Spitting on Graves

This post is political. Tread carefully. (Hope this works as a content warning.)

So, the political landscape in the States is pretty unstable with people dropping out, people coming in, others holding speeches, and some people dodging bullets. Literally. I didn’t know that this happened because I’m not from the States until I heard about it a while ago… through memes.

And today I wanted to share some thoughts on the matter because it’s something I was interested in – as well as some thoughts on a certain orange man who can’t even spell a name right.

Duck

On July 13th, 2024, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt while speaking at an open-air campaign rally, resulting in him being shot and wounded in his upper right ear by Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old man. Crooks was then shot and killed by the United States Secret Service’s Counter Sniper Team.

There is a timeline of the events on Wikipedia if you’re interested in that, btw, although that might be a bit macabre in a way.

I’ll avoid joking about the matter here.

I’m prone to joke about it since I learned about it from memes but I genuinely do not condone any deeds like that, no matter who it is. Even Trump might have people that would cry for him if he was dead, so… yeah.

With that said, I found the reporting on the issue and the aftermath to be rather disturbing.

Dodging accountability

Thomas Matthew Crooks was perceived as a bright and quiet kid at school but, after this deed, former classmates and other people from his school days expressed that Crooks was frequently bullied. The school he attended states that there were no records on any known bullying incidents involving Crooks.

Similarly, he seems to be just a regular dude who eventually decided to take matters into his own hands but in a completely wrong and disturbed way.

There have been news sites reporting on him playing games on Steam or browsing for Porn… which is completely unrelated at all to what he’s done. Literally owning a Steam account doesn’t make one a killer but the framing certainly might make it seem that way. Similarly, who hasn’t browsed for porn on their phone, ever before? And how many of those people turned out to try shooting an orange and confused man?

At the same time, there are also reports being made on how Crooks was a registered Republican voter but donated 15$ to the Democrats once…? As if that matters?

It seems like people are trying to frame it in one particular way or as if they’re trying to dodge accountability.

If Crooks was indeed a victim of bullying at school, then that very much could have resulted in traumatic experiences and the radicalization of a youth… as seen with many other shooters at American schools. The way that the school Crooks attended seems to completely dismiss the rumours about that simply because of how they officially don’t have any records on that seems dodgy to me. They wouldn’t be held responsible for this and I think PR-wise it’d be better if they took this as an opportunity to do more against bullying… but instead, they try to bury even the chance that they might have overlooked a bullying victim. Anyway.

The way that people frame stories centred around the very few details known about Crooks is upsetting to me because you essentially try to push an agenda or utilize a dead person for the sake of clicks and ad revenue.

“Wannabe Trump assassin’s final internet search was for porn” (The Independent) sounds like an attempt at making fun of Crooks rather than actual journalism… but hey, what do I know? I didn’t even state that this is related to that event in my post’s title because the MAGAheads are gonna flood my comments again once I start criticizing Trump.

It’s just that this is very upsetting. The guy was not much younger than my brothers and now he’s dead. Murdered. I doubt that was the only option to resolving this they had but it’s bound to raise questions since they decided to shoot the guy rather than question them or that lapses in security resulted in this.

And questions like that already turned into wild conspiracy theories both for and against Trump which is hardly beneficial at all to anyone. More than anything, it just feels iffy to me that they’d utilize the dead like that.

Memes

So, I found out about all of this through memes.

One such post stated that Trump only lived because he looked to the right to look at a graph about immigration. Racism is saving lives, I guess?

There’s a lot of shitposts. A lot of people romanticising the attempted killer, a lot of people joking about “better luck next time”… a lot of folks saying very macabre things…

But I don’t fault them. Believe it or not, this is a historic event. Just like with previous assassination attempts, this one will be taught in the history books… alongside famous speeches by Trump such as the one where he confused “asylum seekers” with “insane asylums” or that time he made a joke out of a man who died shielding his family from a bullet destined for Trump. More on that in a bit.

Joking about this event and turning it into stupid memes sounds macabre and equally iffy as journalists trying to create a narrative surrounding porn, video games and assassination attempts… but I get it to a degree. This is a historic event, in a way, and many of us don’t know how to cope with it.

The general cynicism that comes with politics these days, especially in a time where Americans have – yet again – to vote for the “lesser evil” rather than what they believe in. It’s a troublesome time and I worry about people of colour, queer people and trans people daily over there, especially after more and more laws are being passed to specifically target those.

Edit to clarify: I don’t see both candidates as “evil”. I just was referring to the general mood of every election feeling like a vote for what is less bad. In the case of Harris, she might be cool but I don’t know much about her aside from her stance on Gaza and how she wants to continue what Biden did… which isn’t great. More thoughts on Gaza here. But in my experience, from what I’ve read and heard from people over there, people don’t seem to vote for what they believe in but rather what they think is less harmful for them. As it stands, I don’t think the whole “Republican vs Democrat” system is working for the U.S. of A. and it’s troublesome that voting for any third party is essentially the same as not voting at all.

In this time, how could youngsters like us not be cynical about it, cracking macabre and grotesque jokes about how a firefighter, husband and father shouldn’t have died that day and how shooters should “gid gud” and practice their aim better next time. It sucks. I hate it. It makes me gag to think about it that those are very much tweets that are just being perpetuated on the birb site and other social media platforms… but I also get that this level of dark humour is being used to cope with everything.

So, mixed feelings on that. I don’t like it. It’s wild to me.

Trump’s disgusting

Finally, though, I wanted to talk about something I had only alluded to earlier. Corey Comperatore was killed by gunfire. Comperatore (50) worked as a project and tooling engineer and was the former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company.

Comperatore attended the rally with his wife and two daughters before shielding them when the gunfire started. Many other people were injured at the rally, but this one died while protecting something important to him… and that’s honourable, I guess. Rest in peace.

That said, Trump made a joke of it in an attempt to try and paint Comperatore as a martyr.

In one of his speeches, he claimed that people raised money for Comperatore’s wife, seemingly criticizing that act and stating that Comperatore’s wife would rather have her husband back. I guess Trump only likes money when he gets it?

The whole “she rather would have her husband back” thing is pretty commonly used in speeches, in my experience, to paint a picture and really emphasize how victims of one’s political ideology took away a father and husband, a family member, and so on. It’s supposed to be an emotional appeal… but…

Trump messes it up. Instead of appealing to emotion, Trump decides to make a joke about it. “Many wives out there wouldn’t say that about their husband”, he says, which sparks laughter in the audience. Huh.

He also posed with a firefighter uniform next to him with Comperatore’s name spelt incorrectly. Really showing how he just wants to use this dead man for his political goals. What an absolute asshole.

Correction: That was his actual jacket. The spelling error isn’t something that Trump or his team should be faulted for. Thanks to Tipa and Marathal for pointing this out to me! I’ll still leave it in there to take accountability for something I didn’t research properly in advance, as I should have done.

I obviously don’t agree with Trump. I don’t like the guy. I don’t think he should wield any sort of power… but even with my low expectations, I expected him to do better than this. His “moment of silence” was fourteen seconds long. His “joke” mocked the death of one of his supporters. His gesture with the jacket falls flat due to his team’s failure to spell a dead man’s name right.

But, hey, it works for his supporters. They gained a martyr and Trump got to pose with his right fist held at “a certain angle”, shouting “fight!” repeatedly while being carried away.

Crooks was Republican and made a donation to the Democrats of 15$, and I’d imagine that many people will brush over the former thing and really ride on the latter fact that he donated to Democrats. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of a sudden, many people attempted to assassinate other candidates, as revenge. Especially after Trump told them to “fight” like that.

Anyhow

I just found the way that dead people are being utilized like that horrible.

I find the jokes made about the assassination attempt disgusting but it’s not like I’d prohibit people from making them, I just avoid doing so myself, essentially.

Think about it this way, if we could not make fun of people in power, we’d have a lot of very big problems on our hands… and again, humour is a coping mechanism. So, I get it.

But dragging the corpse of a dead man (metaphorically!) out of his grave who died protecting his family only to utilize him for your own political agenda (something you accuse others of)… and not even doing it right but taking the opportunity to also make a sexist joke about women caring about money more than love… and also not even spelling the dead man’s names right… Do you know what I mean?

It’s frankly perverse.

Edits made:
A correction of an error on my part as well as a clarification of what I mean by “lesser evil”, made on August 7th, 15:56 CEST.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.