This. Is. Not. Funny.

“Jim, where were you when former President Trump was nearly assassinated?” That’s the question a friend asked over the weekend. Interestingly, the answer is quite memorable, as I was about to go on stage to deliver a talk on how to be a successful investor at FreedomFest in Las Vegas.

In fact, I heard about the shooting, and Trump’s narrow escape from finality, a few minutes before taking the stage. Feeling as though I had to address the orange elephant in the room, I told the crowd about the incident. At first, there was incredulity, and a sense that perhaps I had initiated a bad joke.

But there was nothing funny about this incident, and I don’t jest about matters of this nature.

Fortunately for the entire world, the assassination attempt failed, with an obviously incompetent shooter missing his target from 140 meters away. And speaking as a U.S. Army-trained expert marksman, a shot with an AR-style rifle from an elevated position at this distance is about as easy as it gets. I mean, even newbie infantry recruits have to hit multiple bullseyes at 150 meters just to make it through basic training.

Yet, aside from observation, and relief, that the shooter was incompetent, another reaction I had was to note the incredible presence of mind Trump displayed in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. I mean, love him or hate him, one must acknowledge that the man displayed the incredible ability to stage manage this event perfectly.

By raising his fist into the air and shouting “Fight! Fight! Fight!”, blood streaming down the side of his face, the world has been left with an indelible and iconic image of resolve and strength, and that, I suspect, has all but cemented his victory in November.

Now, in the aftermath of this ghastly assassination attempt, I was corresponding with my friend and The Deep Woods guest columnist Brandon Brison, Creative Director at advertising and marketing firm CDMG, Inc. As he always does, Brandon shared with me his insightful thoughts on this situation. In fact, the thoughts were so insightful, I wanted to share them with you today.

So, here is my good friend, colleague and thoughtful human, Brandon Brison, with an insight we call…

This. Is. Not. Funny.

I keep a fairly politically diverse group of friends. As such, I am used to (mostly) good-natured debate and argument over politicians, principles, laws, the future of our country and so on.

I was not prepared for the joy and glee with which some of my circle greeted the news of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13. And I was genuinely astonished that the only dismay they felt was that the assassin missed.

When I went online to get more information on the shooting, I was almost overwhelmed with memes, jokes, twits and other social media detritus clogging up the online discourse around the attempted assassination of Trump.

I shut my computer, turned off my phone and, knowing President Trump was safe for the time being, decided to abide by the 48-hour Rule of Major News.

For those two days that I intentionally avoided the breathless news cycle and waited for the facts to rise above the hysteria and conspiracies, I reflected on the utter lack of seriousness with which a certain contingency was treating that civilizational inch between restless order and outright chaos.

I’m not sure how we got to a point in our societal conversation where politically motivated murders are considered a laughing matter… especially in the immediate aftermath.

Whether you love Donald Trump, hate him or you’re one of the vanishingly few people who are indifferent to him… if you are a rational person, you must be able to comprehend that the natural consequence of his death by an assassin’s bullet would be violence, bloody violence.

The only conclusion I can come up with, for the mystery of why people are openly cheering for the assassination of a presidential candidate, is that we have been blessed by peace for so long that the consequences of political violence are too abstract for modern audiences to grasp.

We have apparently become an unserious people with an inability to recognize that we live in a world with actual, real-world consequences. For too many people, their only point of reference for last Saturday’s shocking act is the latest episode of Game of Thrones… a titillation, a one-hour dopamine hit that can be turned off if it gets too real or you get too bored.

Those of us who choose to live in reality are surrounded by adults who live in a world of pretending — that assassinations don’t have consequences, that destroying the engines of the economy will create prosperity, that freedom can be mandated by indifferent psychopaths in a swamp on the Eastern Coast of the United States.

For those pretending people who need it spelled out… when murdering your political enemies becomes acceptable, bad, BAD things are soon to follow.

It doesn’t matter what you think about the personality of the person targeted.

Politics exist because debate is a preferable proxy for tribal violence. As ugly as it can get “making the sausage” and finding political solutions to apparently intractable issues, using persuasion, logic and reason to lead a society works to the benefit of every single person in that society.

When you remove the “proxy” aspect… when you move from the realm of the mind to the realm of raw force… the only possible outcome is warfare, oppression, genocide.

And — even if your side “wins” — no one comes out the other side unscathed.

Though I have never personally experienced war in my homeland, I once dated a Bosnian woman who, as I was getting to know her, told me a lot of stories from the civil war there. Like the story of her father’s best friend taking a bullet to the head on their doorstep. Their neighbor getting executed for informing on the wrong person. Women raped and shot in the middle of the street. Parents selling their daughters into prostitution for an MRE.

This. Is. Not. Funny.

To be crystal clear, I’m not the type who thinks violence is forever off the table. Many things are worth fighting for. And some things are worth dying for. But I tell you, if I ever have to pick up arms to defend my family, it will be mournfully and with a realistic idea of the world to come.

Hopefully that day will never arrive, in my lifetime or my children’s lifetimes or their children’s lifetimes. I hope that we can somehow continue to muddle through the next few centuries or longer on the power of mean words, harsh rhetoric, gritty debate and ugly unity so future generations can live in relative prosperity and peace.

If the weekend’s assassination attempt has any silver lining, I hope that it causes every single person in this nation to stop for a second and reflect on how close we came to a civilization-fracturing event. And I hope that the people smugly celebrating the failed assassin realize how colossally stupid their first take was and sober up to the realities of the world as it actually is — not the “Made for TV” version.

If we as a culture don’t take steps to fix this discourse, the next time those people wail “But it was just a joke!” could very well be as the communists they’re cheering on put them up against the wall, because the usefulness of their idiocy has finally worn out.

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A Playwright on Assassination 

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

–George Bernard Shaw

Given the events of over the weekend, is there anything else that needs to be added to Shaw’s thoughts on this matter?

Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.

In the name of the best within us,

Jim Woods