Gambling In Casablanca

Being blamed for a world of political violence by the people who force us to live in it, and are now shocked—shocked!—by it. Navigating the daily trauma of living in a bully's paradise.

Well I'm given to understand that today and for an extremely limited time, the members of our nation's political violence party are shocked—shocked!—to learn that we currently live in a world of easy massacres and normalized political violence, and would like very much to know who is to blame.

I'm kidding, of course. They've already decided who is to blame. It's the same culprit they hold at fault for every other real and imaginary problem in their lives: Everybody except them.

This will probably be a shorter one than usual. I'm weary as hell, and I bet most of you are, too. I had a whole piece built about our legacy media's penchant for speculation and prediction, about its penchant for creating equivalencies to manufacture a simulacrum of neutrality rather than delivering informed context that might provide the foundation of a shared reality based in fact. And it was about our unfortunate habit of aping the worst habits of legacy journalism, by endlessly speculating on what is likely to happen rather than dealing with what actually is happening and working from there to build what ought to be.

Maybe I'll still post it in the coming weeks, but right now it feels like it needs a refurb. It also feels as if maybe I'll need to take my own advice, and avoid speculating too much on unfolding events. The reason for both of these things is that yesterday in Pennsylvania, a gunman took some shots in the direction of the former president—the adjudicated rapist, 34-time convicted felon, insurrectionist, and daily fomenter of political violence, Donald Trump. Trump, who has himself attempted to enact political assassination in the not-so distant past, survived with what appear to have been minor shrapnel wounds. At least one attendee in his crowd and the shooter did not survive. It's all shocking and frightening and unnerving, as is every instance of the manufactured modern plague of gun violence to those of us who aren't oriented toward violence in this violence-oriented world.

That's all I think it wise to say, as the story is still very much in flight, and there will be plenty of time to get the facts and figure out what the shooter's political motivations were and get down to the very important task of casting blame, while neglecting to recognize the clear context that there is an active political movement calling itself conservative, or Republican, or MAGA if you like, which is fully dedicated to forcing us to all live in a world of easy massacres and accelerating normalized political violence. It's our political violence party, and I'm told it is leading in the polls right now.

I say "violence," because it involves abusing and harming and menacing and killing all of the rest of us. I say "political," because it involves seizing the apparatus of government to do it. Assassination attempts are indeed political violence, if a rare type. Violence committed by government against citizens is far more common, and far more popular, too, which is something one could have observed at Trump's Pennsylvania violence-instigation rally, until it was interrupted by a less-common form of political violence.

And I'm given to understand that the members of our political violence party are shocked—shocked!—to find violence in the country to which they deliver violence each day, and they'd like to let us know who they think is to blame.

In 2015 it was "lock her up." In 2016 it was "2nd amendment solutions." In 2017 it was telling cops "please don't be too nice." In 2018 it was "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." In 2019 it was "can't you just shoot them in the legs or something?" In 2020 it was "stand back and stand by." In 2021 it was an actual attempted overthrow of the government, along with the attempted assassination of the Vice President and Congress. In 2022 it was leading the crowd in laughing about the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi and the brutal attack on her husband by a deranged hammer-wielding maniac. In 2023 it was calling enemies "vermin" who were "poisoning the blood of the country," and promising "I am your retribution." In 2024 ... well. There's been no end to it, but earlier this year there was a predicted bloodbath, and a never-ending litany of more vermin and blood-poisoning talk, and just last week we heard about another American Revolution to be waged by MAGA America against all the rest of us, which we were assured would stay bloodless as long as we didn't resist, and the Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina literally told his crowd that some people need killing.

It's a list truncated by choosing only one item per year. It was a shockingly easy list to compile. You could double it, triple, it, and not drain the pool of readily available examples. We haven't even touched on the constant open praise of dictators and longing admiration for their ability to enact shocking acts of brutality against their own population.

And of course in every year there has been gun massacre after gun massacre after gun massacre, each of them followed by the exact same empty pageantry that demands that we mourn the death of today's victims without ever remembering yesterday's or trying to protect tomorrow's, because the cause of all massacres—the massacre weapons themselves—are forever treated as the only thing to defend, and any attempt to protect actual humans is treated as shameful politicization of tragedy that is never permitted to be understood as preventable.

And there have been the ceaseless waves of murderous police brutality, followed by police riots enacted in retribution for those who dare protest murderous police brutality, and there have been calls published in national newspapers to use the army to murder peaceful protestors, and calls to run them over with vehicles, and the celebration of those exonerated after murdering protestors, and the official government pardons of those who murder protesters when they get convicted. And we've seen librarians and teachers hounded out of jobs, and families fleeing fascist states like Florida or Oklahoma or Texas, states that would prefer to see trans children dead. There has been the gleeful promise to accelerate a climate catastrophe that is predicted to kill a billion beautiful human beings, and the gleeful promise that in the future all of our daughters will be forced to live in a country that treats their bodies as the property of whatever small town youth pastor decides to rape them, and on and on and on.

This is the world we all occupy; the world we're forced to occupy, against our wills.

And I'm given to understand that Republicans are shocked—shocked!—that there is suddenly political violence in this world they've forced us all to occupy with them, and they'd like us to know exactly who they think is to blame.

And there have been ceaseless enthusiastic calls from the Republican voting base for civil war, an open desire to get to some real mass killing, and people openly yearning to use the guns, and early this year a bunch of Republican governors got into the act and started openly fantasizing about secession when it appeared the president wasn't going to let them kill brown people at the border. And we've all seen the little threats and little hopes for retributive violence, peeking out at us around any turned corner, thin blue line flags and Punisher logos and violence-celebrating car wraps and bumper stickers and "Rope. Journalist. Tree. Some Assembly Required." t-shirts, marring a bright sunshiny day with the sudden knowledge that we share this beautiful world with people who are comforted by the idea of a coming day when they may be able to see a lot of us die, and would like us to understand that the threat they pose is real and ever-present.

I don't want to be naive. This has always been a nation mediated through violence against marginalized people. However, I don't think I'm entirely being a coddled little comfortable middle-class middle-aged white dude when I say that in the age of MAGA there has been a new drumbeat added to the traditional mix, a manufactured rhythm of dread at the exact cadence of a semi-automatic weapon firing into a crowd, and just last month the tempo of the drumbeat was massively increased when the MAGA supreme court attached a bump stock—a modification MAGA America demands as a crucial element of what they call freedom, which expresses itself as their right to kill whoever they want whenever they see fit.

There's a real trauma for all the rest of us, to have to live in this world of deliberately normalized violence, a world where menace is a daily event, where violence is a campaign promise, where retribution is promised to be delivered to all of the rest of us on behalf of those who demand domination over us, who then excuse any action they take in response when we commit the unforgivable crime of not submitting to that domination. I think it's wearing us all down, to be honest, to be forced to live in this bully's paradise, where violence is encouraged and celebrated and eagerly anticipated, and cheered at rallies by red-capped throngs of people all celebrating their perceived right to live in a world that is a danger to us all, which is the only kind of world that seems to make them feel safe.

It's hard to live in a world like this. It's draining and difficult and terrifying and wearing. We do what we can. We commit hopeful acts of opposition and defiance, things that bullies consider violent acts against them, things like treating people as if they matter and belong in society, and helping people in need, and being aware of things that are broken and paying the cost to repair them; things like thinking about what a more kind and just and sustainable world might look like, and demanding it; things like standing up to bullies on behalf of those who can't do it for themselves.

But I think it's all going to be a bit too much to take if we're also to be blamed by the bullies who made this world for us, when they suddenly take some shrapnel and have to confront a reality that will not be denied, which is that they don't get to live in a different world from the rest of us no matter how much they might demand it. I think it's going to be too much if these fascists, realizing that they too have to live in this world they've created, decide that the people to blame for this is everybody except for themselves, and that this now justifies even more violence against the rest of us.

Today suddenly I'm given to understand that MAGA America is horrified by the idea that something somebody or other might say about somebody or other might cause somebody to do something or other—as if stochastic terrorism hasn't been their active political strategy for years. Sitting congresspeople are claiming that Joe Biden (who was recently bestowed immunity for any act of political violence by a MAGA supreme court majority that appears to believe that such acts are part of a president's official duty) is culpable for this act of political violence, for the crime of accurately representing Donald Trump for what he is—namely a clear and present danger to end democracy in this country and replace it with a fascist theocracy. We know this is the danger of Trump and his party, because that is exactly what he and his party promise to do, it's exactly what is written in their massive plan, and it's what his crowd cheers for, and it's exactly what they have been doing, everywhere they can, as fast as they can, as much as they can.

And it seems they may be accommodated. It appears it may become considered out-of-bounds for a time, during this election cycle when the truth is most needed, to state the obvious truth that we can all see, which is that we all have to live with a world of normalized violence created by a violence-normalizing political movement.

Bullies always see opposition preventing them from committing violence as an act of violence, I've noticed, and then use the alleged violence as an excuse for committing the violence they've already been committing. They'll hold you down and hit you with your own hand and ask you why you're hitting yourself, and if they accidently hit themselves while they're doing it, they'll beat you harder for the pain they'll claim you inflicted. Fascists like any narcissist act in boundless bad faith, and are fully capable of using a newfound opposition to political violence in order to justify political violence.

And now our national bullies have been handed a new excuse to ask us why we're hitting ourselves, bestowed to them by some would-be assassin who had a desire to kill, who just so happens to live in a country whose government, thanks to our political violence party, has made sure he had an unfettered constitutional right to give it a try.

Democratic politicians meanwhile are all acting like normal human beings and condemning the attack, even as they are being blamed for it, and are pulling down political ads even as they are being told they are the cause of violent politicization. People who should know better are proclaiming Trump brave or even inspirational. And, our media being what it is, the conversation will now shift entirely to the question of whether or not Democrats are to blame for the shooting, and I expect that it will be a question that will be posed as if there is no possible answer to be reached; the narrative will, if the pattern of modern history holds, mostly focus on what each side says and speculation as to which story will be believed, and eschew our national history of violence. We will take at face value the most laughable premise possible, the idea that our confederate violence instigation party is now shocked—shocked!—by violence.

So OK. I'll join. I'll take it at face value.

The people in the political movement that openly calls for civil war have this in common with the rest of us: They apparently have a real problem with actual shots actually fired—although for them that opposition appears confined exclusively to cases where they feel they might be the target. Bullies hate to bleed their own blood. The movie Dodgeball taught us that.

Yes, the MAGA gang today apparently don't want to live in a world of normalized violence and massacre weapons that are readily accessible to anybody with a trigger finger and a grudge, and so I'd like to act as if their opposition is offered in good faith, invite them to join us in our opposition to living in that world, anytime they want to stop creating it and forcing us all to live there.

So yes, let them join us, if they want, in opposing violence, by opposing its causes.

Let them join in enacting sweeping national gun legislation.

Let them work with us to remove far right supremacists from our military and police forces.

Let them stop blocking and sabotaging all efforts to combat climate change, and work with us in transforming our society into something sustainable rather than something doomed.

Let them work to restore the regulatory and civil rights protections that they've spent decades dismantling, and let them dismantle the punitive carceral state they've spent those same decades building.

Let them work for sustainable and affordable education, housing, and medical care, and create a world that cares for everyone without a thought to what is deserved.

Let them stop enacting their meticulous and detailed plans of domination, and cease their endless and accelerating demonizing rhetoric against every type of marginalized community.

Let them join us in remembering that human beings are a value, not a cost, and that nobody is illegal.

They can join us whenever they want. The door is wide open. If they want a world free of normalized and accelerating violence, the path is there, and anyone who wants to walk it can.

And if they don't, then they won't. And then we'll know, whether or not it is reported.

As long as MAGA America continues to force us to live in their world of menace and abuse, I recommend we decline to take the blame for getting hit, and instead keep opposing them with exactly the same vigor as before, in the same way, and for the exact same reason: Not because we want a world of violence, but because we want a world without, and because we understand what is causing violence, and because in our opposition we are demonstrating our hopeful and expectant commitment to something better.

Hopefully they won't be shocked.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries, and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He's the frequency, Kenneth.