You're Not Safe — Act Like It

I started writing this post before the latest attempted assassination of Donald Trump, but the attempt underscores what I have to say.

I am alarmed by a gulf I see between sleepy Republican apathy and an army of left-wing Orcs on the march. In several important very winnable recent elections — that were lost — Republicans just didn’t show up to vote. People seem to think they’re safe because Trump is in office. Voting is the bare minimum needed to defend liberty.

Meanwhile, mainstream leftists openly advocate assassination of a sitting US president, talk about the need to go after his supporters, and organize for the day when they return to power.

The 2026 race for the House, even the Senate, only months away, will be very close. If we fail to make an effort, we could lose. So what would that mean? And what would it mean if we lost in 2028?

I am old enough to remember when elections mattered, but didn’t feel existential. Yes, losing to Democrats was bad — it meant a slight pull to the left, more corruption, higher taxes, etc. But you felt you could weather it and win the next time.

That isn’t the case now. The new Democrats are far, far more left-wing, and their tactics are entirely unconstrained.

In 2016, toward the end of Obama’s second term, presidential contender Donald Trump held a rally in San Jose, CA. His supporters were attacked by an organized, angry left-wing mob. The police were told to “stand down,” which is to say do nothing, while ordinary people were beaten. The local news reported on the event the day after, and I kept the photo below from the report. The young man seen running did not escape. This was the first time I could recall being anywhere near political violence, and it occurred to me — hey, that could have been me.

It was part of a broader pattern of suppressing open support for Trump. Even just wearing a MAGA hat or having a Trump bumper sticker could put you in danger. You can measure the effectiveness of that intimidation by how few MAGA hats you see even now, even though Trump is supported by more than half the country.

The danger is credible. Over the last decade, we have started to hear about something called Antifa, essentially the modern left’s Brownshirts. They train left-wing activists in street fighting techniques, as secretly recorded by Project Veritas. And they’re not the only left-wing group that trains in violence.

It’s this population of trained and indoctrinated thugs that makes doxing by the left so dangerous. It’s the modern equivalent of “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” The doxer just identifies the location of the target. It’s not exactly like issuing a hit, so it has legal deniability. The doxer simply made a hit easier, full-well knowing that there are thousands of crazed left-wing activists itching to strike.

In 2017, Democrat James T. Hodgkinson opened fire on Republican congressmen during a baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, injuring five people. Among those five was Republican House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was critically wounded in the hip and pelvis and narrowly missed being killed. Hodgkinson’s attack was motivated by his opposition to Donald Trump.

There have now been four assassination attempts on Trump himself:

• July 13th, 2024 at a rally in Butler, PA. Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from a rooftop, one shot grazing Trump.

• September 15th, 2024 on a golf course in West Palm Beach, FL. Ryan Wesley Routh was spotted with an SKS-style rifle in bushes but was caught by Secret Service before he could open fire.

• February 22, 2026 at Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Austin Tucker Martin sneaked past security armed with a shotgun and gasoline and was shot and killed by Secret Service.

• April 25, 2026, Washington Hilton, DC. Cole Thomas Allen fired up to eight shots in the lobby/security area of the during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and was caught.

Assassination of Trump is so mainstream among Democrats that the former head of the FBI, James Comey even joked about it.

The Democrat Virginia Attorney General is cool with assassinations.

The left has decided that assassinations are fine now. Charlie Kirk talked about that before he himself was assassinated.

Before his death, Scott Adams predicted all of this.

Once in office in 2021, the Biden administration famously went after a number of prominent supporters of Trump, bankrupting some of them, and attempting to imprison others. But their vengeance wasn’t limited to the prominent.

About a thousand J6 attendees, ordinary people, many of whom never even went inside the Capitol, and many who had simply walked through after being waved in by Capitol police, spent years in prison, often in deplorable, unconstitutional, conditions.

Deliberately segregating J6rs and treating them badly in prison wasn’t about politics, but about a moral crusade to punish those the left views as evil. One case I remember in particular is that of Matthew Perna. He walked through open doors into the Capitol, peacefully ambled around with the crowd, and then left. He was arrested and was told that if he plead guilty his sentence would be limited to 6-12 months in prison. But after agreeing to that plea, and after long delay — a tactic used to leave J6rs in a constant state of worry for months — DOJ prosecutors informed him that they would also charge him with terrorism, which would raise his sentence to a potential 9 years in federal prison. Four days after receiving news, Matthew went into his garage, put a rope around his neck, and hung himself.

The left’s partisan abuse of its enemies was not limited to judicial tactics. In September,2024, a hurricane hit North Carolina. Thousands of families, many with children, were left desperate and homeless. But this was an area of the state that had voted for Trump. So FEMA aid that was intended for these people was partly diverted to immigrants, and was denied to anyone — any ordinary person — who was Republican. This is not conjecture or rumor, but verified fact. FEMA workers literally walked past freezing families living in collapsed houses if records showed they were Republican. Again, this could have no political effect. It wasn’t about winning the next election. It was about destroying their enemies.

In the course of all this, Democrats created a website where anyone could add names of those who had helped in any way to reelect Donald Trump. It was not a secret effort — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) even promoted it openly. I personally remember being shocked and a little alarmed when when a minor former Obama official promoted the list on Twitter. The list is not just about major Republican contributors or staff. It’s far-reaching, and likely has been extended down even further among ordinary people. No doubt the list still exists, and given the wonders of AI is being created and updated on a routine basis.

You may think I have been writing this to advocate a quick trip to your local gun store, or to take up martial arts. Both of these are advisable in any case, but that’s not where I’m headed. It’s no good only preparing for a final, desperate battle when there are so many less desperate, more effective things you can do so that we never reach the point where 2A is all we have left.

First, at a dead minimum, you need to vote and get your Republican friends to vote. As I said at the beginning, we have been losing important battles because Republican voter turnout has been materially lower than Democrat. This is plain laziness. People don’t seem to realize the stakes involved. We can’t allow that to continue.

Second, if you have time or need a job, even a part-time or temp job, consider working in your local election process. Election boards do a ton of hiring around election time, and that’s coming up shortly. How does that help? Because honest eyes are a deterrent to mischief, and simply keeping the process honest would go a long way to winning.

Apart from that, there a ton of other helpful things to do — indeed that’s what this substack is all about.