The Knowledge

I receive newsletters from The Economist, and in today's was a question about the shooting at this weekend's Donald Trump rally:

The left thinks the shooting was just a performance; the right sees an inside job. Will the truth matter?

For me, it's a given that the truth doesn't matter, because this isn't a question of fact, but of identities. Identities of distrust, mostly. There are questions that one can ask about the attempted shooting this past weekend, and given that the assailant was shot dead on the scene, he won't be able to answer any of them. And so certain people have started doing what they always do, convince themselves that whatever theory of the case appeals to them, motivated by their prior beliefs is the correct one, and focusing in on those facts that support their cases. And questioning, sometimes quite vociferously, any official narrative that contradicts them. It's a way of feeling certain about the world, and it's something that means more to people than factual accuracy in the eyes of others.

It's also a way of expressing a group identity; one that, in American politics, is often defined in terms of opposition to a sinister, unpatriotic and duplicitous Other. And so those official narratives that contradict their neat (sometimes too neat) versions of events become proof that the sources of those narratives are allied with the Other; either willingly or through having been duped. Whatever the reason, they are also not to be trusted.

I, for better or for worse, am okay with a world in which I am certain of very little beyond "I think, therefore I am." So I have less need to craft ego-syntonic, but otherwise suspect, theories of the case. This is not to say that I am any more trusting of official narratives; after all, those narratives are just as self-serving as my own narratives. I'm just unlikely to see a hateful conspiracy on the other end of things, given the general tendency of people and organizations alike to tell stories about things in a way that serves their own interests and insulates them of potential negative consequences.

In the end, I suspect that the simplest explanation for things is also the most likely; the Secret Service, having come to view much of what they do as a formality (after all, the last high-profile shooting of a candidate for President was before I was born), was somewhat lax, and Donald Trump quickly assessed the situation, concluded that the immediate danger had passed and saw (and then took) an opportunity to present himself to the audience as he wanted them to see him. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that Mr. Trump was prepared for something like this to happen. He knows that he lives in the United States, and guns are common. He also knows that he has a penchant for alienating people outside of his base of support. There may well be people who were genuinely surprised that someone came after the former President, but I doubt that Mr. Trump himself was among them.

To the degree that "the Left" and "the Right" have their own conspiratorial explanations for Saturday's events. those are matters of group identity and loyalty. As far as the people who hold to them are concerned, their theories are the truth of the matter. For the rest of us, there are other concerns that are more pressing.