Nuttier and Nuttier

As the world gets nuttier and nuttier, so do the popular theories about what’s really going on. As I write, it’s been about twelve hours since a twenty-year old man was killed by Secret Service snipers at a rally in Pennsylvania after shooting at President Trump, injuring the former president and killing at least one member of his audience. Or so we are told. It might even be true.

What is certain is that the narrative will evolve. Initial reports that Thomas Matthew Crooks was Antifa were quickly amended to claim he was a registered Republican.

Not the Nine O’Clock News

Coming Untrue is not a news reporting service, and this post will probably not appear for at least a week, during which time the mainstream media storyline concerning the shootings will probably have changed ten times at least. I’m much less interested in the version of events being pushed today, next week or a year from now than I am in the early public reaction to it from Christians and unbelievers alike, which reveals increasing reluctance to believe the things we are told even when there is visual evidence to support it. Specifically, no small number of average viewers looking at the video and news reports jumped to the conclusion the event was staged, presumably by Trump’s people, in order to make his election in November even more likely than it already is.

Okay then.

Long-time readers here will be well aware that I have no issue with Christians believing conspiracy theories so long as they can muster even the most tenuous association with the facts. (I tend, for example, to tune out people who confuse Stormy Daniels with Stormie Omartian.) In our weird world, a non-trivial percentage of so-called conspiracies turn out to be true. To take the most egregious example, the resurrection of Christ was once a conspiracy theory, while the popular narrative promoted by the Jewish establishment was that his disciples stole his body. Conspirators 1, Establishment 0. I’ve made the case here for Christians reserving judgment about disputable matters in the public square, but I don’t believe questioning the veracity of the popular narrative is the testimony-destroying outrage many Christian writers make it out to be. For every man or woman feigning offense over your reluctance to believe The New York Times’ account of any given story there is probably at least one nodding in complete agreement. “Bad testimony” in such cases is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Reasons to be Sceptical

That qualification aside, this particular theory seems exceptionally silly. Trump was by far the most popular Republican candidate in the primaries, so much so that he didn’t bother to debate his competition anywhere but on social media. Subsequent efforts by the Democrats to disqualify him by way of lawfare and scandal-mongering have only driven his poll numbers up, to the point where even President Biden’s staunchest supporters are advising him to step down so the Democrats can field somebody more competitive. Those who say yesterday’s attack was staged need a better motive than “to increase Trump’s popularity”. The potential blowback from a faked assassination attempt is far too great to justify the risk of getting caught manufacturing one, even if we grant there are Republicans shady enough to do it.

Secondly, this wasn’t the first attack on Trump, and he’s much more virulently hated by the Left now than he was in either 2016 or 2017. Given the current epidemic of Trump Derangement Syndrome, there’s a plausible argument to be made that another assassination attempt was not just conceivable but inevitable. Why would a man so hated fake something that was all but guaranteed to happen anyway? If anything, he seems to have been trying to prevent it.

Thirdly, the much-ballyhooed incompetence of the Secret Service is hardly unequivocal evidence of a staged attack, unless you mean staged by the White House. Four US presidents have been killed in the line of duty over the years notwithstanding the elite protection with which taxpayers provide them. I read once (probably in a novel), that to prevent an attack the Secret Service has to be either lucky or good every single time. An assassin only has to get lucky once. It’s a valid point.

Finally, Christians pushing the theory are siding with more than 200,000 probable disinformationalists and speculators who made “staged” the second-highest trending word on social media yesterday (immediately after “Trump”). These days, the more people saying it, the less likely it is to be true.

The Dwarves are for the Dwarves

Democrats have plenty of incentive to push the “staged” narrative and no evidence of the necessary moral fiber to resist a convenient fib that works in their favor. With November getting closer by the minute, they desperately want to discredit Trump. Any allegation will serve, no matter how outrageous or improbable.

The incentive for Christians to push it is decidedly murkier. The only motive that makes sense to me is a regrettable eagerness to show themselves too clever to be taken in. As C.S. Lewis so effectively illustrated with the dwarves in The Last Battle, there is a point when an obsession with not being deceived can telescope on itself and cause the very outcome it is intended to prevent.

That said, the unlikeliness of a staged attack doesn’t conclusively rule it out. I’m personally disinclined to entertain the possibility, but stranger things have happened. There are no end of good reasons to question almost every popular narrative these days, from manmade climate change to the origins of COVID-19 to the efficacy of the vaxx to RussiaRussiaRussia to Hunter’s “fake” laptop. This campaign season has so far been surreal. Doug Wilson put it best in his commentary last Monday morning: “Look at that photo again. It was obviously staged. Just not by Trump.” Read that any way you like.

Conspiracy theories are increasingly common, conspiracy theories with legs less so. We will see how long this one can stagger on …