Everything in America Just Changed. Can You Feel It?

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No more games, imma change what you call rage
Tear this motherfuckin' roof off like two dogs caged
I was playin' in the beginning, the mood all changed
I've been chewed up and spit out and booed off stage
But I kept rhymin' and stepped right in the next cypher
Best believe somebody's payin' the Pied Piper

— Eminem, Lose Yourself

I’ve been struggling all morning to figure out how to write this.

For a real-world, history-in-the-making event, my training tells me to shift to a more journalistic frame. Gather data. Provide evidence. Make a compelling case.

But what I want to say is something more than the sum of its parts. The individual facts and observations can only take you so far. What I am sensing is a combination of pattern recognition, instinct, and maybe something else that’s hard to put my finger on.

It’s going to sound woo, but whatever. I’m so far off the reservation at this point I’m not sure it matters.

There has been a distinctive energetic shift in the past 24 hours, and it comes as the result of something that has been building for a while, catalyzed in an instant as a series of shots rang out at a Trump Rally in a small Pennsylvania town about an hour north of Pittsburgh.

I’m not sure I believe in the “many worlds” theory — the quantum physics hypothesis that posits any number of variated parallel worlds or universes that exist parallel to our own — but if it were real, an incredibly prolific bifurcation would have happened yesterday.

In one version, the shooter would have aimed an inch to the right and Donald Trump would be in a morgue today, with the civic unrest that would follow.

In another, the Secret Service would have done their job and there would not have been an unsecured roof with line of sight on the presidential podium just 150 yards away.

In a third, Trump would have been injured by the bullet, but cowed with fear and confusion, would have succumbed to the ministrations of the Secret Service and never gotten up to reassure the crowd, thus looking feckless and weak, providing photographic evidence of cowardice that would be used to diminish his standing as the campaign season dragged on.

But in the world we live in, the only one we know is real, something very different unfolded. Donald Trump, whose true character is often an enigma even to his admirers, had the insight, grit, and determination to recognize a turning point in history in real time, and to maximize the opportunity it presented to him.

He shrugged off the agents trying to keep his head down, blood streaming down his face from a damaged ear, raised his fist with pure defiance in his eyes, and started a chant: “Fight, fight, fight…”

And the people gathered in that crowd, which had just been fired upon by a cold-blooded killer, rose to their feet and took up the chant.

People on both sides of the political spectrum reacted immediately to that moment.

“Trump just won the election.”

It was a comment I saw again and again. Stated with certainty, and without qualification, just a naked acknowledgement of gut-level fact.

And while I do not think our attention-addled nation can hold this moment in mind for another four months with such feverish intensity, I do think we set out on a path yesterday from which there is no going back.

Imagine a scene in the movie The Matrix where Neo is not the only one waking up from the imposed dream. Instead, thousands, maybe even millions of sleepers begin emerging from their ooze-filled cocoons.

The media covering the event predictably lied. The entire scene plays out in under a minute. There’s no question that the sound is that of gunshots, that the crowd ducks for cover, that Trump himself reaches for his ear after being hit by something, then drops low, that the Secret Service force Trump down further, shielding him, or that he arises, bloody and looking a bit stunned, to encourage the crowd.

Any rational person watching this would be able to piece together what happened in an instant. But the media went for “loud noises” and inexplicable “injuries” and even the idea that Trump merely “fell.”

See for yourself:

Some of the Most Brain Dead Headlines of All Time

If all of this had happened at any other time, this protective armor of lies, laid down by the paid propagandist arm of the Leftist regime, might have held up under literal fire.

But we are still in the midst of a full-scale meltdown over the idea that the White House and various Democratic political operatives “hid” President Biden’s deteriorating mental state from the public. And even the propagandists in the media are eager not to be seen as willing participants in the deception, so they have been turning on their formerly-friendly political class.

The nested layers of kayfabe are stunningly audacious. And the people of this nation have seen through the act.

There is this sense of an awakening, a rising up, a seething anger about being manipulated and lied to and gaslit twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Yes, we still have our bread and circuses, but they are becoming things we can ill-afford at today’s prices. We are not so comfortable anymore that we can ignore all the signs. More people than ever are seeing through the deceptions that have held them captive for so long. And many, exhausted by relentlessly hostile ideological and political rhetoric, suffering from a diminished quality of life and a deep uncertainty about the future as degeneracy proliferates and we are berated for having the intelligence to know that men aren’t women and women aren’t men and children shouldn’t be mutilated or exposed to weird sexual proclivities, watched yesterday as the man promising to make their lives better — and with a track record of having done so before — was nearly killed because his political opponents cannot find any other way to stop him.

And to make matters worse, they killed one of us. A fellow citizen. An innocent bystander just there to support his political candidate as an exercise of the freedom that makes this country great. A man whose dying act was to cover his family with his body and absorb the bullets that might otherwise hit those he loves. A local fire chief and beloved member of the community. A salt of the earth American citizen.

That could have been any of us. And we all feel the danger.

And we are angry.

And we are motivated.

And we want our country back.

One side of the political spectrum has relentlessly portrayed their opponent as literally Hitler for years. They have put him on magazine covers, photoshopped to look like der Führer. Our sitting president has called him a threat to democracy, a dictator, a threat to everything America stands for. Although he has already peacefully (if not quietly) handed over power once, and has had the entire machinery of government and large swaths of the tech-driven private sector turned against him, in true fascist style, he is treated as some megalomaniacal tyrant he has already proven himself not to be.

After all that, what did they think would happen?

Well, considering the fact that they have refused requests to add additional security multiple times, and even attempted to strip his Secret Service detail completely, I think we know what they think.

They wanted this.

Many on the Left, in fact, are expressing their disappointment that the assassination attempt failed. It’s gross. But it’s entirely predictable. Some of the quotes below are from media, elected officials, staff, or federal employees.

Jenna Howell is an FBI employee who does firearms background checks.

Ashley Nerbovig is a writer at Seattle media and news company The Stranger.

Jacqueline Marsaw is a staffer for Democratic Congressman Bennie G. Thompson — chair of the J6 committee and the man who sought to have Trump’s secret service detail taken away.

Rep. Steven Woodrow is a Democrat in the Colorado House of Representatives.

The others are just a small sampling of the kind of comments we’re seeing everywhere online.

Last year, Tucker Carlson warned that this moment was coming. In an eerily prescient interview with Adam Corolla in August, 2023, Tucker laid out the logic:

What is even more disturbing is the appearance of this entire attempt on Trump’s life being an inside job. According to media reports, the red arrow in the image below is where Trump’s stage was, and the yellow arrow points to the building where the gunman was located. What do you notice?

If you said something along the lines of “a clear line of sight” or “wow, that building is really close to the stage, how could someone hide there” or anything similar, you get a gold star!

It’s so obvious, even to untrained, non-security personnel, that the building that provides the best vantage point for a sniper MUST be secured to keep Trump safe that it’s unfathomable how it could not have been guarded at all.

Or how the government snipers, situated on the rooftops behind Trump and looking in the direction of the shooter, did not see him in plain sight.

Or how they waited until several shots were fired to fire back:

Or how citizens who noticed the gunman climb up onto the building and tried to alert security forces to his presence were ignored until after shots were fired:

All of this is to say: our only options here are either catastrophic failure from our security apparatus, or an inside job.

I am reticent to deploy Hanlon’s Razor in evaluating a force as august and respected as the US Secret Service, because they are known to train very hard to eliminate the dangers of incompetence. Or at least, they used to.

That said, watching this was not reassuring — and yes, I added the music myself:

Did you know that the Secret Service, established in 1865 to stop counterfeiting money, was tasked with presidential security after the assassinations of presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and William McKinley?

But the assassination of John F. Kennedy reminded us that they were not infallible.

There is a historical resonance here.

Between 00:30-00:55 in the following video, Trump indicates, without saying it directly, that he believes the JFK’s own CIA was involved in the Kennedy’s murder.

Less than a month later, one can't help but wonder if the CIA (or some other faction within the deep state) wanted to show Trump how that's done.

Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a recent interview with Jeffrey Sachs that he asked Trump why he didn’t honor his promise to release the JFK records.

“Judge,” Trump responded, “if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have released it either.”

We are in a very dangerous time.

We can’t trust even those who are supposed to be most stalwart.

Conspiracies — like the coverup of Biden’s dementia — are being proven true right before our eyes, so how many others still in the realm of theory are as well?

Things will continue to degrade for the foreseeable future. This is unlikely to be the last attempt on Trump’s life. Perhaps others will be more effectively thwarted. But the Left’s reaction to this — the widespread disappointment that the assassination failed, rather than universal lament that it happened at all — is indicative of the will and mood to use political violence to obtain what cannot be won at the ballot box. The next four months, a the very least, are likely to see an escalation in both rhetoric and violence.

The country is bristling with pent up conflict.

That worries me. I’ve got small children to look after. We want stability and security, not chaos and threat.

I hesitate to do it, but I want to leave you with something personal. Something I admittedly don’t fully understand.

Sometime last fall, my wife Jamie got the sudden and inexplicable urge to “go home” to Northern Virginia, just outside of DC.

This area of Virginia was where we lived for years before coming here to Phoenix in 2016. It’s where we got married and started our family. It’s where she built her real estate business, and I founded my previous publication. We have always thought of it as “back home,” even though she is from Arizona and I’m from New York.

This urge she got was so strong, she actually referred to it as a “calling.” It felt like an active command, almost. It was less like nostalgia, or homesickness, and more like an activated beacon.

But our daughter was in her final semester and about to graduate, we had businesses up and running here, her father was dying, and moving at Christmas was not very appealing. So we let logic win instead of instinct, and extended our lease until this summer.

Over the intervening months, the resolve to go back wavered. She and the kids missed the seasons and the greenery, and our oldest daughter and her two kids are there, but Phoenix is an incredible city that is growing rapidly and has lots of opportunity for people in the right industries. We have friends here. We have come to really like it here.

But then everything started going wrong. Lots of little things, that squeezed us and pushed us and made us doubt whether we could actually stay. One day, under the pressure of everything seeming to be against us, Jamie said a prayer, or a call to the universe, I don’t know which. She was feeling the push to “go back home” again, so she said, “If you really want me to go, you’d better give us the means to do it. If you do that, I promise, I’ll go.” Financially, we’ve been barely scraping by. A cross-country move was simply not in the cards.

But five minutes later, she got a phone call that a real estate investment from several years ago had been paid off unexpectedly early, and that we would be receiving a lump sum payout from the transaction that we were not expecting until some time next year.

I don’t know what to make of it, but it was a hell of a coincidence. Since that day, we’ve been packing and planning to go back. Sometimes, we waver. I’m having a hard time leaving. There’s a lot we’ll lose by leaving. Even the simple things, like enjoying our summer by the pool while loving the whole West Coast vibe.

It’s hard, when the rational part of your brain is in the driver’s seat, not to wonder if it really was just a wild coincidence.

But whenever we do waver, some new thing goes wrong. A sudden hit to business revenue, a new complication somewhere else in our life, just these little (and sometimes not-so-little) nudges that happen almost instantly and force us to stay the course. And Jamie has expressed an increased sense of urgency in the feeling of being called.

I trust her instincts. When they are this strong, even if they don’t make sense to me, I listen.

But I don’t have an interpretative key for things like this. I don’t know why we’d be called by some benevolent force to move closer to the center of all political drama in this country, and not sent further away. I can’t tell you what to make of this. But I can’t help but feel that the vibe shift in this country has something to do with the push to leave. There is a subtle feeling of danger in it all. As though if we don’t leave soon, we might not get to. And that maybe that’s more important than we can see from here.

This could be me grasping at shadows. Take it with a grain of salt.

But if there’s anything to my suspicions, I very much wonder what we’re in for.