Everything is Permitted
Trump, Crooks, and twists of fate
Butler, PA — July 13th, 2024:
Thomas Matthew Crooks ascends to a rooftop, gun in tow, with a plot to etch himself in history alongside other infamous three-named presidential assassins. He lines up Donald Trump’s head in the crosshairs of his rifle. Pulls the trigger. But at the last moment, Trump’s head moves slightly, a breeze blows, the bullet somehow simply grazes him.
Instead of the President’s head exploding, Crooks’ brains are instantly blown out by Secret Service snipers. The would-be assassin never had the makings of being exceptional.
Suspiciously little is known about Crooks. No clear motive, uncertain if he was very politically engaged, almost no online posting history. His living quarters seemed to be scrubbed when they were searched by the feds. I don’t know what was going on his head, but I imagine somewhere in there was a desire to “go out with a bang”. A tactical assault on the President is done with thoughts of altering the course of history, of sending seismic shockwaves. Attaining a kind of morbid and sinister “Greatness”.
One of the most interesting parts In Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, is the idea that the crime is some how a test of the Great Man. Raskolnikov becomes obsessed with Napoleon, works up this idea that for the truly exceptional man “everything is permitted”. Goes out and kills a woman to test his theory, but finds himself tortured with guilt. He didn’t have the Napoleonic makeup, for better or worse he wasn’t a man who moved decades.
"No, those men are not made so. The real Master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and so all is permitted”
As far as modern Napoleonic figures go, Donald Trump may be the closest thing there is. Ascended to power, then thrown out of the White House in a contentious battle. Exiled to Mar-a-Lago and Truth Social, sued by his political enemies, convicted of felonies, and yet somehow marches back and regains the power of his nation and his people.
Trump famously jested in 2016 that he could probably shoot a man on 5th Avenue and he would go up in the polls. It was very funny. A vintage “Teflon Don” moment, but also nested in there was a bit of truth. Trump can get away with nearly anything. Lesser men would have long ago been stopped in their tracks by petty scandals like the Access Hollywood tape.
He is the man of his time. The man that has sucked up so much mindshare and talk for nearly a decade now. That has captivated not just America, but people around the globe.
Whether you love him or loathe him, when you see Trump miraculously pop-up from the ground after being shot in the ear, fist raised high in defiance, you have to wonder whether fate is behind this man’s ascendance.
The weak assassin was foiled, the extraordinary man carried on.