Ryan Wesley Routh “believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,” Donald Trump said in a Fox News interview after Routh was caught apparently lying in wait for, and with ill intentions toward, the former president.  “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at …”

Well, no, for two reasons.

The less important reason is that neither Biden nor Harris have ever publicly incited the murder of opposing domestic political candidates and have, in fact, inveighed against Trump’s would-be assassins.

Even if you don’t believe Biden and Harris possess strong moral fiber, that still makes sense. Our masters find the idea of being hunted by mere serfs horrifying, and that horror expresses as a protective attitude even toward their opponents within the ruling class. Cabin-dwelling “patriot” bumpkins and dirty hippie street protesters? Fair game! But touch not the elite! They don’t want to let THAT genie out of the bottle.

The more important reason is that words have neither eyes to look through a scope with nor fingers to squeeze a trigger with. That takes a person with the freedom/agency to make decisions.

While actual incitement — as opposed to mean tweets or snarky references — might rise to the level of plausible conspiratorial involvement, an assassination attempt requires overt acts — acquiring a weapon, learning to use it, seeking out or lying in wait for the target, aiming the weapon, firing it.

So far as we know, Joe Biden didn’t play straw buyer to procure a weapon for Routh, nor did Harris give the man a lift in her limo, dropping him off near Trump’s golf course, nor have either of them ever spoken with or directly to him.

All this blather about “civility” and “lowering the temperature” and Person A’s political speechification somehow making Person A responsible for Person B’s actions, even if Person A doesn’t know Person B from Adam is just that: Blather.

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can’t, for the most part, buy a gun for someone else or force that someone else to aim and fire it.

We’re all responsible for our own actions. If we let ourselves become obsessed with or deranged by political rhetoric such that we engage in counter-productive violence (hint: If Routh  or Thomas Matthew Crooks had succeeded in killing Trump, the MAGA cult would have become stronger, not weaker), that’s on us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY