On Celebrities
And a Recent Assassination Attempt
Two weeks ago today, there was an assassination attempt on a former president and current presidential candidate. It failed by the most random fluke, or stroke of luck, or grace of God, or whatever you believe, but the former president and current presidential candidate was still shot in the ear, one of his supporters died, and two more were wounded. The former president and current presidential candidate was shot, but survived an assassination attempt on live TV.
Anyone reading that paragraph out of context, perhaps in future history books, would be shocked and appalled that two weeks after this assassination attempt occurred, it appears to have been completely wiped from the news cycle. Particularly when so many questions and conspiracies accompany it. I enjoy a conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but some of them, such as the candidate setting up his own attempted assassination, really are astonishingly stupid. I give more credence to the belief that it was a setup by the government, but of course we’d never know if that were true. Many people believe it was just severe incompetence on the part of the security team, and that does seem most likely. Whatever you believe, and in some ways it is immaterial what you believe, this is still a major story that in any other time in history would be talked about for months after it occurred, particularly as we have no answers to some glaring questions, such as why wasn’t the candidate removed from stage the instant the alarm was raised. But the only question that seemed to be of interest to the media was whether Donald Trump was really shot or just hit with shrapnel, as if this would make any difference to the fact that a former president and current presidential candidate was nearly killed on live TV. And yet now, two weeks after its occurrence, there is no mainstream media outlet discussing this history-making event, which is absolutely astonishing to me.
This can partially be blamed on our 24-hour rolling news cycle, which is always eager to move on to the next big thing, and we’ve had enough big things in the two weeks since it occurred to keep the wheel rolling at hyperspeed. It can also partially be blamed on our short attention spans, made shorter by social media, always on the lookout for the next viral image. We have a difficult time in our modern age deciphering real, actual events that will matter in the future from flash-in-the-pan fads. It is sometimes difficult to discern what people will still be talking about years from now versus what seems all-consuming in the moment – think of COVID, and how quickly the lockdowns and vaccinations have faded from our collective minds in 2024.
Probably the main reason why the assassination attempt appears to have been glossed over is because Donald Trump is a very polarizing figure. I have never understood this, having no strong feelings for or against Donald Trump, but Trump Derangement Syndrome is real, and makes otherwise rational and intelligent people become frothing hysterics at any mention of his name. I live in Texas, a state that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will absolutely do so again in 2024. So either way I vote is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, which is why I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the upcoming election – there is nothing I can do to affect it, and it is silly to obsess over things you can’t change. But one of the saddest experiences I’ve had since coming here is speaking to my downstairs neighbor, a nice, young, gay man and Trump supporter, who had to hide his MAGA hat in his closet whenever his friends came to visit, as he was afraid they wouldn’t be friends with him anymore if they knew he supported Trump. The stereotypical view of Texas would be that this young man would have to be in the closet for his sexuality, and yet he was openly gay, but a closet Trump supporter, not able to reveal his true political beliefs to those closest to him. To exchange one closet for another is not desirable, and really a commentary on the intolerance of so many “liberal” minded people. A recent poll cited in Unherd claimed a third of Democrats wish the shooter had succeeded in assassinating Donald Trump, which again, boggles my mind. I dislike many politicians, but I wish none of them to be assassinated on live TV. I cannot fathom the derangement it takes to hope for something like that.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I am no moderate on many issues, both political and non-political – I care passionately about portrayals of fictional characters, for instance, and can become a frothing hysteric about what I see as incorrect interpretations of these characters. I understand the obsessive passion that people and events can inspire, but I have never understood this feeling regarding politicians. I understand it in terms of celebrities, or at least, celebrities who are famous for something other than just being famous, and I will elucidate why in this essay. But politicians are notoriously difficult to pin down – they flip flop on many issues and blatantly lie to people, so it is difficult to even discern who these people truly are. People who hate Donald Trump likely hate a figure created, or at least exaggerated, by the media, who have been comparing him to famous dictators for about a decade now.
I remember very clearly a New Yorker article from 2020, after Trump got COVID, and was airlifted from the hospital back to the White House. He made a speech from the balcony after his recovery, and this article noted that someone else also famously made speeches from balconies, and it was Adolf Hitler. I believe the same article also claimed the eagle imagery on the helicopter Trump had used was reminiscent of eagle imagery used in Nazi Germany, perhaps conveniently forgetting that the bald eagle has been the symbol of the USA since its inception. A few days before the shooting, The New Republic magazine merged a picture of Hitler and Trump’s faces together on their cover. And let’s not forget the kids in cages at the border story, covered breathlessly by every mainstream news outlet, and likened to Nazi concentration camps. There are, of course, still kids in cages at the border, but nobody cares now, because the “threat to democracy” is no longer president, replaced by a president who is now being replaced by a nominee nobody voted for, which is of course how democracy works. Articles like these are the Boy Who Cried Wolf, calling everything fascist so that people will tune out should real fascism arrive. These formerly respectable media outlets have chosen to become propaganda rags, and should certainly take a good look in the mirror when such rhetoric might have inspired an assassination attempt. Indeed, if Trump truly were Hitler, wouldn’t you have a moral duty to assassinate him? But of course he’s not Hitler, and the people saying he is don’t believe it either, or they wouldn’t have condemned the assassination attempt. Comparing Trump to horrible dictators is a cynical tool, and the people doing it know they are lying. But they do it to stir up hatred among people, and it works, although again, I cannot really understand why. It is very difficult to know who people really are, even people close to you, let alone people you have never met. So the strong opinions about strangers who deliberately put on a mask in order to get votes is something I will never understand without knowing what lies behind the mask. It is silly to hate or love a figment of imagination – hate or love should be directed at something real. And it is difficult to see what is real about politicians.
Of course the same can be said for celebrities, but the following is my defense of that. I cannot defend social media celebrities or influencers or even Donald Trump before he ran for office, because I don’t understand that obsession at all – to me, these people seem to be the same as politicians, putting on a mask to sell something to an audience. But the obsession with a celebrity such as a singer, writer, or actor, I do understand. One could argue that they are similar to the influencers, but I believe there is an important distinction there.
As a creative person myself, I have long thought of creativity as a kind of divinely inspired act. Not being a religious person, it is difficult to admit this, but I have no other explanation for where ideas come from, how stories and characters just pop into my head in a way that makes sense and is meaningful to other people. I believe creativity involves some kind of communion with the divine, whatever that may be, and that a talented creative channels that divine inspiration into something that can be so real to strangers that it can move them to laughter or tears. We take things like movies and books for granted, but it truly is miraculous how we can feel so deeply for characters and stories that are fictional by definition. I have seen The Lord of the Rings trilogy many hundreds of times, I know every line of it by heart, and yet I am still moved to tears by Boromir’s death, and Samwise’s speech at Osgiliath every time I see them. These people are not real, they were never real, but their words and actions stir real emotion in me. In some ways this is the oldest human experience, because why would stories survive and be passed down through the centuries if they were not meaningful? Why would people argue passionately about interpretations of characters and stories if they were truly just silly and meaningless? Perhaps they are insane, and indeed perhaps they are, but if so, insanity has been with humanity from the very beginning and certainly shows no signs of dying out.
From our earliest history, we have had actors, poets, and musicians creating and telling stories. Throughout history, many of them were described as insane, as being touched by the gods who gave them madness or genius, or both at once. This tradition continues today, and people who are talented actors, writers, and musicians are worshipped because we still believe they have a kind of miraculous power, a gift of genius given to them by gods we no longer believe in, but whose residue we can feel in their creations. So a writer who can create a character out of this divine influence, a character that resonates with people in real life, should have those characters respected, not destroyed. Even supposedly simple characters like Superman or Luke Skywalker demand respect, because they are beloved by millions of people, and should not be deconstructed lightly. An actor who can make a character like Count Dracula or the Joker feel real, characters who are so evil or theatrical that they could never exist in real life, and yet to have them feel real because of the actor playing them, is miraculous. And an actor who can channel that divine inspiration correctly is worth respecting – indeed, all my favorite actors are ones who made completely unrealistic characters seem real. Vincent Price talked about this in an interview in 1969: “I was talking with Chris Lee about it the other day…we were both saying that you really have a problem as an actor of creating reality out of unreality, whereas the modern method actor, say, has to create reality from reality, which they do by being unreal.” I joke that Christopher Lee is my god, but that is because I see the divine in the way he brought Bram Stoker’s creation to life. He channeled the essence of that character, and I saw Dracula come to life on screen. He was so compelling that he became the definitive Dracula for generations, and he made that character real to millions of people, including myself, so real that I have dedicated my life to him through my writing.
That is why these things matter to me – they are not real in the sense of existing in real life. Rather, I believe it is because these things are the most real in one sense of that word – this is what an archetype is, the collective human experience distilled into one fictional character or story, and yet it is also something we can see reflected in the world all around us. That is why these things move us deeply, because they are emblematic of some great truth about the world. Samwise’s speech elucidates this – it is about the great stories that really mattered, because they teach us that there’s some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. This is a true statement, possibly the truest statement, and that is why it moves us to tears. To hear truth, real truth, is always powerful, particularly in a world of convenient lies.
We live in such a world, and perhaps always have done, but these lies come more easily in a world where everyone is connected all the time. We particularly hear lies out of the mouths of those in authority, those whom we should be able to trust, our leaders and our media and our institutions. We heard a great deal of lies during 2020, and as our upcoming election draws nearer, we will hear a great deal more. These lies are not confined to one side of the aisle – there is no morally superior political party whatever people might believe. Groups cannot be morally superior because they are made up of various individuals, and individuals can only be judged as individuals, not as members of a group. We should not believe in guilt by association or collective sin, because that is what destroys nations. The only way to judge people is as individuals, by their actions.
Which brings me back to politicians, a group one can judge by their actions, because they all act the same. Politicians in this day and age say whatever they believe will get them elected. That is their job, and I do not begrudge them doing their job, but I cannot love them for doing it. Nor can I particularly hate them, although I do hate liars in general. I can hate pathetic governmental bureaucrats whose job, say, is protecting public health, lying about the origins of a disease because it would implicate them, and sacrificing the truth for their own cowardly self-preservation. But I have a harder time judging politicians because it is rare that you can truly see who they are behind the mask. You cannot trust what they say, because it’s an old cliché now that they just lie all the time, making election promises but then breaking them once they achieve power. You cannot trust their words, nor particularly their actions, as those too can flip on a dime depending on how they interpret public sentiment – see the current president saying he won’t give up seeking re-election, and then giving up a day later. Perhaps this is the reason people both love and hate politicians – since they are basically empty suits, people can just pour their own ideologies into them, and see them as avatars of those ideologies. But these are reflections of the people themselves, not of the politicians. There is no opportunity or indeed incentive for the politician to reveal himself or herself as they truly are, nor for the public to get a true glimpse of their character. But we did get an example two weeks ago.
As I say, I have never been a Donald Trump fan, and I have no plans on becoming one now. But I saw on live TV a man get shot, and whose first instinct after taking a bullet was standing up, raising his fist into the air, and shouting out at his followers to fight. Whatever else you might think of him, that was an act of courage, and it impressed me, as someone who never thought much of him before. Of course he lies and dissembles and brags, because he is a politician, but in that moment I saw a glimpse of what had to have been a true reflection of the man, because no one in fight or flight mode can think of what might look good to the voters. This was an instinctive reaction brought on by adrenaline, and probably anger, but it was a true reaction, which is a rare thing to see. And I applaud his bravery if nothing else.
The photo that was taken at the event is iconic. You see a man who has just been shot, blood pouring from his wound, but his fist raised in defiance against the background of the American flag. One might say that captures the spirit of America itself – bloodied and bowed, but still in the fight. It doesn’t take an English PhD to analyze that photo, nor to be moved by it. It is an image that should resonate with every American, even if they don’t like Donald Trump. Let go of the derangement for just a moment, and think about him as a man who was just shot at a public event, whose instinct was to rally his followers and to fight. Usually when a shooting breaks out, people run and panic and more people are killed in the chaos, but Trump’s defiant reaction spread to his followers, and they stood their ground and chanted “USA” instead of panicking. I know it would not have been my reaction on getting shot, and I salute that it was his. Whatever else can be said of him, he’s a true badass.
What happened two weeks ago should not be forgotten in the maelstrom of current events. It was a shocking act of hatred and potential tragedy, followed by a shocking act of courage. It is rare that we see bravery in politicians in this day and age. Love him or hate him, Trump’s actions that day should be respected and remembered. This is an iconic image that will go down in the history books, and it is worth remembering.
