Blood in the air, blood in the water

Elements of a cult leader's mystique

An errant shot ricochets into history.

All week, I have been in reflective mode. There are times, as a writer, when I have bursts of energy and feel I need to get things down on paper and out into the world. (Some of you may have noticed this, when you get more than one newsletter from me in one day!)

This week, though, I had been sitting back, because (1) I have been ultra-focused on the Joe Biden situation (something salient for me but perhaps not as compelling to my readership) and (2) the focus I’ve given that situation has eaten into the time I am able to devote to the cataclysm in Gaza.

So, those two considerations had held me back somewhat. I’d taken a lot of notes, actually, about the burgeoning Kamala Harris conversation (as I see that as being the next front — that people are being led by the nose into supporting her, even though she may not be the optimal candidate to defeat Donald Trump). I also wanted to explore the newly ubiquitous insult of ‘bed-wetter’ in Democratic messaging and whether that presaged a metamorphosis in the Democratic Party itself.

Then this Trump situation happened.

As a point of background, I originally wrote on another platform, and on that platform it’s drilled into members that we could only speak about things absolutely known. We could speculate if we clearly labeled things as speculation, but we could not do so without a foundation of facts. Otherwise, we risked veering into conspiracy theory land, and we could not have that.

I respect that, as I am both a devotee of sound logic and an advocate for viewing reality as accurately as is possible for humans. We see through a veil darkly, but we can do our best to keep that filter translucent.

However, when a moment is truly critical, waiting until one has every scrap of information means that one necessarily works in the past, because one must wait for the information to come to light. (This is why the January 6 commission, as important as it was in terms of advancing that national conversation, was necessarily “behind,” as the information it presented by then was eighteen months old. Just to give an example.)

So, I’m simply going to share what my reactions were to yesterday’s developments. I am going to temper what I say, because I want to remain true to reality. But I’m also going to speculate, because we necessarily don’t know all of the facts yet. Plus, I have impressions that persist, even after having a night to sleep on them.

Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns

When I first heard of the shooting at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally, I was strangely unmoved. I’m still trying to track why this is, and I think it’s because the situation seems removed from context. When the story broke, few facts were known. (DW News, for example, couldn’t even confirm that there was a shooting, stating instead that there had been “loud noises.”) Then it came over that Trump held up a resistance fist, and then that the alleged shooter was dead. 

That was it. That’s necessarily decontextualized, because it’s so disjointed.

I knew that Trump was still alive, so there was no foothold for any emotional reactions. Everything was already “resolved.” So, then, for me and for everyone else, it’s been a waiting game to see how the rest of the information fills in the gaps.

That’s not how most stories are presented. Normally, a story is linear. It has characters, it has a plot, it has conflict; there’s a beginning, middle and end. Elements that we can depend on surface to give us an anchor into meaning. Deprived of those, people are apt to fill in their own guesses as to how A progressed to B. And, the more important an event is where information is unknown, the more likely people will tend to insert these missing bits.

I’m a human. I’m no different than anyone else in this regard. So, while I am still waiting to find out more information about what actually were the circumstances in this situation, I find I am skeptical about the picture so far. There are a couple of reasons for that.

The main reason is, I cannot yet see how it is that a bullet grazed Trump from the assumed spot of where the shooter was located without doing more damage to the man himself. I need a ballistics expert to lay out this information for me.¹

Later, some unverified sources said that it was glass from a shattered teleprompter that “nicked” Trump’s ear. (I grant that’s possible, though I would still want an expert to walk us through that scenario as well.) But that doesn’t explain why Trump himself described the object as a bullet, or why the New York Times, alongside a picture purporting to show a “projectile” moving in a straight line just behind Trump’s head after the crucial moment, quoted an expert who conjectured that the projectile could have been a bullet. So it wasn’t glass?

My point here is that there are conflicting reports on the critical object in question. So that’s a rather central point that needs to be clarified.

But, second, what this incident recalled for me was a scenario that probably would not occur to most people, because it’s a very dusty moment in American history that few would know. That I saw parallels rang alarm bells for me, but that doesn’t mean that the alarms are justified. I just see similarities. Yet I would feel remiss if I didn’t point those out so that other people can see and weigh them.

Mirror parallel

As I’ve noted before, I have invested a lot of time in the study of destructive cults. Indeed, I described MAGA (and its nested phenomenon QAnon) as belonging to that category years ago, before it was a mainstream idea. At the time, I encountered much pushback for making such an assertion, as though the label was simply name-calling. I responded by noting the structural similarities between how Trump interacts with his followers and how a cult leader grooms, indoctrinates, and manipulates his followers.

One of the most notorious cult leaders in American history was Jim Jones. Despite more than 45 years elapsing after the culminating event of his cult — the mass suicide of more than 900 people — most Americans are familiar with Jones, if only in the colloquialism “drinking the Kool-Aid.” That phrase is a memorial to duping and delusion on a communal scale, the power of an unbalanced, paranoid Pied Piper leading his members off a cliff. We’ve compressed the event into a phrase so as not to forget the power that can be wielded by such a leader.

There’s one instance regarding Jones that is further recessed into history, and it’s what popped to mind when I saw and heard about what happened to Trump.

In May of 1972, Jones and the members of his community, known as Peoples Temple, had gathered at one of the newest branches of his church in Redwood Valley, California. They were enjoying a picnic, a festive though low-key occasion. It was a time of togetherness. It was here that Jones revealed a clear side of his personality.

Tim Reiterman, author of Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People, recounts the story:

“Finally on a pleasant Redwood Valley afternoon in the summer of 1972, the church’s paranoia exploded into genuine fear. The congregation had gathered, a few hundred strong, in the parking lot between the parsonage and the Temple. While food and plates were arranged on long rows of utility tables, the church band performed. Teen-agers were shooting a few baskets. Some older folks took to the shade.

“Then a boom froze the scene. Stephan Jones, thirteen, thought that a musician had stomped hard on a bass drum. Then he turned and saw his father hit the ground with a thud. Dozens of terrified faces turned on their leader. The shot had originated among the tall, dense grapevines, to one side of the lot. Stephan’s big mongrel Husky bolted in that direction, barking and ready to do battle. The people started to take off that way, too, but Jones, clutching his hands to his bloody chest, stopped them. ‘No. No,’ he choked. ‘That way.’ He pointed weakly in almost the opposite direction, ordering everyone toward the rear of the house.

“In the pandemonium, the pack obeyed Jones. One older man almost had a heart attack; still he managed to pick up a shovel and join the pursuit, ready to brain someone. Old ladies trembled, and one woman screamed hysterically, thinking Jones had been assassinated, just like the other great leaders of recent years. Stephan stood by as people fussed over his father; something did not seem quite right. Why did his father direct the pursuers away from the vineyard?

“With Marci and the nurses swarming around him, Jones struggled bravely to his feet, and was helped toward his house. Jack Beam suddenly appeared and took one arm. The people feared they had lost their God.

“A half hour later, Jim Jones walked out of the house under his own power. The crowd gasped in relief and praised the heavens. Jones turned to his nurses: ‘Tell them. Tell them about the hole I had in me.’ While Jack Beam held up the bloody shirt with a hole, one Temple nurse testified, ‘I could stick my fingers in the wound.’ Lack of a hole in Jim’s chest was proof of the miracle. He had healed himself, he said. And to underscore his capacity for forgiveness and mercy, he confessed that he had sent his people away from the shooter, so the would-be assassin could make a clean getaway and not be harmed. An emotional, uproarious meeting of thanksgiving followed.

“To remind his followers of his miracle, Jones commissioned Archie Ijames to build a wooden case with a glass front to display the bloody shirt. The relic was shown for only one meeting, however. The sheriff’s office heard about the shooting incident somehow and made an inquiry to Jones. That scared him more than the shooting. With miraculous speed, the display case went into storage.

“Those who were familiar with the mechanics of his healings were unbothered by the shooting incident. The manipulation was valid because the outcome was positive: the shooting unified people and made them realize that they had enemies, real enemies who would stop at nothing to destroy them.”²

Other descriptions of the same incident underscore Jones’s motivations:

“Once he even simulated his own assassination with a fake bullet and fake blood. Following the theatric event, he disappeared for a few hours before he came back out and claimed to have used his powers to resurrect himself[.]”³

“[Amphetamines] exacerbated Jones’s preexisting paranoia, and he continued to paint the government as an opposing force that was threatening their progressive movement and trying to infiltrate their organization. One member recalls: ‘There were always threats. They were always, always, always there… we were always vigilant.’ To justify this paranoia, Jones orchestrated a second fake assassination attempt, this one much more public and much more intricate. After feigning being shot in the chest and rushed into a private room, Jones emerged later to proclaim that he had healed himself.”⁴

“[T]he Sundance documentary, Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle . . . discusses how Jones created enemies where none existed, thus allowing him to tighten his control and increase the group’s isolation. This is hinted at in other programs, but it is clarified here through highlighting Peoples Temple newspapers and discussing a fake assassination attempt in May 1972 at the church’s Redwood Valley location. Some members recognized what was going on, but as Jonestown survivor Tim Carter puts it, red flags were ignored because of the overarching mission.”⁵

Am I saying that Trump faked an assassination attempt? No. I can’t say that, because I don’t know that. However, I can say for a fact that Trump, like Jones, will use this incident to increase the paranoia among his followers in order to generate hostility toward those they perceive as their enemies.

MAGA Manipulation

To that point, J. D. Vance, Tim Scott and other high-level Republican figures last night blamed President Biden and the Democratic Party for creating the atmosphere that produced this foiled assassination attempt on Donald Trump. They jumped at the chance to cast their political opposition in this nefarious role, in the hours before the identity and background of the alleged gunman was known. 

As it turns out, the apparent shooter was a 20-year-old who was registered with the Republican Party, was wearing a shirt of Demolition Ranch, a popular Texas gun club, and who was an advocate of unfettered Second Amendment rights.

This background is not of someone who would be swayed by Democratic portrayals of Trump and his operatives, yet Vance, Scott and others wasted no time in riling up the Republican base to turn their ire on “the other side,” Democrats, the people they see as their enemies.

And it’s important that Vance et al. did this in the interim where we didn’t have this information, because it was crucial for them to set the narrative for their audience. They had to get out in front of the story in order to fill in these unknowns.⁶

So I would be remiss if I didn’t point that out. This incident will be used to mold the emotions of MAGA. And, because of the nature of the group, where people are much more linked into each other in terms of emotion and shared opinion, a magnifying effect will occur such that this incident will have staying power, despite the fact that the shooter comes from the same ideological “side” as MAGA itself. It will be a rallying cry, a 21st-century version of waving the bloody shirt.

This will be the energy going into the Republican National Convention, which begins tomorrow. The emotion, rather than that of ambivalence due to not knowing what Biden will decide as to his placement on the Democratic ticket,⁷ instead promises to be vicious and vindictive, full of a need to gain retribution for the attempt of unseen forces to remove their leader, their love object. There will be one temper and one focus.

1. I say this because Trump stated later that the object that hit him was a bullet and that it “pierced” his ear. There’s no way that I can see — even if someone had Dumbo ears, which Trump does not — where a bullet whips right through an ear and does not hit any other part of the head. Maybe the very top of the ear — but then it would look very ragged, due to forces upon exit. There should have been more damage than what showed up in the images that were captured.

2. Tim Reiterman, Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People (1982), pp. 201-202. Dutton: New York.

3. Ellie A. Delanni, “The Legacy of Peoples Temple: A Movement Created and Destroyed by Jim Jones.” Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, Special Collections of Library and Information Access at San Diego State University.

4. Taylor Martin, “Jim Jones: A Case Study in the Relationship Between Antisocial and Narcissistic Personality Disorders” (2019), Senior Thesis, University of South Carolina - Columbia, p. 25.

5. Jason Dikes, “Jonestown Documentaries on the Fortieth Anniversary: A Media Review.” Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, Special Collections of Library and Information Access at San Diego State University.

6. This is because people tend to remember the first information they encounter about a story, especially if that story is one that is emotionally charged. If later information contradicts the first, they may cling to the original version; or they may update the factual details, but the emotional charge is what sticks to them after the fact. There really is no way to neutralize that aspect of mis- and disinformation.

7. As for the Democrats, Biden still has a decision to make! And there remains this nebulous idea of what happens if he does step aside — will Democrats make their most momentous decision based solely on money, on whether they can crack open the warchest? I foresee that conversation returning in the next few days, as the dust settles. But the dynamics absolutely have changed. If anything, the field of play has become even more difficult to predict.