Things We'll Never Know and Never Understand

                                                                                     

Some things, like beauty, we'll never understand

     I didn’t see the attempted assassination of Donald Trump live. I heard it on the car radio, an interruption of regular programming. The announcer knew enough to tell listeners the former president’s ear had been grazed by a bullet, but initial reports said he was fine. Of course, the D.J. (I was listening to a rock ‘n roll station) said more information was still coming in. 

     He didn’t need to remind me of J.F.K.’s assassination, when preliminary reports said the president had been shot. Severity? Unknown. There was still hope. Later, news reports said President Kennedy had died. And, here we are, sixty-two years later, after piles of books, documentaries, and movies of the assassination, we still don’t know why Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, maybe R.F.K.’s investigation into the Mafia, maybe Cuba, or even LBJ’s obsession for the presidency. We’ll never know. 

     I’ve chosen not to dig into the attempted assassination of Trump, just what I hear on the news. A twenty-year-old kid (at my age a 20-year-old is a kid) climbed onto a roof of a commercial building 148 yards away from where Trump was speaking, shot several times with an AR-15 (the civilian version of a military M-16), wounded the former president, and, tragically, killed a bystander, a firefighter, we’re told, protecting his family, and left others wounded. 

     One report said the kid’s dad bought him the weapon a few days earlier. Another report said it was the dad’s weapon, and he let the kid use it to go to the shooting range. A few days earlier, the kid had purchased 50 rounds of ammunition. An AR-15, like an M-16, of which I’m more familiar from my days in Vietnam, takes a magazine, a metal container the size of a narrow paperback novel. It’s spring-loaded and holds twenty-rounds, 5.56 mm, able to penetrate a steel helmet at 500 yards (required by the Army). As each round is fired, another round springs upwards, into the chamber and closer to the firing pin. 

     The Colt Company, supposedly, recommended we didn’t fill the magazine to capacity. Better to put in 18 rounds, not so tight, and less chance of the rifle jamming, for which it was famous, many a soldier losing his life because of it. I remember seeing an image of a dead U.S. soldier, in the heat of battle, smoke all around him, his M-16 broken down, and a cleaning rod sticking out one end, notorious for jamming when dirty. News flash! Most jungles are dirty, and muddy. The U.S. military had a rock-solid contract with the Colt Company. 

     Some people said, lucky for the former president, the kid was a bad shot. I agreed the former president was lucky but, respectfully, disagreed the kid was a bad shot. Unless, he was trained, like a soldier, with the AR-15, he was a pretty damn good shot but not very sabe of weapons. Like the M-16, the AR-15 is an assault rifle, and, as our drill instructors had informed us, good for Vietnam, and guerilla warfare, because, chances were, if we made contact, the enemy would be within a hundred meters of our position, a hundred-meters, about the length of a football field, often, separated by dense jungle. We didn’t need to be good shots, just good enough to spray the jungle, single-shot or full-automatic, and kill anybody shooting back at us. 

     I knew some guys, soldiers raised in rural America, hunters, who could pick off a target at one, even two-hundred yards with an M-16. They were rare. Snipers in Vietnam never used an M-16. They chose the heavier, trustier, M-14, with a scope, accurate up to 500 yards. Some chose WWII carbines. Today, it’s high-tech, like the Remington M24, yup, a sure thing. At 200 yards, hitting a target is like a pro hooper making a layup. 

     So, I think to myself, why didn’t this kid, the attempted assassin, take a more accurate hunting rifle or carbine? Maybe he knew the AR-15’s rounds tumble when they hit targets, ripping and tearing everything inside, and upon exiting taking out damn near a body’s entire back. That’s why doctors who operate on patients after a shooting, when an AR-15 is used, especially if children are involved, often say there’s little left to stitch back together. So, maybe the kid figured even if he got close to his target that would be good enough to do the job. 

     To confuse things, politically, reports say the kid was a registered Republican who recently gave $15 to a Democratic political operation. Was he messing with us? It does make for interesting propaganda, for both parties, in today’s America, where each party is ready to pounce on the other. I will say, here, at this point in my brief meandering, I was relieved to hear the shooter wasn’t black, Latino, Muslim, Asian, gay, or in the country illegally, or we might be witnessing an ugly retaliation against the innocent. We (yes, I include myself since I tan deeply in summer), in cities across the country, have already been targeted by those who consider themselves America's gatekeepers, those who believe the myth that the country was meant only for “whites,” and, somehow, they “whites” are not immigrants. Yet even the term "white" is suspect.

     For those who think such a statement lends to some sort of racist bent, let me remind folks, Irish, Scots, Italians, Slavs, even Germans, in the past, weren’t considered “white.” In Europe, and in the colonies, they were “less than,” ripe for serving others, for turning into slaves and indentured servants. Some Europeans considered Irish “black.” The British colonists warned their brethren to stay free of the German (or Prussian) rabble who would do nothing more than taint their pure bloodline. 

     Yet, if one considers the majority of recent violence -- by recent I mean within the past ten years -- specific ethnic and religious groups have been targeted, their neighborhoods, stores, churches, temples, and mosques. Then there are the lone rebels, those who target children in schools, some, emotionally disturbed shooters, often children themselves, taking their hatred out on teachers and students they believe made their lives a living hell, the ones Alex Jones calls “fabricated,” as in none of it ever happened. It was all a hoax, like Sandy Hook, a hoax. 

     What I do believe, though, the attack on the Capital on January 6, exposed many Americans operating in the shadows, the ones who can't be designated as domestic terrorists, those committed to white supremacy or white nationalism, those who don’t think twice about using violence to meet their ends. Nobody knows who they are, until they appear.

     To call a people “vermin” is to equate them with rabid animals. To label them, collectively, as “murders” and “rapists,” is to place targets on their backs. To push conspiracy theories, about child sex plots in pizza parlors, and Jewish space lazars, sets the crazies free. 

     Yes, I know, some argue, like with “love,” all is fair in “politics and war.” The vile language is simply part of the propaganda, whether the person believes it or not. You can say anything to win. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, kind of thinking. 

     Was there something someone said about Mr. Trump, something hateful, wildly hyperbolic, or even poignant that resonated in the head of his possible assassin? We’ll never know. Maybe he just wanted to make a name for himself. So much we’ll never know, not really, like why they executed Jesus, Socrates (though he chose his own poison), Abe Lincoln, JFK, MLK, RFK, or Malcolm X. Yeah, we know what “they” told us, what “they” wanted us to know, thought we could handle, or how our competing religions interpreted in verse, as in Jesus’ case. 

     So many secrets we’ll never know, like why some assassinations fail, why some live and some die? Maybe some just aren't martyr material. Malcolm X might have gotten closest to the truth when he said, after President Kennedy’s assassination, “The chickens have come home to roost.” Another way of putting it, I guess, is "you reap what you sew." Is there some sin deeper in our society that we're missing, that our leaders keep from us?

     What gives me hope is what I’ve experienced, wherever I’ve travelled in this country, and outside of it, are that most Americans, regardless of our differences, are accepting, decent people who want the best for each other, will, sometimes, die for each other, as I saw in combat. That’s something we must hang onto.