{"id":6381,"date":"2024-07-13T22:41:38","date_gmt":"2024-07-14T05:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=6381"},"modified":"2024-07-13T22:41:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T05:41:38","slug":"seriously-this-is-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/?p=6381","title":{"rendered":"Seriously, This Is Bad News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assassinations (or attempted assassinations) seldom work out the way the assassin (or would-be assassin) thinks they will.<\/p>\n

First, assassination attempts, like this one, might fail. They typically fail, in fact. The biggest targets (and ex-presidents are certainly a big target) all have professional security teams. And the Secret Service is one of the best. Failure is by far the most likely option.<\/p>\n

In fact, such attempts happen all the time, and fail, due to law enforcement (primarily the Secret Service) foiling them. We don’t hear about them because:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Secret Service lives up to its name.<\/li>\n
  2. In the name of not inspiring copycat attacks, the media cooperate by refusing to cover foiled attacks, unless (like this one) they get way too close to being successful and as a result become basically impossible to suppress coverage of.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It failed, so the logical result is to benefit the would be target via the sympathy effect.<\/p>\n

    But it’s worse than that. This particular would-be target has a fantasy about seeking revenge on his political enemies. He now has ammunition in pursuing this fantasy: those enemies are violent and tried to kill him.<\/p>\n

    The Nazis used assassinations and attempted assassinations to rationalize their own political violence. Kristallnacht happened in response to an assassination<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    That’s right, even when they “succeed,” many assassinations, in the final analysis, fail.<\/p>\n

    There’s already some conspiracy theories emerging that Trump and his security team deliberately allowed the assassination attempt to happen. I would not be surprised to soon hear claims that it was all an inside job.<\/p>\n

    So far, there is no evidence of this, other than poorly-argued circumstantial evidence (“how could he circumvent Secret Service measures?”).<\/p>\n

    The Secret Service is indeed very good at what it does (to reiterate, assassination attempts are foiled all the time), but it is not perfect.<\/em> Mistakes happen. We will probably hear how they slipped up and failed to secure the roof that served as the sniper’s nest in this one.<\/p>\n

    Time will tell, and maybe<\/em> good evidence that it was, in some sense, an inside job will emerge. But so far, it has not.<\/em> It is entirely possible that this thing was all sheer luck. In fact, that is currently the most plausible explanation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Assassinations (or attempted assassinations) seldom work out the way the assassin (or would-be assassin) thinks they will. First, assassination attempts, like this one, might fail. They typically fail, in fact. The biggest targets (and ex-presidents are certainly a big target) all have professional security teams. And the Secret Service is one of the best. Failure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6382,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6381\/revisions\/6382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackcap.name\/blog\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}