Trump’s stochastic terror
I suppose we should be thankful that it doesn’t happen more often. Vance Luther Boelter, 57, the alleged murderer of Democratic Speaker of the House of the Minnesota legislature Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, is still at large as I write this. He attempted to murder two other prominent Minnesota Democrats and was apparently targeting 70 more, including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the man who, in a sane world, would be our current Vice President.
This is Trump’s fault. The blood of those people is on Trump’s hands. Once again Trump’s violent rhetoric has naturally inspired violence, from January 6 to his two (or three?) assassination attempts to attacks on precinct workers in the 2020 election to increased instances of racially and ethnically motivated acts of violence in general, all blame inexorably tracks back to Trump.
Trump’s constant indoctrination of his glassy-eyed, adoring base into his doctrine of hate and violence has led to yet another terrible tragedy. And it was all avoidable. But violence is the lingua franca of MAGA these days, or as Isaac Asimov once put it, the last refuge of the incompetent.
Now MAGA lunatics are already fashioning conspiracy theories that this was a “false flag operation,” that Boelter was in fact a Democrat in deep cover disguised as a MAGA Republican. They base all this lunacy on wishful thinking and the fact that “No Kings” leaflets were found in his car. That’s pathetically easy to explain: if they’re in his car they aren’t in the hands of others, right?
No, people who actually knew Boelter, people who actually know what they’re talking about, including a lifelong friend who met Boelter in the fourth grade, know that he is a and always has been a Republican and deeply conservative. But facts never get in the way of conspiracy theorists.
What makes Boelter a little different from your everyday MAGA lunatic is he’s a soft spoken man with a PhD. His doctorate comes from a now defunct private Catholic college called Cardinal Stritch University. Stritch appears to have been legitimately accredited, but it closed its doors in 2023 due to economic difficulties and low enrolment.
While Boelter was murdering human beings, Trump was preparing for the ultimate expression of his violence fetish. He was holding an obscene parade of weapons and merchants of human slaughter, a military parade. It was one that was, I am pleased to report, poorly attended, and unenthusiastically attended by those who bothered to come at all.
Trump was and still is a sociopath, a vulgarian, a disloyal and craven traitor, an idiot, a fool, a conman, a rapist and a stochastic terrorist. He continues to confirm himself in that role. I hate to acknowledge this inevitability, but Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark will not be the last victims of his rhetoric of violence. For this alone he should be impeached and cast out of office and into the outer darkness.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.