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Tuesday
It’s amazing how crazed narratives flourish when truth is whatever you decide it is. QAnon was the first inkling I got of how a significant swatch of the electorate would buy into unhinged conspiracy theories so it has come as no surprise that Republican politicos are blaming Democrats and Biden for the Trump shooting. And doing so even though the shooter was (wait for it) a white kid who hung out with conservative classmates in high school, had access to his libertarian father’s AR-15 style assault weapon, belonged to a shooting club, wore a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch (a YouTube channel known for its firearms and demolition content), and was a registered Republican.
Nevertheless, at least 30 Republican members of Congress are now on record blaming either Biden, the Democrats, or the media for the shooting.
Conspiracy theories can go in multiple directions, as Jorge Luis Borges was well aware. In two of his short stories, he looks at the dynamics at work, showing in “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” how people will create fraudulent scenarios to serve their purposes and in “Death and the Compass” how they can get trapped in their own theorizing. More on Borges in a moment.
First of all, however, here’s a taste of this theorizing from the man that I correctly predicted (with help from Lady Bracknell) would be Trump’s choice for V-P. While I credit Vance’s two billionaire backers, Peter Thiel and Edmund Musk, for the selection, some have speculated that Trump liked how Vance blamed Biden for the shooting. As Vance tweeted,
Today is not just some isolated incident.
The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.
Forget the shooter’s demographics, in other words. Reality for Vance is whatever he decrees it to be.
Now to Borges, who in “Traitor and Hero” imagines a 19th– century Irish revolutionary discovering that he himself is the traitor in his activist group (we’re not told how). He therefore asks to be executed in such a way that will advance the goals of the revolution. To make the death particularly dramatic and memorable, one of his fellow revolutionaries plagiarizes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Macbeth. The resulting story becomes one for the ages, the traitor is regarded as a hero, and the revolution succeeds.
There’s a further twist to the story but put that aside and think further about conspiracies. What’s to keep a liberal conspiracy theorist from arguing that Trump just set up the whole shooting so that he could strike a heroic pose from an embattled position, thereby boosting his election prospects? Or imagine our liberal conspiracy theorist contending that Trump, like the traitor/hero in the story, planned heroic martyrdom to advance the cause of Trumpism. (Okay, I suspect that even the most ardent Trumpists wouldn’t see their narcissistic leader capable to this degree of self -sacrifice.)
On to “Death and the Compass,” where a famed detective chooses an elaborate conspiracy theory over the obvious explanation about why a rabbi gets stabbed. The obvious explanation is that the thief was out to steal a renowned collection of sapphires but blundered into the wrong room. This is the police commissioner’s theory but detective Lônnrot, like Poe’s Dupin or Doyle’s Holmes, disagrees, saying that such a theory
is possible, but not interesting. You will reply that reality hasn’t the slightest need to be of interest. And I’ll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber.
It turns out that the police commissioner is right about a botched robbery. But in a further twist, the organized crime lord who ordered the robbery figures out the rabbinical explanation that Lönnrot is pursuing. He therefore feeds him fake clues to lead him on, luring him into a trap and ultimately shooting him. Before he dies, the detective comments,
In your labyrinth there are three lines too many. I know of a Greek labyrinth [Zeno’s paradox] which is a single straight line. Along this line so many philosophers have lost themselves that a mere detective might well do so too.
To which his about-to-be killer replies, “The next time I kill you I promise you the labyrinth made of the single straight line which is invisible and everlasting.”
So while Vance and others are spinning elaborate theories that blame Democrats, it is up to the rest of us to apply a single straight-line explanation. Actually, I can think of two. Either the shooter thought that Trump isn’t right wing enough or he was a mixed-up kid looking for notoriety.
(I mention that first explanation, not because I have any idea about its accuracy, but to make the point that it’s more plausible than any we’re getting from MAGA.)
So will Republicans get trapped in their own theories the way that Lönnrot does? Well, do you think shouting nonsensical claims at the top of your lungs is going to win over those independent voters that Trump needs to swing the election? Perhaps Trumpists convince themselves they are winning because they can’t hear anyone but themselves, but keep in mind that, ever since 2018—when they started doubling down on Trumpism—they have been losing elections. And this in spite of their heavy gerrymandering and voter suppression. As the kids say, they keep getting high on their own stash.
In my post about James Stephens’s “Sea Shell” last week, I contended that Biden’s common sense and decency, delivered in calm and measured tones, will ultimately be what most voters want. The address he gave following the Trump shooting was another instance of his reasonableness. So when hysterics such as Trump and Vance—Vance even more than Trump—are threatening to send women and LGBTQ+ folk back to the 1950s and unions back to the 1980s, do we really think Americans are going to go for it? Especially when there’s a grown-up in the White House who keeps insisting we keep our eyes on the prize? Maybe Trump is fun reality tv for a while but, in good economic times, you can always count on the American electorate to choose comfort and stability over chaos. And the incumbent over the challenger.
In Borges’s story, Lönnrot is far more interesting than the police commissioner. The commissioner, however, has a better understanding of how the world works.
