George Wallace

The Chickens Have Come to Roost: The Assassination of Donald Trump

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

July 16, 2024

I remember my first presidential candidate assassination attempt. I was a second grader in Boca Raton, Florida in May 1972,  when we heard that Alabama governor George Wallace, a Democratic candidate for president, had been shot by a 21-year-old man dressed in red, white, and blue. I remember that Wallace was known to be a white supremacist. At 8, based on my Sesame Street education, and love of the Mod Squad, I knew that was a bad thing. Wallace, survived, although paralyzed, and George McGovern went on the be the Democratic nominee, only to lose to Tricky Dick Nixon.

The Wallace shooting has been on my mind as I watch the coverage of Saturday’s attempt on Donald Trump’s life with my 9-year-old daughter. “This is your first political assassination attempt, Cozy,” I told her. “I’m sure it won’t be my last,” she replied. She already knows how America works.

I remember where I was when I first heard that John Hinckley had shot Ronald Reagan in 1981 (in my Gran Torino in the parking lot of Redan High School) and when I heard that Charles Manson acolyte Squeaky Fromm (and another woman 17 days later) tried to shoot Gerald Ford in 1975 (in my rec room in Stone Mountain, Georgia). I was only 4 when Sirhan Sirhan shot Democratic candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968 and in utero when his brother, President John Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. The shooting of American politicians will mark my life, from womb to tomb.

When JFK was killed in 1963 by a gunman from an elevated position 266 feet away, it shocked a nation that thought it was beyond political violence, even though three previous presidents had been assassinated (Lincoln, 1865, Garfield, 1881, and McKinley, 1901). Black nationalist civil rights icon Malcolm X created a firestorm when asked to comment on the murder of Kennedy. “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” The response was fierce and the Nation of Islam, the group X spoke for, sanctioned him for speaking ill of the president loved by so many black Americans.

But Malcom X’s sentiment is worth considering. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Minister X explained his comment as a form of social karma. That an administration, and a society, that had foist so much violence on its citizens, especially on black people, should not be shocked when that violence bounces back on them. You reap what you sow. And America has a long history of launching violence into the world, and defending the violent. Live by the gun, die by the gun.

So when Trump was shot by a white kid, a registered Republican, and a gun club member, with his dad’s AR-15, I heard those words. The chickens have come home to roost.

America loves violence and nobody loves the language of violence more than Donald J. Trump. We don’t have to go down the sizable list of offenses (but him asking if the BLM protesters could be shot in the legs in 2020 is a favorite). Trump Saturday, with a barely winged ear, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” with clenched fist, was part of his faux macho man performance. Ever the showman, under the dog pile of Secret Service agents, he was probably thinking, “I need a fundraising meme!” Fifteen minutes later, the image was everywhere. Trump looking like 50 Cent. “My body eats bullets.”

The shooting of Trump is a horrible event for so many reasons. While this nation was founded in bloody revolution, we solve our disputes with ballots not bullets. The worst liberals (including some friends) publicly wished the kid was a better shot. The worst conservatives saw the hand of nutzo conspiracies that blamed Biden, antifa, the “deep state,” and (surprise) the Jews. The shooting was seen as “evidence” of whatever your binary us vs. them political position. Many, on both the left and the right, we were convinced that attempt, that killed a father in the crowd, would guarantee a Trump victory and whatever glory/hell that creates. “America is saved/doomed!”

The violent rhetoric of Trump (much of which I’ve written about here) is not exactly balanced out by peace and love vibes from Democrats. On Monday, when NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed President Biden, Holt asked the President about his rhetoric toward Trump. ““It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” Biden, instead of apologizing or engaging in a heartfelt conversation about the overly violent nature of political speech, played a moronic game of what-about-ism. “Look, I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one.” You’re not helping, Joe. Take a nap.

After the Trump shooting, “Civil War” was trending on X (Twitter) and the dark web I monitored over the weekend was full of “keep your powder dry” posts. But the ray of hope may come from Trump himself. After his brush with death (and we were millimeters from his head exploding in that Pennsylvania field), the former president allegedly tore up his original fiery speech for his crowning Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He could return to his “Crooked Joe and Them Evil Democrats” stump speech template, full of rambling stories about sharks and Hannibal Lector. But maybe, just maybe, Donald has had a come to Jesus moment (the real Jesus, not White Republican Jesus). Perhaps this Thursday’s speech will be his version of Obama’s brilliant 2004 Democratic Convention oratory, when Obama said, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America.” After naming misogynist MAGA sycophant J.D. Vance as his running mate, I don’t hold out much hope, but you never know. A new Trump could urge calm amid Terrordome-like political chaos.

We desperately need leadership that says, we are not red or blue, just beautiful and varying shades of purple. We need a chorus of voices that says all this political violence is endlessly counter productive. We need credible messengers to tell us there is a better way and show us how to do it. If not, we’re done.

I Was a Third Grader

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

November 15, 2022

I guess it’s a normal thing to compare yourself to your kids. “When I was your age I had to walk three miles to school, in the snow, and barefoot, and uphill, and backwards!” I remember when I was in high school we all took our shoes off on a snowy Georgia day and walked to school so we could foist that same flex on our kids.

I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. There seems to be some clear differences between 3rd grade Randy and 3rd grade Cozy. In 1972, I loved to play outside in the woods, she loves to be inside playing Minecraft. I had brain-numbing Saturday morning cartoons, she has brain-numbing YouTube videos on demand. But much of it is the same. Our aversion to any food that is good for us, or to going to sleep, or to getting up. I loved Elvis Presley (“Burning Love” era), and she loves Dua Lipa (“Levitating” era), but other than that, not that dissimilar.

So, as I drop her off at school each day, I’ve been trying to remember what I remember from my 3rd grade experience at Atherton Elementary.

My teacher was Mrs. Weldon and we were supposed to get candy bars for completing our times tables, but I never got mine. I did a presentation on Boston by building a version of the U.S.S. Constitution from a huge cardboard box. The teacher read us James and Giant Peach and we had discussions about the 1972 presidential election. (I supported Nixon because I liked his funny-looking face.) My best friend was Keith Harrison and we focused our arguments on Elvis, Hank Aaron, and how to make the best go-cart. And I definitely thought girls had cooties.

For me, third grade was my introduction to Southern culture. Like many Slavic-rooted Americans, I was born in Cleveland, Ohio. My family fled the rustbelt for the sunbelt after the steel industry crashed, and after year in Boca Raton, Florida, we ended up in Stone Mountain, Georgia (for reasons I still don’t understand). Red clay, black-eyed peas, thick accents, and one classmate who took a dead possum home for “supper” presented me with an alternate reality that was both dreamlike and hostile to a “damn Yankee” 8-year-old. A neighbor named Kenny called me “Polish monkey,” which I later figured out was because of my non-WASP name. Church was king in Stone Mountain, so that was the vehicle of assimilation, although it always felt unwelcoming.

So I wonder what my own 3rd grader is collecting to be reflected upon 50 years from now, in 2072. Will she remember the names of her friends and practicing make-up application, like I remember playing in the creek with Tico and Kip? Will she remember the insanity of MAGA, like I remember the madness of George Wallace and Lester Maddox? Will she remember binging on Takis, like I remember seeing how many Little Debbies I could shove into my mouth? Will she remember her parents living apart and then together again (but still apart), like I remember my father gone on extended sales trips?

Eight seems like such an in-between age. I see my daughter carry herself like she’s 5 minutes from college, but she’s still a child (who wants to set up a spy-cam to catch Santa in action this Christmas). Her peer culture has gained power. She just got her ears pierced and is starting to use slang, like “That’s suss, Dad.” She calls me, “bra” like I’m a bro. How do I tell her to eat her vegetables?  Was I that the age when I started separating myself from my parents? (I staged sit-ins in protest of their demand that I eat canned beets, I do remember that.)

If I could go do 8 again, there are certainly things I would do differently, besides buy stock in IBM. I would be kinder to my little brother, and pay more attention to the marginalized kids in my school. But much of 3rd grade seemed to not be about finding your direction, but finding that you could have a direction, any direction; that, at some point, you’d be able to do your own thing. I see that in Cozy, the potential to do really big things if she wants to.

What I needed from parents at 8 was a message of assurance, that they had my back even if I made mistakes. That they’d keep me safe but allow me to see how far I could walk across the ice. And I need encouragement to match the curiosity I had in myself with a curiosity in others. That’s the least I can do for my 3rd grader.