Assassinated By Lies

The near assassination of President Trump has rightly dominated headlines, at least after several mainstream outlets gave up on pretending that he had merely taken a fall on stage. Now that most of the world has seen video of the event from numerous angles, it’s inconceivable that any of those journalists could have sincerely believed that a mere fall had occurred. What was happening was not ambiguous. So, those who get their news from X (formerly Twitter) saw and heard the truth in near real time, while millions of others were intentionally kept in the dark.

As information about the shooter is scarce and tightly controlled, the people are again denied the truth. It’s part of a dangerous pattern. Those in the media who talk the most about disinformation are the biggest orchestrators of silence and falsity.

It seems reasonable to conclude that the shooter was likely the product of false reporting about Trump specifically and Republicans more generally. Plenty of people have focused on how inflammatory rhetoric can push the mentally ill to take actions that others would only fantasize about, but there’s a more important issue. That is, when people are denied the truth, they are forced to live a lie. This isn’t just the case for those who are battling severe mental illness, but for all of us.

Our understanding of what is can be warped, even intentionally. Such a distorted understanding of reality is the space that so many live in—not just those who are on the precipice of violence, but regular Americans who suffer for what they do not know. Misinformed through the educational system and then the legacy media, they must operate on a false footing.

Philosopher Josef Pieper clarifies:

Can a lie be taken as communication? I tend to deny it. A lie is the opposite of communication. It means specifically to withhold the other’s share and portion of reality, to prevent his participation in reality.

Too many are denied their share in reality. Knowing this, and being aware of how the “official” sources of news are such bastions of deception, we must be careful not to allow the impending cries against online radicalization to be used to silence smaller media outlets or online communication more generally. This is a likely strategy in the run-up to an election. Our news agencies have been embedded with people from the intelligence agencies for decades, known at least since Operation Mockingbird became declassified. The attempt to mold opinions (and people) is thus more organized than many think.

It’s not improbable that we will never be told the truth of the shooter’s motivations, just as we weren’t with the Vegas shooter, and just as the Nashville trans shooter manifesto has never been released. There appears to be an unspoken rule that if a shooting cannot be weaponized against the “right”, it is only to receive minimal coverage. This too is about denying people an understanding of the reality that they live in, in order that their opinions can be shaped by lie or omission.

The former (and probably next) President of the United States came millimeters away from being assassinated in front of thousands of his supporters. Most likely, he would have been killed for a lie—whether the lie that Trump will kill trans people, that he’s going to overthrow the system of government, that he hates the disabled, or any number of others.

The iconic moment wherein Trump raises a fist and says “Fight” to the American people, when so many would have been focused on finding safety, should be remembered by all. The cultural battles that we fight are enduring, and will probably spill over into more violence in the coming years. As described, it is largely Truth itself that forms an epicenter of the conflict. It is in that recognition that we can see how it is a spiritual battle that underpins the greater war. Truth is the person of Christ. The nation’s soul is being fought for. The country won’t be saved by an election, though perhaps the descent can be slowed. There is a long fight ahead to change the tide of the culture, and to educate so many who have been immersed in a fictitious existence.