宴會與墨西哥捲餅——對美國政治暴力的反思

舞廳裡擠滿了穿著正式禮服的記者。春季豌豆配布拉塔起司沙拉剛剛端上桌。一名魔術師正在為總統以及主桌的賓客表演讀心術。槍聲突然響起。出席者起初並沒有反應，直到特勤局特工開始行動，他們才意識到發生了什麼。第一夫人的臉上出現了震驚的神情。總統轉向她，彷彿希望在面對永恆之前最後看到的就是她。

转自 Sasha Gong

【龚小夏按：這是Real Clear Politics刊載的一篇描述和分析美國政治暴力的文章。文筆生動幽默同時對美國現狀進行深刻反思，可惜文章不適合廣播朗誦。在這裏為大家送上譯文和英文原文。】

《宴會與墨西哥捲餅》

作者：本傑明·布拉多克

關於週六的刺殺未遂事件

舞廳裡擠滿了穿著正式禮服的記者。春季豌豆配布拉塔起司沙拉剛剛端上桌。一名魔術師正在為總統以及主桌的賓客表演讀心術。槍聲突然響起。出席者起初並沒有反應，直到特勤局特工開始行動，他們才意識到發生了什麼。第一夫人的臉上出現了震驚的神情。總統轉向她，彷彿希望在面對永恆之前最後看到的就是她。

在外面的走廊裡，槍手被撲倒。警員把他剝到只剩短褲，以檢查是否藏有武器或傷口。總統迅速發布了一張槍手俯臥在地、雙手被反綁的照片。隨後執法人員用一條麥拉應急毯將他包裹起來，這張裹著鋁箔的照片迅速在媒體上傳播。

過了一會兒，川普總統走進白宮記者簡報室，身邊站著副總統、司法部長、戰爭部長、國務卿以及聯邦調查局局長。他們都沒有換衣服，下面的記者也一樣。整個房間既像一場國家活動，又像一齣服裝戲。CNN主播凱特蘭·柯林斯，一直在公開場合與總統對立，這一次卻以罕見的真誠人性提問。她穿著晚禮服坐在前排，看起來十分動人。

這起事件被視為對川普總統數次可信刺殺企圖中的最新一次，但科爾·托馬斯·艾倫原本計劃於當晚8點40分寄給家人的宣言中，將整個政府團隊列為目標。因此，簡報室中總統與幕僚並肩而立的畫面，不再像王子身邊的隨從，而更像一群並肩作戰的戰士——在同一場戰鬥中倖存，肩並肩站立。命運似乎帶著一絲詩意，讓這些人在關鍵時刻仍穿著黑領結晚禮服。

當晚的影像一幕接一幕。史蒂芬·米勒用自己的身體保護懷孕的妻子。皮特·赫格塞思像獵豹一樣沿著房間邊緣移動。馬可·魯比奧與妻子在西翼外等待。邁克爾·格蘭茨仍坐在原位繼續吃沙拉。Getty Images攝影師安迪·哈尼克，一手拿相機，一手拿波本酒，冷靜地拍攝。

這些畫面呈現的是男性面對暴力時的整套原始反應，在晚禮服中即時展現，呈現在一群長期否認這種現象存在的媒體人面前。這些人並不是在當下決定要成為什麼樣的人；在槍火之中，他們只是成為他們一直以來的那種人。

至於艾倫，他原本想成為羅馬的布魯圖斯，卻只成了一個墨西哥的捲餅。

第二部分

加州理工學院，2013至2017年。機械工程。基督徒團契。Nerf俱樂部。

艾倫是一種典型的美國人類型，尤其常見於像加州理工這樣的頂尖理工院校：天賦出眾、社交笨拙、極度真誠。他能進入噴射推進實驗室實習，或在加州理工擔任助教，並不令人意外。但助教職位結束，實習也沒有轉為正式工作。像他這一代的許多人一樣，一個原本充滿希望的起點逐漸消散為一種迷失。

到2025年，離開加州理工八年後，他自費在加州州立大學多明格斯山分校取得電腦科學碩士學位。對一名加州理工機械工程師而言，三十歲回到州立大學攻讀電腦科學碩士，明顯意味著某些事情出了問題。他的日常工作是在C2教育機構任教——一個設在購物中心的補習連鎖——教洛杉磯家長的孩子考出他曾經考出的成績，走向他曾經走過的學校，通往他曾經未能完成的道路。

他以為自己會得到的東西與實際到來的東西之間的落差，成為其他東西進入的空間。進入其中的是宗教。

一個世俗人生軌跡明顯失敗的人，往往會讓宗教使命變得全面而極端。學歷體系曾承諾給予意義，但最終沒有兌現。而被扭曲的社會福音，則提供了一種不需要制度認可的意義。

他以為自己在進行一場聖禮，但實際上他是在重演一場宴會——人類暴力的核心社會技術。

第三部分

華盛頓的運作建立在模仿性競爭之上。政客、記者、說客以及幕僚，全都渴望相同的稀缺資源——接近權力的機會、地位以及與權力的距離。這種競爭的強度，正是這座城市存在的根本原因。在古代社會中，這種未經調控的競爭會導致人人對抗人人的暴力局面。為了防止這一點，社會發展出各種儀式。

白宮記者晚宴，在人類學意義上，是一種儀式性的容器。這是一場每年一次的宴會，媒體與行政權力在此共同進餐，並進行一場吐槽——一種儀式化的嘲諷形式，將模仿性競爭轉化為戲劇性的娛樂。吐槽是一種古老的機制，用來提醒國王他也是凡人，同時也提醒廷臣們，他們並不高於國王之上。這是一個安全閥，理論上讓華盛頓的模仿性壓力以儀式形式釋放，而不是轉化為實際暴力。

然而，這一儀式在某個時候已經失靈。星期六晚坐在主桌的總統，在他的第一個任期內從未參加過這類晚宴。在這段時間裡，媒體用一種任何吐槽都無法消化的語言來描述他——威權主義者、希特勒、美國歷史上最危險的人。原本作為安全閥的機制，反而變成了每年一次集中釋放仇恨的場所。這種壓力必須流向某個地方。它流向了科爾·艾倫——他從產生這種壓力的媒體中吸收了它，然後諷刺性地把它帶回了他們自己的舞會。

吉拉爾對於這種崩壞宴會最著名的解讀，來自《馬可福音》中施洗約翰之死的故事。希律王正在宴請群臣，當著眾人的面向一位跳舞的少女作出輕率的承諾。少女跑去問她的母親該要求什麼。母親告訴她：要施洗約翰的頭，裝在盤子裡。少女返回，立刻提出這個要求。（《馬可福音》的希臘文特別強調了這一動作的迅速。）希律王因為在眾人面前立下誓言而進退兩難，為了避免顏面受損，他下令殺死先知。頭顱在宴席上被呈上。人群在象徵意義上吞食了這位先知，整個房間因他的血而恢復一致。

吉拉爾的觀點是，這名少女並不是暴力的主體。她只是媒介。真正的殺意屬於整個房間。她從母親那裡吸收了這種慾望，並透過自身將其加速傳遞給希律王，而希律王之所以執行這一行動，是因為整個房間都在要求它。這名少女是一張空白的慾望載體。她沒有自己的慾望。她只是讓宴會轉化為暴力的通道。

科爾·托馬斯·艾倫，就是白宮記者晚宴中的那名跳舞少女。他所吸收慾望的人群，是更廣泛的美國自由派話語圈：包括《紐約時報》、《大西洋月刊》、《紐約客》、MSNBC、《Pod Save America》節目、週日政論節目、高端播客、後福音派神學圈，以及民主黨的民選官員——他們在過去十年間不斷強化一個命題：總統是一個企圖成為獨裁者的人，他的運動對國家靈魂構成威脅。而在最近幾個月裡，總統自身陣營中的一部分前支持者也開始採用類似陰暗的語言，例如塔克·卡爾森在幾週前暗示總統可能是敵基督。其他前支持者如今則聲稱總統危險、犯下戰爭罪，並必須以非常手段加以阻止。

所有這些敘事都被艾倫吸收，他的宣言幾乎逐字複製了這些說法：「在拘留營中被強暴的人、未經審判被處決的漁民、被炸死的學生、被餓死的孩子、以及被這個政府中的眾多罪犯虐待的少女。」古老的宴會需要吞食一個受害者。群體圍繞著替罪羊的屍體聚集，並在象徵上或實際上進行吞食，以內化彼此的和解。這種和平既是真實的，又是虛假的，兩者同時存在。整個房間因鮮血而達成一致。而這血是無辜的。整個房間拒絕承認這份無辜，然後心滿意足地各自離去。

第四部分

聖餐（聖體）將這一機制反轉運行。基督自願奉獻自己。群體所領受的，不是被憤怒人群殺害的受害者，而是對暴力的徹底拒絕——也就是基督本身。聖餐的宴席揭示了迫害群體的罪責以及受害者的無辜。它打破了這種迷惑。

科爾·艾倫所進行的，是一場披著基督教外衣的古老宴會。他所接受的教理，在過去五十年間，逐步從主流新教中剝離了聖餐的核心內容，同時保留並強化了獻祭的衝動。在他所吸收的版本中，基督徒的道德生活已不再是效法基督，而是主動介入對抗壓迫，代表被壓迫者行動，必要時甚至訴諸暴力。所提供的模仿對象，不再是基督，而是那位在宴席上端上頭顱的行刑者，並宣稱這一切是為了上帝的國度。

帶著這一區分去閱讀那份宣言，其結構就變得清晰可見。艾倫被提供的是效法基督（imitatio Christi），但他以這並不適用於自己為由拒絕了它。「我不是在拘留營中被強暴的人。我不是那個未經審判就被處決的漁民。」在他的教理之中，基督徒並不需要承擔競技場中殉道者那種自我犧牲的姿態，因為基督徒本身並沒有在受苦。基督徒的角色，是替那些正在受苦的人行動。因此，在這套2026年的教理中，基督徒可扮演的角色，不再是十字架，而是刀劍——為了讓他人不必承受十字架而動用。

在基督教出現之前的政治共同體，是圍繞著為群體利益而犧牲受害者而組織的；而基督教革命的發現，在於認識到受害者是無辜的，並且群體透過他們的鮮血達成和解是一種謊言。那些對艾倫進行教導的主流教派，保留了正義、壓迫、共謀與犧牲的語彙，卻失去了「自願受害者」這一概念。如今它們所產生的，正是古老宴會一直以來所產生的東西：一個透過某個被認定為障礙的人之血而達成和解的群體。

當教理所要求的血，變成美國總統的血時，艾倫就是這條生產線最終產出的結果。對他進行教導的這條管道，給了他一個目標，也給了他一種使命。吉拉爾早已理解，現代世界中最危險的宗教情感形式，是那種保留了基督教的道德嚴肅性，卻拋棄了賦予其內容的「自願受害者」啟示的形式。他稱之為在正義名義掩護之下對無辜者的迫害。這正是披著基督教外衣回歸的前基督教獻祭機制，而艾倫則是其在美國的具體體現。

第五部分

在他的宣言中，在列舉完政治不滿、經文論證，以及對家人、同事與學生的道歉之後，艾倫轉而長篇詳細地抱怨希爾頓酒店的安保措施。他原本預期會有金屬探測器、監控設備，以及在每個轉角都部署特工。但他實際遇到的卻是什麼都沒有，這一點讓他極為憤怒。

他最後寫道：「如果我是一名伊朗特工，而不是一個美國公民，我完全可以帶著一挺該死的M2重機槍進來，卻沒有人會注意到。」這段抱怨被表述為一種半帶愛國意味的關切，指責特勤局的無能。但實際上，它真正表達的是對這個世界的控訴——即使在他準備用槍強迫他人注意他的那一刻，這個世界依然沒有注意到他。

這名潛在的刺殺者，不僅希望透過行動被看見，還希望這種被看見的程度足以匹配他自認的重要性。他希望自己所需要突破的安保體系，應當配得上他這個人。事實是，他帶著一把霰彈槍、一把手槍以及多把刀具，在沒有受到酒店工作人員任何阻攔的情況下，一路通過，甚至走到了樓梯頂端的金屬探測器前——這對他而言成為最後一種宇宙性的侮辱。這個體系甚至沒有認真到要試圖阻止他。

他的束縛是徹底的。他在試圖奪取他人注意的同時，卻依然被剝奪了被承認的可能。

第六部分

在過去六十年間，美國共和國經歷了四種模仿性的大規模暴力表現形式，而現在正開始進入第五種。

第一種始於達拉斯，延續至孟菲斯、洛杉磯、地下氣象組織的爆炸事件，以及史奎基·弗羅姆對傑拉爾德·福特的未遂槍擊。那是一個政治刺客與革命性小團體的時代。這一階段在1981年3月30日於同一間希爾頓酒店結束——當時欣克利為了引起女演員茱蒂·福斯特的注意而槍擊雷根，他是在1976年夏天觀看電影《計程車司機》15次後對她產生執念。欣克利標誌著這一形式的最終退化。整個國家將此視為那一時代的終章。然而在1986年，一名名叫派翠克·謝里爾的郵政員工走進奧克拉荷馬州埃德蒙的一個分揀中心，射殺了14名同事。

一個新的篇章開始了。

馬克·艾姆斯於2005年出版的《Going Postal》，是理解此後發生事情的關鍵著作。其核心論點是，郵政屠殺事件以及隨後出現的校園槍擊，在結構上與內戰前南方的奴隸起義是相同的。每一個公共恐怖階段，都對應著一個最近失去其儀式機制的制度領域。六十至七十年代是政治領域；在裁員、外包、去工業化，以及由麥肯錫主導對中層管理勞動結構的掏空時期，是職場；在科倫拜校園世代，是學校；在2010年代平台經濟之下，是公共空間；而現在，隨著艾倫在希爾頓酒店的行動，則是整個資格體系本身。

第七部分

星期六的刺殺未遂事件，與巴特勒以及猶他谷事件之間，存在一個尚未被清楚說明的差異。

巴特勒事件並沒有讓主流精英媒體感到恐慌。猶他谷事件讓他們稍微緊張了一下，但很快又回到了既有的敘事模式。聯合健康保險執行長布萊恩·湯普森被殺，在某些圈子裡甚至引發了公開的慶祝。當時的態度是：針對右翼的政治暴力，即使令人遺憾，也是可以理解的。《惡棍特工》、《一戰接一戰》——這些被視為對當前這類暴力的道德想像對應，這種暴力正在被預先合理化並被幻想。

當川普在巴特勒遭槍擊時，媒體在四十八小時內就將焦點轉向「那麼右翼的言論呢」。當查理·柯克被殺時，相關報導明顯缺乏媒體通常對其認為真正悲劇性死亡所投入的持續道德關注。這種敘事框架能夠吸納這些事件，是因為它將針對右翼的暴力視為某種可以理解、可以解釋的現象，而對於針對媒體本身的暴力，則無法如此處理。

星期六的事件本應符合這一框架。科爾·托馬斯·艾倫幾乎是為此量身打造的人物：受過良好教育、有宗教背景，並以對拘留營、挨餓的兒童以及受虐少女的人道關懷為動機。按照他自己的標準，他的推理方式正是好萊塢、媒體以及民主黨所宣稱的那種具有道德嚴肅性的公民應當採取的方式。他本該成為所有關於抵抗、良知、共謀與時代要求的社論中的理想主角。

當針對右翼的暴力發生在右翼活動現場時，這種暴力是可以被吸納的。也就是說，發生在別的地方時可以。但當暴力發生在華盛頓新聞界的「舞會」現場時，就無法被吸納了。艾倫將媒體長期建構的道德框架當真，並且徹底加以應用。當「川普就是希特勒，而支持他的人就是共犯」這一邏輯被一貫地推行時，媒體自身也被納入了範圍之內。媒體並不是在城市另一端與那些被他們稱為共犯的人分開用餐——他們是與這些人坐在同一張桌上。他們投票支持了「獵豹會吃臉黨」，然後一隻獵豹真的出現在他們舞會的走廊裡。

在那個宴會廳中的媒體階層，在威脅持續的那段時間裡，被迫與他們長期妖魔化的那些人處於同一處境。內閣官員與記者一起躲在同一張桌子下。在槍手的致命範圍之內，兩個群體之間的政治對立被一個簡單的物理事實暫時中止——他們都身處同一個殺傷半徑之中。曾經躲在同一張桌子下、穿著同樣的服裝、經歷同一次襲擊並倖存下來的這一事實，將以某種有趣的方式影響未來數年的華盛頓政治。

刺殺未遂事件後的星期一下午，在白宮南草坪的蜂箱旁，總統攤開手掌，一隻蜜蜂停在他赤裸的掌心。英國國王俯身觀看，王后站在一旁，第一夫人將手平貼在胸前。蜜蜂靜靜地停在總統掌心中央。

蜜蜂沒有螫他。

那種在本能之中能夠轉身避開子彈的鎮定，正是那種能夠托住蜜蜂的鎮定。兩者是同一種鎮定。

https://im1776.com/2026/04/29/the-banquet-and-the-burrito/

The Banquet and the Burrito

By Benjamin Braddock

On Saturday’s Assassination Attempt

The ballroom was full of journalists in formal wear. The burrata salad with spring peas had just been served. A magician was demonstrating a feat of mind-reading to the President and those seated with him at the head table. Gunshots rang out. It took a moment to register with the attendees, who only reacted when Secret Service agents sprang into action. A look of shock came over the face of the First Lady. The President looked over at her as if he wanted her to be the last thing he saw before eternity.

Outside, in the corridor, the gunman was tackled. Officers stripped him to his shorts to search for weapons and wounds. The President quickly posted a photo of the gunman face down on the floor, hands tied behind his back. Then law enforcement wrapped him in a Mylar emergency blanket, and the picture of him in the foil went out on the wires.

Some time later, President Trump walked into the press briefing room at the White House, flanked by his Vice-President, Attorney General, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and Director of the FBI. They had not changed their clothes, nor had the press in front of them. The room was simultaneously a state event and a costume drama. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins, who has long played the adversarial interlocutor in her public interactions with the President, asked a question, for the first time anyone could remember, with genuine humanity. She looked beautiful, sitting in her gown in the front row.

The event has been processed as the most recent of several credible assassination attempts against President Trump, but Cole Tomas Allen’s manifesto, scheduled to be sent to his family at 8:40 that evening, had named administration officials in the plural as his targets. The image at the briefing room of the President flanked by his Men was therefore not that of a retinue around a prince but of a cohort, men who had survived the same battle, standing shoulder to shoulder in battle dress. It was a touch of poetry on the part of fate to have these men in black tie at the threshold moment. 

The images from the briefing room capped what was already a series of glittering images from across the evening. Stephen Miller using his own body to shield his pregnant wife. Pete Hegseth moving around the perimeter of the room like a leopard stalking a gazelle. Marco Rubio and his wife waiting outside the West Wing. Michael Glantz remaining seated, continuing to eat his salad. Andy Harnik of Getty Images, calmly snapping photos with his camera in one hand and a bourbon in the other. 

What the images caught was the entire pagan repertoire of male response to violence, performed in tuxedos, in real time, in front of a press class that has spent a generation denying the existence of such a thing. None of these men decided in the moment what they were going to be. Each of them under fire was the kind of man he had been all along. 

As for Allen, he had wanted to be Brutus. He got to be a burrito.

II

Caltech 2013 to 2017. Mechanical engineering. The Christian Fellowship. The Nerf Club.

Allen is a recognizable American type, particularly at the better technical schools like Caltech. Gifted. Socially awkward. Intensely sincere. Not surprising that he landed an internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory or had a teaching assistantship at Caltech. But the assistantship ran out, and the JPL internship did not convert to a staff position. Like many men of his generation, a promising start petered out into a sort of listlessness. 

By 2025, eight years out of Caltech, he had paid for and earned a master’s degree in computer science at Cal State Dominguez Hills, a working-class regional state school in the South Bay. A Caltech mechanical engineer who returns to Cal State for a CS master’s at thirty is a clear sign that something went wrong. His day job was working at C2 Education, a chain of strip-mall test prep centers, teaching the children of Los Angeles parents how to score the scores he had already scored, en route to the schools he had already attended, headed for the trajectory he had already failed to convert. 

The gap between what he thought he would get and what arrived is the gap into which something else was free to enter. What entered was the church.

The man whose secular trajectory has visibly failed is the man for whom religious vocation becomes totalizing. The credentialing system promised significance and did not deliver. The corrupted social gospel offers significance that does not require institutional ratification. 

He thought he was performing a sacrament. Instead, he was performing a banquet, the central social technology of human violence.

III

Washington runs on mimetic rivalry. Politicians, journalists, lobbyists, and staff all desire the same scarce resources to access, status, and proximity to power. The intensity of the rivalry is the entire reason the city exists. In archaic societies, this kind of unmanaged rivalry produces all-against-all violence. To prevent that, societies develop rituals.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is, anthropologically, a ritual container. It is a banquet at which the press and the executive eat together once a year and perform a roast—a ceremonial form of mockery that converts mimetic rivalry into theatrical entertainment. The roast is the ancient device by which the king is reminded that he is mortal and the courtiers are reminded that they are not above him. It is the safety valve by which the mimetic pressure of Washington is, in principle, allowed to discharge in ceremonial form rather than in actual violence. 

This ritual stopped working some time ago. The President at the head table on Saturday night had not attended one of these dinners during his first term. The press corps had spent the intervening decade describing him in vocabulary that no roast could metabolize—authoritarian, Hitler, the most dangerous man in American history. What had been the safety valve had become, instead, an annual concentration of the hatred it was supposed to discharge. The pressure had to go somewhere. It went to Cole Allen, who picked it up from the press that had been generating it and brought it back, ironically, to their version of prom. 

Girard’s most famous reading of a banquet that broke this way is the death of John the Baptist in the Gospel of Mark. Herod is hosting his court and makes a rash promise to a dancing girl in front of his assembled guests. The girl runs to her mother and asks what to demand. The mother tells her: the head of John the Baptist on a platter. The girl returns and hastens to ask immediately. (Mark’s Greek is emphatic about the speed). Herod, trapped by his oath in front of the court, kills the prophet to avoid losing face. The head is delivered at the feast. The crowd consumes the prophet symbolically, and the room is reconciled by his blood. 

Girard’s point is that the girl is not the agent of the violence. She is the medium. The murderous desire belongs to the room. She absorbs it from her mother and accelerates it through herself onto Herod, who executes the act because the room demands it. The girl is a blank slate of desire. She has nothing of her own. She is the channel through which the banquet becomes violence. 

Cole Tomas Allen was the dancing girl of the WHCA banquet. The crowd he absorbed the desire from was the broader crowd of liberal American discourse: the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, MSNBC, Pod Save America, the Sunday programs, the prestige podcasts, the post-evangelical theological circuit, and the elected officials of the Democratic Party, who have spent the last decade hammering the proposition that the President is an aspiring dictator whose movement constitutes a threat to the soul of the nation. And, in the last several months, a growing portion of the President’s own former coalition has picked up similarly ominous lines of rhetoric, like Tucker Carlson, who a few weeks ago intimated that the President may be the Antichrist. Other former supporters now claim that the President is dangerous, engaged in war crimes, and must be stopped by extraordinary means. 

These narratives were all absorbed by Allen, whose manifesto reproduces them verbatim: “the person raped in a detention camp, the fisherman executed without trial, the schoolkid blown up, the child starved, the teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.” The archaic banquet consumes a victim. The community gathers around the corpse of the scapegoat and eats, symbolically or literally, to internalize their reconciliation. The peace is real and fraudulent, both at once. The room is reconciled by the blood. The blood was innocent. The room does not countenance this innocence and goes home satisfied.

IV

The Eucharist runs the mechanism backward. Christ offers himself willingly. The community does not consume a victim murdered by an angry mob. The community consumes the total refusal of violence, which is Christ. The Eucharistic banquet exposes the guilt of the persecuting crowd and the innocence of the victim. It breaks the spell. 

Cole Allen was performing the archaic banquet in Christian drag. The catechism that taught him has spent 50 years progressively stripping the Eucharistic content from mainline Protestantism while preserving and intensifying the sacrificial impulse. The Christian moral life, in the version he absorbed, is no longer the imitation of Christ but the active intervention against oppression on behalf of the oppressed, by violence if necessary. The imitation on offer is the imitation of the executioner who serves the head at the feast and claims he has done it for the kingdom of God. 

Read the manifesto with this distinction in mind, and the architecture becomes legible. Allen is offered the imitatio Christi, but he refuses it on the grounds that it does not apply to him. I am not the person raped in a detention camp. I am not the fisherman executed without trial. The Christian, in his catechism, is not bound to the martyr-in-the-coliseum posture of self-sacrifice because the Christian is not personally suffering. The Christian’s role is to act on behalf of those who are. The role available to the Christian in 2026, in this catechism, is therefore not the cross but the sword, deployed so that others will not have to bear the cross. 

The pre-Christian polity organized itself around the sacrifice of victims for the good of the community, and the Christian revolution was the discovery that the victims were innocent and that the community’s reconciliation through their blood was a lie. The mainline denominations that catechized Allen retained the vocabulary of justice, oppression, complicity, and sacrifice, but lost the idea of the willing victim. What they produce now is what the archaic banquet has always produced: a community reconciled by the blood of someone they have decided is the obstacle. 

Allen is what comes out the other end of the production line when the blood the catechism demands is the blood of the President of the United States. The pipeline that catechized him hands him a target and a vocation. Girard understood that the modern world’s most dangerous form of religious feeling was the form that had retained the moral seriousness of Christianity while abandoning the willing-victim revelation that gave Christianity its content. He called this the persecution of the innocent under the cover of justice. It is the pre-Christian sacrificial mechanism returned in Christian costume, with Allen being its American instance.

V

In his manifesto, after the political grievances, scriptural reasoning, and apologies to family, colleagues, and students, Allen pivots to a long, detailed complaint about security at the Hilton. He had expected metal detectors, surveillance, and agents at every bend. He encountered nothing, a fact he is furious about. 

He concludes with the line: “If I were an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed.” The complaint is presented as a semi-patriotic concern about Secret Service incompetence. But what it really is is the complaint that the world failed to notice him even at the moment he was preparing to force their noticing at gunpoint.

The aspiring assassin does not only want to be witnessed by the act, but for the witnessing to be adequate to his significance. He wants the security he had to defeat to have been worthy of what he is. The fact that he walked through with a shotgun, a pistol, and multiple knives, unchallenged by hotel staff, and made it to the metal detector at the top of the staircase is a final cosmic insult. The system did not even take him seriously enough to try to stop him.

His bondage is total. His recognition is denied even as he is trying to seize it.

VI

The American republic has, in the last sixty years, run through four mimetic manifestations of mass violence and is now starting the fifth.

The first ran from Dallas through Memphis, Los Angeles, the Weather Underground bombings, and Squeaky Fromme misfiring at Gerald Ford. Political assassins. Revolutionary cells. It ended at this same Hilton on March 30, 1981, when Hinckley shot Reagan to impress the actress Jodie Foster, who he became obsessed with after watching the movie Taxi Driver 15 times in the summer of 1976. Hinckley was the form’s ultimate degeneration. The country read it as the final act of that chapter. But in 1986, a postal worker named Patrick Sherrill walked into a sorting facility in Edmond, Oklahoma, and shot fourteen of his coworkers. 

A new chapter began. 

Mark Ames’s Going Postal, published in 2005, is the indispensable text on what happened next. Its central argument is that the postal massacres and the school shootings that followed are structurally identical to the slave revolts of the antebellum South. Each phase of public terror corresponded to which institution had most recently been stripped of its rituals. Politics in the sixties and seventies. The workplace in the age of downsizing, offshoring, deindustrialization, and McKinsey-led hollowing out of the middle managerial labor categories. The school in the Columbine generation. The public square under the platform economy of the 2010s. And now, with Allen at the Hilton, the credential pipeline itself.

VII

There is a way Saturday’s assassination attempt differs from Butler’s and Utah Valley’s that has not yet been clearly stated.

Butler did not freak out the prestige press. Utah Valley freaked them out a little, but they soon reverted to form. The murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson produced, in some quarters, open celebration. The attitude was that political violence directed against the Right was, if regrettable, understandable. Inglourious Basterds, One Battle After Another—these are the imagined moral analogs to the kind of violence that is being pre-justified and fantasized about. 

When Trump was shot in Butler, the press pivoted within forty-eight hours to what about the rhetoric on the right. When Charlie Kirk was killed, the coverage was characterized by a notable absence of the sustained moral attention the press devotes to deaths it considers genuinely tragic. The frame absorbed each of these events by treating violence against the right as intelligible and explicable in a way that violence against the press itself would not be.

Saturday should have fit the frame. Cole Tomas Allen was perfect for it. Educated, religious, motivated by humanitarian concerns about detention camps, starved children, and abused girls. He was reasoning, by his own lights, exactly as Hollywood, media, and the Democratic Party said the morally serious citizen ought to reason. He was the ideal protagonist of every editorial that had been written about resistance, conscience, complicity, and the demands of the moment. 

Violence against the Right could be absorbed when it was happening at right-wing events. That is to say, elsewhere. It cannot be absorbed when the violence is happening at the Washington press corps version of prom. Allen had taken the moral framework the press had been generating seriously enough to apply it consistently. Consistent application of Trump is Hitler and the people enabling him are collaborators puts the press class itself in scope. The press was not eating dinner across town from the people they had been calling collaborators. They were eating dinner with them. They had voted for the Leopards Eating Faces Party, and then a leopard appeared in the hallway of their prom. 

The press class in that ballroom was, for the duration of the threat, physically bound to the men they had long demonized. Cabinet officials and reporters were under the same tables. The political opposition between the two groups was suspended for the length of the attempt by the simple physical fact that both groups were inside the kill radius of the gunman. The physical fact of having been under the same tables, in the same costume, surviving the same attempt, is going to influence the next several years of Washington politics in interesting ways. 

***

On the Monday afternoon after the assassination attempt, on the South Lawn, at the beehive the White House keeps, the President opened his hand and held a bee in his bare palm. The King of England leaned in to see. The Queen watched from beside him. The First Lady pressed her hand flat against her chest. The bee sat in the center of the President’s palm.

It did not sting him. 

The composure that preternaturally turns to miss the bullet is the composure that holds the bee. They are the same composure.

Ben Braddock is the Editor-in-Chief at IM—1776. He can be followed @GraduatedBen.