In a nation of reality shoppers, the customer is always right.
On July 15, 2024, America was already a powder keg of anxiety. Not since the dark summer of 1968 has the country been so utterly unmoored from itself — so uncertain of its destiny or national identity. We were, and are, as we have been for our entire history — a land whose stated beliefs of a pluralistic, multi-cultural meritocracy, built on the hard work of immigrants brought from all corners and cultures of the earth to claim a title of citizenship not born of blood or soil perennially at odds with the homogenous Christian white ethnic nationalism of those who never were asked to earn the title, and who remain largely uninclined to share, usually for no other reason than the fear of losing their place in a socio-economic hierarchy that, by their own choice, barely cares for them already. In a nation of marks, it’s essential that the grifters keep you convinced it’s a zero-sum game, and it helps if everyone is just a little bit hungry.
In retrospect, in a nation of 330 million terrified people awash in firearms, the prospect that someone was going to end up shooting a candidate this cycle seemed all but inevitable. Both sides have entirely convinced themselves that the other side represents the End of the Republic As We Know It, and even in my small sample set, I encountered…
