On conspiracy theories

Okay. So you’ve noticed the shitgibbon’s long and abiding relationship with professional wrestling, and you know that wrestlers cut themselves on purpose all the time, and you don’t believe that a bullet fired from an AR-15 can graze someone for some reason,(*) and you think the assassination attempt was faked.

Okay. Fine. You go ahead and do that. Think whatever you like.

But before you spout that shit where I can see it, I’m going to insist that you explain the two dead people and the two injured people. And you’re going to have to do so in such a way that it makes more sense than that a nut job got ahold of a gun, took a shot at someone, barely missed, and the Secret Service, around someone whose single greatest skill as a human being might be his ability to surround himself at all times with utterly fucking incompetent people, fucked up.

Because I’m entirely willing to believe in a world where someone missed a shot and cops fucked up. That sounds just like America to me.

I have nothing else to say about this, other than the paragraph to follow, which is more about math than it is about politics.

(*) If it is possible for an AR-15 bullet to hit someone and blow their head off, and if it is possible for an AR-15 bullet to miss someone, than somewhere in between those two places there literally must be some distance where the bullet does damage– and an ear wound is going to bleed like a bitch even if it’s a small cut– that is not fatal. This isn’t even the first president who didn’t get killed due to amazing fucking luck. Teddy Roosevelt had a bullet basically bounce off a speech in his pocket. Andrew Jackson had someone come after him with two pistols and they both misfired, leading to Jackson beating the hell out of his assailant with his cane. The idea that it is impossible for a bullet to barely miss may be the dumbest conspiracy theory in a wild thicket of dumb conspiracy theories.

Fucking Christ, that’s enough

Damn near all of this is good news, one way or another, and you can imagine how jubilant I am that we might finally get a perp walk for that orange shitstain sometime in the near future. But all I can think about right now is Salman Rushdie. I don’t know why I haven’t seen the phrase “assassination attempt” used in any of the media accounts I’ve seen of the stabbing attack on him today, but the latest information I’ve seen (as of 8:23 PM) is that he may lose an eye, that the nerves in one arm were severed, and that he sustained damage to his liver as well. He is currently on a ventilator but I’m choosing to not read much into that given that he just came out of major surgery, and being on a vent after something like that is pretty much par for the course.

Initial reports (which may, of course, be wrong) suggest that his attacker is an Iranian sympathizer and he does not appear to have been provided with any security at the event where he was attacked. I don’t know how that happens. If he doesn’t make it through this it’s going to be the biggest loss to world culture since Lennon was killed.

I dunno, it’s got me fucked up. I hope he recovers. I can’t deal with Salman Rushdie being assassinated right now.


Out of town tomorrow for a birthday party in Indianapolis, and I’m back to work for real on Monday, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me on either or both days. The classroom is in decent shape (I’ll have all of Tuesday to finish it off; Monday is all meetings) but I’ve got a lot of writing and presentations to create so if I behave like an adult for the next couple of days I’ll be busy as hell.