That image goes hard. It’s the kind of iconic shot that defines an era, destined to be endlessly replicated and memed.
Contrast it with the pictures that circulated in the aftermath of the J6 fedsurrection.
MAGA meemaws took an unscheduled tour of the people’s house, and the “people’s” “representatives” explosively vented the contents of their bowels into their Depends, cowering under their benches and hyperventilating in effeminate panic.
An assassin narrowly misses a headshot on the rightful President of the United States, the bullet clipping his ear due to a fortuitous last-second turn of his head or gust of wind, and the chieftain’s reaction is to raise his fist in the air, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
These things in Congress, they are wretches – cowardly, traitorous, treasonous, treacherous, trapped by kompromat involving petty bribes and boys with smooth cheeks. They know what they are, regardless of the face they try and present to an incredulous country. On J6 they felt their sordid careers of betrayal catching up with them ... all those who were not let in on Biden’s prank, at least. They had visions of the lampposts and firing squads they know quite well that they deserve.
The guilty flee where no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
Today, I think, once again, there are a truckloads of adult diapers in need of changing, inside the Beltway. It is dangerous to strike at the king, and miss ... and boy, did they miss.
A lot of people are saying this is all kayfabe, an outrage carefully orchestrated from within the Trump campaign itself. Reflexive paranoid skepticism is a good and healthy instinct in these times, but I do not think this was staged. There is very little margin for error in a head shot at 150 meters. A gust of wind, a slight turn of the head, at just the wrong time, and the bullet meant to scare everyone and get you the sympathy vote, instead ends your campaign, your political career, and your life in a splatter of grey matter. The Giant Orange Ego would not take such a risk, especially when he does not have to, when he is already blowing mumbling Uncle Creepy out of the water in polling.
If there is a conspiracy, it was on the other side. Many have observed that the Secret Service ignored the rooftop from which any competent sniper would have a clear shot; others have pointed out that the security detail ignored a warning from a bystander, who saw the assassin climbing up onto the roof. It begins to look like the Praetorians were ordered to stand down, especially when Trump’s request for a beefed up security detail was denied by the DHS. Then again, others have noted that the Secret Service has been yassifying and DIEversifying, with Trump’s detail being larded down with obese females who fumbled with their holsters in the aftermath of the shooting. So perhaps there is no conspiracy, but merely another manifestation of the competence crisis collapsing yet another complex system. Not that these are mutually exclusive scenarios.
The shooter1 is dead, of course.
So there’s no possibility of dragging him in for enhanced interrogation. His physiognomy screams mentally ill Antifa pedo straight from central casting...
So maybe he’s a stochastic terrorist2, incited to throw his life away to save American Our Democracy from the Cheeto Fascist.
Or maybe he’s just a fall guy, dragged up onto the roof by a professional sniper team, executed with a bloodstream full of fentanyl, in order to cover their tracks.
Who knows.
It doesn’t matter.
The mood is what matters, now.
And Trump’s people, which is to say the American people, are in a mood.
They are pissed.
A decade of rabid, sanpaku-eyed, mouth-foaming madness has come to this.
Their emperor was almost killed. Whether the shooter was a stochastic or a spook, whether the path that was opened was due to diversity hire incompetence or a quiet order from on high to stand down, the conclusion is the same:
These people need to go.
They need to be removed.
All of them.
Without exception.
Of course we all knew that.
They’re dragging us into a multi-front global great power war.
They’re stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, and then they’re ripping up the nails.
They’re building a green prison out of AI surveillance and CBDCs and mRNA transfections.
They’re opening the gates and letting barbarians flood into our countries, with whom they hope to fortify elections, and terrorize the people as they replace the people.
They’re grooming the children, driving them to madness and despair, vivisecting their bodies.
These people are the enemy of everything good in the world, and if we leave them in their offices, their studios, and their courts, they will destroy us. This is existential. But you already knew that. It’s been clear for quite some time.
Now, however, it is, for many, much more personal.
Now, the rules have changed.
An inflection point has passed.
Americans have been remarkably, even superhumanly patient with their fecklessly malign ruling class, accommodating to the point of absurdity with the mewling madness of the glassy-eyed NPCs who continue, amazingly, despite everything, to fall for it all, to think that they’re the good guys, that they’re on the side of truth and humanity.
That seemingly bottomless well of patience is now, I suspect, as dry as Death Valley.
The left should count itself lucky that the sniper missed, that Civil War 2 did not start yesterday, in the eerie silence following Trump’s cracked-open skull. Leftists would be wise to remain circumspect in the coming days and weeks. There are a lot of angry people out there, and they will be looking for an outlet for that anger, for any excuse to exercise it. High profile regime types in particular, the sorts of people whose names and faces are widely known, should probably keep their heads down and stay home for a while. Going out in public might lead to unpleasantness. They will not be popular.
And for the rightists – which is most of those of you who are reading this – don’t do anything stupid. Don’t let that anger control you. Turn the fire in your heart into ice in your veins, bottle that rage up and refine it into high-octane fuel. No one knows what happens from here. Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. But if the lockdowns and election theft of 2020 felt like the beginning of the end, this shot feels like the end of the beginning, the starting pistol for a race that will lead us either to freedom, or destruction.
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
- speech by Mark Antony on the occasion of Caesar’s assassination, Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
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Oh and there is a book coming:
’s Bushido of Bitcoin is now available for pre-order. For the past several months I’ve been helping him edit it, and it’s been a fascinating project to assist with. Svetski meditates on the warrior virtues of feudal Japan, medieval Europe, and the Hellenistic age, asking how these can be adapted to the coming diamond age of cyberpunk multipolarity. There’s a Kickstarter, whichWho, remarkably, was not Sam Hyde.
As an aside, isn’t it just so very interesting that it is the left, which screams about the risks posed by stochastic terrorism, which seems to commit all the stochastic terrorism? And by interesting, you should read typical, and expected. The left always projects.
If an orchestrated attempt to finally remove Orange Man, then this is a good sign for the rest of us. It doesn't get any more desperate than assassination. You don't assassinate people you can defeat, only the dangerous opponents.
He could be a lone gunman of course. Given the extent of Trump Derangement Syndrome it is in fact likely. Most TDS sufferers are lost. Lost enough to believe he is Orange Hitler hell bent on genociding blacks and gays, which seems to be what many of them actually think.
So either this is the inevitable end state of endless media propaganda against a president they dislike, or a sign of the deep state running out of options. I believe the former as Trump is unlikely to be a real threat once in office.
The actual threat are MAGA supporters subsequently disillusioned by four years of a compromised Trump unwilling to change much. We note he no longer talks about evicting Muslims; just one example from many. He is bound to be a failure again and I would argue this is the real tinderbox. Once the average guy understands voting changes nothing then that revelation could change everything.
130 yards is not a long shot. I'm not particularly good with a rifle and probably could have made that.
This is all on the Secret Service. It's hard to imagine this level of incompetence. I think it may have been deliberate. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has been focused on hiring more girlbosses over qualified agents, so incompetence is not totally off the table... But still, if a random like me would know enough to secure a roof 130 yards away, even that is a tough sell.