Rhetorically Speaking

Rhetoric is, in essence, the skillful use of language. I’ve taught rhetoric; it was called basic writing. I use rhetoric here. It is using language for clarity and possibly also for persuasion, sometimes for beauty. Usually rhetoric is considered written speech, although a pre-written speech that is then spoken aloud might also be called rhetoric. By definition, it does not normally mean just speech.

If you didn’t know the definition, you would think rhetoric is a hateful thing. It’s lies. It’s malinformation, or something. It can be dangerous, or hateful, or racist, or anything that some ideology might be—and if it isn’t your ideology, then it must be terribly bad.

Ironically, those who are doing the blame game, accusing others of using dangerous rhetoric, are using that type of “rhetoric” for those negative purposes. And it’s almost always spoken remarks, not necessarily prepared or pre-written, although tweets and memes are definitely part of the mix.

While we’re defining words, let’s look at the word stochastic. This is a word I only became familiar with in the past year or so. I looked up the meaning in my 40-year-old dictionary; it comes at a page turn, so I won’t show a photo:

Sto-chas-tic

1.      Of, pertaining to, or arising from chance; involving probability; random.

2.      Math. Designating a process having an infinite progression of jointly distributed random variables.

It wasn’t in use in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. Current online dictionaries define it essentially the same way as above. And Wikipedia lists various fields in which it is used—all with the meaning of randomness or many variables.

But it began to be used quite recently in the phrase “stochastic terrorism.” Random terrorism? Meaning random targets? Causing random terror, rather than planned? No, not really. It has meant, “Your rhetoric (spoken language) is causing people to be violent, to become domestic terrorists.” That’s quite a stretch for the usage of the word. It’s also quite a stretch to think that rhetoric (spoken language) causes violence.

And, even more ironically, it is used to accuse—not those saying the violent things, but those being accused by them.

Spoiler alert: I do not believe in stochastic terrorism. And I do not believe in blaming rhetoric (or spoken language) for someone’s evil acts.

Can language lead people to do evil? Certainly. But to blame someone for inciting such evil, or such violence, the language would have to be direct, such as: “Join our cause. If you believe as we do, take action. We are planning an attack at midnight this Thursday. Meet with us at the gas station on the corner at 9:00 PM that night to get your assignments and weaponry. You might be killed, but not before you take out plenty of others.”

I wouldn’t really call that rhetoric. I would call that incitement. The person doing the speaking, though, wouldn’t be criminally guilty for the speaking—but for the planning and carrying out (or facilitating others in the carrying out) of the violence. Someone speaking those words, on a soapbox in a park, but being ignored as a crank by every passerby would not be guilty for speaking the words. The incitement charge would have to be from connecting with other human beings and persuading them—as part of an evil cabal—to carry out evil acts.

The ones currently complaining about dangerous, hateful rhetoric—and sometimes calling those things stochastic terrorism—are doing what we call projection. They are doing the things they are accusing their enemies of. And this is in tandem with two (known) assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the main target of their hateful speech.

The assassin from September 15, Ryan Routh (who is still alive and in custody; more below), put out a tweet using the phrase “democracy is on the ballot.” Dan Bongino shared a supercut (video collection of short clips) done, I think, by Bulldog Media, on his program September 17. I used screenshots to make a collage or two.

This first one has the anti-Trump media using that same “democracy is on the ballot” phrase—so maybe you could assume the assassin got it from somewhere.

There were several more clips; I missed a couple that specifically used the phrase “stochastic terrorism,” not in response to the things being said by all these sources, but by Donald Trump—for things he didn’t actually say, such as “white supremacists are good people,” or threatening a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win the election, rather than what he actually said, which was a warning for the beleaguered auto industry if Biden (now Harris) were to continue the administration’s harmful policies. Anyway, here’s another set, in which the speakers call Trump a threat to democracy or some such accusation (ironically from people supporting a candidate who was placed on the ballot, rather than being voted on), and even go so far as to say he has to be eliminated:

Dan Bongino also showed a list. It looked much like one I first saw on a Peak Prosperity video after the September 15 assassination attempt. But I find there is no overlap. Eventually I found the source to be the Trump/Vance campaign website news. The list is long, so I used five screenshots. You might note that this is all “hateful rhetoric” coming at, not from, the MAGA side. The list coming from the MAGA side so far seems to be limited to the Charlottesville lie, the J6 lie, and the bloodbath lie. If there were a shocking amount of hateful statements coming from the MAGA side, wouldn't they list the actual ones, rather than those easily debunked lies?

J.D. Vance had this response (passed along by The Blaze):

from this article on The Blaze

Still, like I said, these spoken words, as vile as they are, as unacceptable in a civilized society as they are, do not cause violence. Additionally, as if we have to say it, speech itself is not violence. We have free speech, which includes allowing vile, ugly things to be said. We have many non-violent ways to respond to that kind of speech—preferably always including speaking more truth.

Along those lines, Guy Benson has had a good response to some of these rhetorical attacks, in an article, here. He included photos of a couple of tweets:

There are more such tweets—in the category of victim blaming:

This was also included in the Guy Benson article

composite image from this Newsweek article

Fortunately, we have a “news” organization skilled in the use of rhetoric—in the form of humor, satire, parody. Thank you, Babylon Bee, for possibly keeping us sane:

from The Babylon Bee

 

from The Babylon Bee

 

Since I do not believe rhetoric—as bad as these hateful words have been—caused either of the assassins to do what they’ve done, why did they do those things?

Hatred and evil are real. Also, we are fighting against powers of darkness. Fortunately, light always wins out over darkness.

OK. But that’s rather vague. I have suspicions of some specifics. I am gathering from others more skilled in such investigations. But we can, at this point, put forth some theories, mainly to show what should be investigated, to then provide the proof we think can and should be found.

I do not believe either of these assassins just woke up one day and decided on their own to assassinate President Trump. I think—and evidence is tending toward this belief—that someone, possibly Deep State actors, possibly within some government agency (or possibly an enemy government, although our own looks more likely) targeted these susceptible individuals and convinced them that their acts, while illegal, would be seen as heroic, because Trump in the presidency would definitely mean “the end of our democracy,” because he is “literally Hitler,” etc.

The “hateful rhetoric,” as listed above, would be part of the milieu, the background noise, that led to the belief that Trump was evil and ought to be stopped. But it had to be something more direct that incited these individuals to take the actions they did.

This article is from Just the News;
the original poll results are here

shared as a Facebook story,
source appears to be @mostly.peaceful.memes

 

The July 13 Assassin

Let’s start with the questions for the July 13 shooter, Crooks. There are many people thinking through the questions. I’ll be referring mainly to information from two. First, Dan Bongino, who spent 12 years as a Secret Service agent, assigned to protect presidents and other government officials, their families, or state visitors from other nations. He knows what should have happened, so he’s uniquely qualified to ask why protection didn’t happen.

The other main source is Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity. His channel isn’t always about such things, but he has a particular method of asking questions, eliminating extraneous theories when the evidence shows a different direction, and drawing conclusions when there’s enough evidence to do so.

I’m taking from multiple videos of both of them and may not always be able to point you to exact ones. Robert Gouveia also provided a lot of good examination of the evidence during the first couple of weeks when we were getting information. And certainly there were others. The longer I take to write this up, the more information comes out. So I don't expect the facts as we know them now to remain static. So this is a current snapshot of what I think we know.

Crooks was seen and identified as a suspicious person hours ahead of the shooting, and multiple times by multiple officers. But no officer ever went and encountered him. He had a scope—totally inappropriate in a crowd of people—unless you’re a shooter. He was able to use a drone (although the USSS had declined to use any, or said they couldn’t for some reason that is clearly not true). Both of these things could have led to the suspicion that Crooks was planning an attack—on the crowd or on the principal protectee.

Somehow Crooks was able to smuggle in a rifle. Maybe he had hidden it earlier; we don’t know. But it was his father’s rifle; the dad says his son had borrowed it that morning to go to the shooting range, which was a normal activity. So Crooks couldn’t have hidden it days before, only hours, at best.

And he was able to climb up onto the roof, with the rifle, and stand up and run across the building to get into place (that run is on video). This should have been heard by any officers stationed inside the building. He is seen by multiple people who were attending outside the event—unable to get into the venue, because of crowd size, but were able to hear from outside nearby. These witnesses called the assassin to the attention of various officers, and made video of the shooter on the roof.

Somehow, the officers stationed inside the building where they would have seen that roof happened to leave their posts at the critical time; we still don’t know why. Communications about the suspicious person, early on, and the critical information that he was on the roof just ahead of the shooting didn’t get to the detail protecting Trump, who would have kept him off the stage until the danger was dealt with. That didn’t happen.

The closer rooftop sniper team was located in such a way that they couldn’t see the shooter on the roof, because of a tree blocking their view. The second sniper team took out the shooter. Both teams were placed in such a way that they overlapped coverage area, rather than spreading out to cover more area. We still don’t know who made that decision and why.

The Secret Service cleaned off the roof (crime scene, where the assassin was shot and killed) on day three, which they don’t do. Someone local gets hired to do that—after all evidence has been gathered. Photos of the crime scene—I see why they might not be made available to the public, but they should have been available to any investigators, including congressional investigators. It was cleaned up very quickly. And we’re told to trust them.

Then, just days later, without telling investigators, the body was released and cremated. No further examination can be done. No one else can verify the official report. No one can do any additional toxicology testing. We’re just supposed to trust the official story.

The shooter was of an age that makes it essentially impossible that he didn’t have an online profile; he would have had to decide at age 12-14 that he would never use social media. That seems unlikely. But he seems to have been scrubbed from the internet.

We’re told he (or his computer?) was connected to three offshore accounts, and that he used various foreign encrypted communication apps. There could be reasonable explanations. But the simplest explanation is that he was paid in offshore accounts for doing the deed (whether he survived to receive it or his parents would), and that the recruiter also scrubbed his online profile ahead of time to keep investigators from finding connections. There were other connections, however, such as a visit from someone with a Washington, DC, phone that showed up in his vicinity shortly before the incident and then returned to a government agency building directly afterward. Who made this visit? Someone must know. There could be a reasonable explanation; the refusal to tell us what that might be leads to more speculation.

image shown in a Robert Gouveia video from July 23, 2024

We didn't mention the finding of a bomb or bomb materials in the perpetrator's vehicle, put together in a way that would have required some skill and practice—not to mention questions about getting the materials to put such a thing together.

Chris Martenson was giving near daily updates in July, as more info kept coming out. But additional information has been slow in coming. There are still questions, although they evolve any time there’s added info. But some of these questions--and the speculations they lead to--ought to be unnecessary, because they should have been answered nearly immediately back in July.

This week Josh Hawley came out with the Senate investigations current report, and Chuck Grassley also put out a letter.  Both talk about the stonewalling and refusal to answer the essential questions. Chris Martenson took the opportunity to cover these and give an update on what we know and what we still don't know.

This first image is from Senator Hawley's report:

from Senator Josh Hawley's report, screenshot from here

Martenson then puts together one of his summary lists. This one takes two slides to cover what we know about the shooter, local law enforcement, Secret Service, and FBI:

Screenshot from here

Screenshot from here

Dan Bongino is also careful to say what additional questions should be asked, rather than making accusations. But it looks, at the very least, to be a LIHOP situation (let it happen on purpose). It could be worse—a plan carried out by government Deep State actors. We don’t know. And the officials’ refusal to answer questions and allow a full investigation makes on-purpose look more likely.

If this was just a series of mistakes and extremely bad luck, we would see changes to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. But that is not what we see.

 

The September 15 Assassin

On Sunday, September 15, at the golf course four miles from Mar-a-Lago, Trump made an unplanned trip to play golf. The Secret Service was a couple of holes ahead, looking for danger. It happened that an agent spotted a gun barrel protruding from a chain link fence, spotted the assassin, who was wearing a pink shirt, and shot at him. The would-be assassin fled in a car (the car had stolen plates, but I think I heard he had borrowed it from his daughter in North Carolina).

Ryan Routh, attempted assassin of Donald Trump on September 15,
image from here

If the perpetrator had worn a ghillie suit or something less noticeable, or if the gun hadn't been protruding through the fence, the assassin could have gotten off a shot at close range. 

A nearby citizen saw the person run out of the bushes and take off in the car, and followed to get a photo of the car and the license, which they called in to police. The police were quickly able to apprehend the man, Ryan Routh, who is now in custody.

So, even though security should have been boosted, just two months later there is another near assassination. The location was a known vulnerability on that course; photographers frequently use that very spot to get paparazzi photos, because it’s so near the 6^th hole.

The assassin, we learned, had been in the spot for 12 hours, waiting for his opportunity. He was outside the fence, but along a busy road where he could have been spotted. This means there was not a sweep of the location prior to allowing the protectee to arrive.

The gun was first reported as an AK-47-style weapon with a scope. And AK-47 can’t have a scope. It was later learned what specifically it was. It was a type of weapon illegal in all 50 states. It would have needed to be obtained on the black market at sizable expense. Also, the assassin had a record of arrest for possession of a weapon of mass destruction; he would not have been able to buy any type of gun legally.

Routh lives in Hawaii. He had a failed roofing business. There is video of him in Ukraine two years ago, trying to volunteer to fight or otherwise help in that cause. He was then 56 with no military experience; they rejected him. But he then went on to try recruiting volunteer military, at something like $1200/month/person. He didn’t have money or income; he has a court-appointed attorney.

So there are money questions. How did he afford the trip to Ukraine. Although probably no one took the very low offer to be a volunteer soldier, he was saying he had $14,400/year for each recruit. Ten such recruits would have cost $144,000 a year—more than he made, apparently.

Then, how did he afford the trip to Florida from Hawaii. Even if he was visiting someone in North Carolina, he came at a time when the trip to the golf course wasn’t planned. Locals may have noticed that, anytime there’s a motorcade in that area, it might be because Trump was going golfing. But Routh wasn’t a native. And Trump has a very busy schedule. He was across the country just the day before. How did Routh just happen to show up in Florida on a day when Trump decided last minute to go golfing, and station himself in the location on that course best suited to get within a short-range shot of Trump, many hours ahead of any tell-tale motorcade?

It’s also odd that this man has had multiple encounters with the media. He’s shown on camera in Ukraine. And there are a couple of other instances. Why does this person get picked for media stories multiple times when most human beings never have such encounters?

The Behavior Panel went over his Ukraine videos, where he’s trying to answer the question to Ukraine officials, “What are you doing here?” He explains himself, and the panel agreed, he is a true believer. He thinks that he has identified the most worthy cause and is trying to take action. He seems to have delusions of himself as a hero.

If there were a type of person susceptible to being persuaded to carry out an assassination “to save democracy” from “literally Hitler,” he would be such a person.

We don’t know yet whether that happened, but we don’t know it didn’t. Dan Bongino thinks that he was intended to be another suicide-by-cop, but he bailed and fled, and he submitted passively was caught. So, depending on who interrogates him, there’s a chance we could learn something.

The money is an issue. Chris Martenson also brought this up.

Chris Martenson goes through questions about Routh's money,
screenshot from here

Routh had a very expensive illegal weapon. He prepared with ceramic tiles as body armor (I think he had them in backpacks hanging from the fence, which would have deflected bullets). He had the ability to fly around the world. Yet he had no funds of his own. He was on government radar, both for the odd media appearances and the arrest record. Somehow he knew where to be and when.

Those are a lot of coincidences for a guy who just woke up and decided suddenly to drive to the golf course near Trump’s home and shoot him when he got to the nearest hole.

shared as a Facebook story,
source appears to be @snowflake_news

I don’t think either of these assassins was a lone wolf who just decided to be a Trump assassin. I think they were recruited and incited to take these heinous actions.

One thing government officials have not been doing is using actual rhetoric—clear written or spoken words—to tell us the truth.