On Thursday night, The Post reported that in accordance with sources, the search at Mar-a-Lago was aimed partially at recovering “labeled paperwork regarding nuclear weapons.” Trump’s response? A post on Truth Social, the platform he founded, declaring, “Nuclear weapons situation is a Hoax,” and a false suggestion that “Barack Hussein Obama” had performed one thing related.
However no matter we might study Shiffer’s motivations and the outcomes of the FBI search, one factor is obvious: The quantity of people that have died seemingly in service of an idol as unworthy as Donald Trump is tragic.
It’s one factor for Trump to alleviate his followers of their cash for dubious causes. (The previous president has raked in thousands and thousands of {dollars} ostensibly dedicated to political work, when in actuality what cash has been spent has gone to Trump’s private bills, in accordance with Put up sources.)
And goodness is aware of, Trump isn’t the one individual whose acolytes behave wretchedly. Die-hard Johnny Depp fans and the stans who enlisted in rapper Kanye West’s online war against actor Pete Davidson are proof that nasty crusades of all sorts won’t ever lack for recruits.
Nevertheless it’s completely different when folks begin dying.
4 of Trump’s supporters died on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol: Ashli Babbit, who was shot whereas making an attempt to climb by a damaged window; Kevin Greeson, who suffered a fatal heart attack; Benjamin Philips, who succumbed to a stroke; and Rosanne Boyland, whose official cause of death was “acute amphetamine intoxication,” however who was caught up in a crush of our bodies on the Capitol grounds. Christopher Stanton Georgia died by suicide later that month after he was arrested on illegal entry fees stemming from Jan. 6; he pleaded not guilty earlier than his demise.
Now comes the demise of Shiffer, who was additionally apparently on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Some may be tempted to create distance from these tragedies by mockery, or by treating Trump’s devotees as oddities.
That impulse — to disparage or dismiss the bizarre and excessive — appears to undergird a 2020 New York Times profile of a widowed farmer in India who adopted Trump as a private deity, then collapsed and died after taking to his room and refusing to eat when Trump examined constructive for covid-19. It’s additionally the sentiment behind a lot snide social-media chatter. For instance: “some dude wakened as we speak and determined to commit suicide by cop bc the previous host of celeb apprentice wasnt allowed to maintain the highest secret paperwork he stole from the white home.”
It is easy to scoff. However this type of commentary ignores the disappointment operating by so many of those tales.
Ashli Babbitt was on the lookout for which means as a result of her navy profession had stalled out, and her pool firm was failing. The QAnon conspiracy theory — which presents Trump as a bulwark in opposition to a secret cabal of highly effective pedophiles — gave Rosanne Boyland function and a framework for understanding the world as she struggled with habit.
The absurdity and maliciousness of the trigger for which these folks have died solely compounds the horror of their deaths. How is it that nobody, no establishment, may provide one thing extra substantive than the manifest hollowness of Trump and Trumpism?
A vital a part of Trump’s malign magic is its impermeability. Counsel that his followers deserve higher — whether or not that’s an precise infrastructure package deal or a pacesetter who appeals to their greatest qualities fairly than their basest — and also you’re accused of exhibiting the very contempt that made Trump enticing within the first place. Counsel Trump is scamming his followers, and also you’re a instrument of the deep state. In accordance with Trump and his many enablers, there isn’t any proof that isn’t planted or manufactured, no ethical act that’s disqualifying, no act for which Trump himself might be held accountable.
Even the individuals who search to martyr themselves in Trump’s protection might be redefined and reinterpreted by this corrupt logic: On social media, Trump followers aren’t celebrating Shiffer as a Trumpist patriot. They’re dismissing him as a false flag planted to color the FBI in a flattering mild.
These of us who dwell exterior the boundaries of this mad realm could also be tempted to rely ourselves fortunate. Nonetheless, we must be involved for the residents of Trumpland for their very own security. And if that’s not sufficient, we should always care as a result of the individuals who die for Donald Trump might sometime take others with them.
