At this time last week, America was still absorbing the shock from news that a “U.S. citizen of Afghan descent” had shot up the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in the largest massacre in modern U.S. history. Within hours, the attack that left 49 people dead and dozens more injured was being described by law enforcement authorities and mainstream media as a terrorist attack. It has turned out to be more complicated than that.
Donald Trump is right about one thing – America is effed up. There’s still lots to admire about our neighbours to the south, contrary to Trump’s belief. But right now, the bad guys are winning. America is not only at war with terrorists. It’s at war with itself.
Trump’s recent pronouncements on Orlando, putting the blame for the attack on Muslim immigration and at the feet of the president of the United States, who he described as sympathetic to radical jihadists, is just the latest sickening permutation.
On the face of it, the shooting posed a political dilemma for Trump. Between the anti-gay and pro-gun factions in his base, there was not much room to maneuver. But when in doubt, Trump did what he always does: he dumbs it down and doubles down. That’s been his modus. Trump will say anything. So his remarks post Orlando, and his tweet taking credit for seeing a terror attack coming, should have come as no surprise. He is, after all, the same guy who on more than one occasion has demanded the president produce his birth certificate to prove he’s not part of some Muslim conspiracy to destroy America. (The president’s middle name is Hussein isn’t it?) Much of the media, though, seem confounded.
A lot has been written to try and explain Trump’s seemingly incomprehensible rise to presumptive Republican nominee for president. Comparisons have been made to the ascension of the late not-so-great former mayor of Toronto, one Rob Ford. But that would be a mistake. Critics took Ford’s support for granted until it was too late. Not so with Trump. Maybe. America may be waking up to what a Trump White House would mean, and Trump too seems to be taking notice of that. He’s announced this morning that he’s replacing his campaign manager.
After Orlando, more Republicans have publicly deserted the Republican party nominee for president. The latest polls show Trump’s ratings among Americans at an all-time low. That talk that was supposed to be dead about a revolt against Trump at the Republican convention in Cleveland in July is all of a sudden alive again. U.S. House speaker Paul Ryan, who as the highest ranking Congressional leader of the party will serve as chair at the convention, now says he won’t stand in the way if delegates decide to turf Trump.
On the other hand, Republican John McCain, the party’s most senior Senator, has sided with Trump on Orlando, which is more twisted than anyone can imagine. It wasn’t too long ago that Trump was saying the former Vietnam POW was no war hero. All he did in Vietnam was “get captured.” McCain’s standing with Trump now may be for reasons of political self-preservation. McCain’s re-election prospects are dimming in his home state of Arizona where Latino voters alienated by Trump’s promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and Trump supporters gung-ho on border security, make up the main voting blocks in the state.
But Republicans looking for someone to blame for the messed up state of affairs in their party need only look in the mirror. For eight years the GOP has sold the American people on the lie that government is broken. And for eight years they did nothing about it but try and shut down Washington. Now they wonder why Trump rallies look like the second coming of the brown shirts.
A spectacular ruse has been perpetrated by the GOP. The fallout from Orlando is just the latest chapter.
Within hours of the attack on the Pulse nightclub, the narrative was being written by law enforcement authorities (most of them quoted anonymously in press accounts), not to mention the Republican governor of Florida, who also happens to be one of the first in the party to endorse Trump.
Rick Scott rushed right in within hours of the assault to call Omar Mateen’s rampage an “act of terrorism” that “should make every American angry.” Depending on your perspective, that last part could be read as a call to arms for all supposedly law-abiding Americans. But viewed in the harsh light of hindsight, Scott’s comments now seem more political ass-covering. He’s signed more pro-gun bills into law than any other governor in Florida history. Those laws have made it easier to purchase assault rifles like the one used by Mateen in his killing spree.
Mateen, of course, could just have been another fucked up mass murderer, like the countless other mass murderers with rage and mental health issues before him. Or, that guy from Santa Monica pulled over by cops on the way to the gay pride parade in Los Angeles with a bunch of guns in his trunk in the hours after the Orlando shooting, who quickly fell off the news radar.
The fact Mateen was of “Afghan descent,” as authorities were reporting, quickly put a terror lens on the story. That he was born and bred in the U.S., only emerged later. Was his rampage really an act of terrorism? Depends on how you define terrorism. Certainly, it terrorized a community and the whole country.
But it’s just as accurate to say, as more details about the killer pour out, that what happened at the Pulse was another made-in-America hate crime. The president described it as homegrown extremism.
In some ways, Mateen’s story seems strangely typical of mass murderers everywhere. All the signs of an explosion were there from an early age. His school record was full of red flags. His former wife described him as mentally unstable. She says he kept her as a virtual hostage during their marriage and that she had to be rescued from his clutches by her family.
He was a failed cop wannabe who dabbled in steroids and, it turns out, may have also been dealing with unresolved feelings about his own sexuality. He was a regular at the Pulse. And, according to numerous reports, a user of gay hookup apps which he reportedly used to snap pictures of his penis to potential suitors.
According to reports, Mateen was searching Facebook and Twitter throughout the shooting, presumably to see if he was trending. In conversations with 911 operators in the hours before the massacre, he’s alleged to have professed his allegiance to ISIS. But those tapes have yet to be released. (On Monday afternoon, June 20, transcripts of Mateen’s conversations with 9-11 operators and hostage negotiators were released.)
Committee on Homeland Security and Intergovernmental Affairs chair Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, has written a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking for Facebook to provide information on some five accounts allegedly associated with Mateen.
According to Johnson’s letter, Mateen allegedly posted “America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic state… I pledge my allegiance to abu bakr al Baghdadi (sic)… may Allah accept me.”
He also allegedly posted that “The real muslims (sic) will never accept the filthy ways of the west” and “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes… now taste the Islamic vengeance.”
Truth is, Mateen was all over the map when it came to politics in the Middle East – and probably his own motivations for his rampage.
That may sound like a conspiracy theory. It does to the Fox News set.
But CIA director John Brennan told the Senate intelligence committee last week that the CIA “have not been able to uncover any direct link between Mateen and a foreign terrorist organization.” The FBI, which reportedly had Mateen on their radar years ago, has also been unable to uncover any link. And so Mateen seems destined to go down in the annals of history as another “lone wolf” inspired to terrorism by forces abroad, if not in his own head.
ISIS, diminished in the Middle East and fighting for territory – Brennan told the Senate committee the organization has lost vast stretches in Syria and Iraq, its finances and media operations are squeezed, and followers are growing disillusioned – were of course quick to take credit for Mateen’s assault.
Those who were in the club that night say Mateen gave civilian deaths caused by U.S. bombing in Afghanistan as one reason for his rampage. And what of that? If Bush the Second hadn’t sold the U.S. on that post-9/11 offensive to go after Bin Laden – and the war in Iraq that followed to find the fictitious weapons of mass destruction – would ISIS even exist today?
The New York Times reported last week that Bush is coming out of the woodwork to campaign with a number of Senators in a bid to save the Republican majority in the Senate in this fall’s elections, now that Trump is messing with those chances. The madness has officially come full circle.
enzom@nowtoronto.com | @enzodimatteo
