The Suspicious Devices sent to Soros, Clinton, Obama, CNN and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Eric Holder, Andrew Cuomo and Maxine Waters were Assassination Attempts
Let’s be plain. Our media, our public, are talking around what’s happened in the last two days. We’re talking about suspicious packages, we’re talking about bombing attempts, but we’re avoiding the real words here.
Someone, or a group of someones, just tried to assassinate multiple people that the Trump regime and its cronies in the Republican party regularly demonize. These were all the people that someone or a group of someone’s tried to assassinate.
- George Soros and his family.
- Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
- Barrack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Sasha Obama.
- Multiple people at CNN. The bomb sent to CNN was addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan.
- The staff of Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
- The package sent to the wrong address of Eric Holder.
- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
- California member of Congress Maxine Waters.
Let’s be plain. These were assassination attempts on people who regularly criticize the Trump regime, who Donald J. Trump regularly demonizes, just days after Trump has declared himself a Nationalist. In New York City, this is on the heels of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization that pretends it’s anything but, attempting to start a riot in New York City, and after its leader Gavin McInnes brandished a sword on the streets of New York.
Over a year ago, on March 20th, 2017, Timothy Caughman, a 66-year-old black man, was collecting cans for recycling in Manhattan, New York City when he was murdered by white nationalist James Harris Jackson with a sword. Jackson claimed that it was a test for future attacks.
In 2017 and 2018, the murder rate for transpeople was astronomical. The only crime these people committed was being themselves, to the best of their ability, and they were murdered for it as transpeople became a political football. It’s similar to the political football that gay rights has become, that leads to the same faces of white patriarchy to murder people for daring to be themselves in a culture that demands they conform to a standard which never really existed in the first place. These were, and are, acts of political violence, especially in the context of a White House that wants to erase these people, and so many more.
For decades, the murder rate among black people at the hands of law enforcement, or self-styled law enforcement like George Zimmerman (who killed teenager Trayvon Martin so many years ago) has been astronomical. Murders and abuses continue, even as I type this.
In Sandy Hook, children were murdered with machine guns, in an act of madness and political violence that echoed and continues to echo. Mass shootings are a normal way of life for us now, so normal that we ritualistically offer thoughts and prayers, ritualistically condemn those thoughts and prayers, and await the news for the next one.
If children immigrating to this country, seeking asylum, are put in cages due to an act of political will, and while in those cages they’re abused, what is that but more political violence?
America is a nation awash in political violence, and has been for so long, but it’s political violence that goes unrecognized. What our media and our politics feels willing to recognize is the myth of political violence, the fear of white patriarchy of a wave of invasion, that sees threats where none exist while threats in the real world regularly lead to political violence and political murder in our country.
If you’ve spent air on worrying about Mitch McConnell getting to eat his guacamole in peace, and somehow think that 2 women in an elevator trying to get Jeff Flake to listen to them is the same as this, you’re lost. You’re clinging to the veneer of a normal that’s never existed, that was an illusion, that ignored the violence of white supremacy and the dominance of patriarchy in the United States.
There is no going back to normal after we end the terror of this time.
There’s only the new normal we all demand, and have a responsibility to enact. And it’s our responsibility to tell the truth, speak plainly, and help usher in this new normal, one free of political violence and repression.
Maybe that’s a naive idea.
But it’s certainly a better idea to reach for than one based in the continuation and veneration of a culture that embraces and accepts the murder of children, of black people, of brown people, of people of color, of LGBQT people, of so many people that don’t conform to some mythical normal, far too much.
— — — — —
Edit: To add Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Edit: at 12:41pm ET to add Eric Holder.
Edit: at 1:06pm ET to add Andrew Cuomo.
Edit: at 1:49pm ET to add Maxine Waters.
