Neocons took power and then voting for the Iraq War -- any less morally culpable than Crooks's assassination attempt?