Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

 From Michael Jochum on FB thanks to David Muir.

Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

 

Michael Jochum

 

This is where we are now: a sitting member of Congress is physically attacked in public, at a town hall, in her own city, in front of her constituents, with a syringe of unknown liquid, and the White House responds with silence, smears, and conspiracy theories. Ilhan Omar is sprayed with a brown liquid by a grown man who walks straight up to her in Minneapolis, is tackled by security, arrested, booked, and instead of presidential condemnation, moral clarity, or even the bare minimum of human decency, we get Trump sneering that she probably staged it herself. Not even a dog whistle anymore, just a bullhorn of cruelty, stupidity, and moral rot.

 

Let’s be absolutely clear about the atmosphere this administration has engineered: months of dehumanizing rhetoric, racist caricatures, open contempt for Somali immigrants, public mockery of Omar by name, calling her community “garbage,” calling them “low IQ,” describing Somalia as not even a real country, accusing “Somali gangs” of terrorizing Minnesota, threatening protected status, ranting about them at Cabinet meetings, humiliating them on international stages, and turning an entire immigrant community into a political punching bag. This is not policy. This is incitement culture. This is narrative grooming. This is how you teach unstable people who already hate to feel justified, righteous, and heroic in their violence. This is how stochastic terrorism works, you don’t give the order, you create the permission structure.

 

And then it happens. A syringe. A public attack. A live-streamed assault on a congresswoman at a community meeting held in the shadow of another tragedy, the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal officers, and the president of the United States responds not with leadership, not with condemnation, not with unity, not even with restraint, but with mockery, denial, and lies. “She probably had herself sprayed.” That’s the level of degeneracy we’re dealing with. A sitting president blaming the victim of a political attack. A man who has spent years calling Omar a fraud, a traitor, an outsider, and a target, now pretending innocence while soaking in the chaos he creates.

 

This is the ecosystem of violence Trump has cultivated: demonize, dehumanize, discredit, deny. Rinse and repeat. When violence follows, he shrugs, smirks, and pours more gasoline. His administration doesn’t govern, it radicalizes. It doesn’t lead, it provokes. It doesn’t protect, it targets. And every racist insult, every “low IQ” jab, every dehumanizing slur, every public humiliation of Somali immigrants, every lie about Omar is a brick in the road that leads directly to moments like this.

Ilhan Omar stood back up, unhurt, defiant, resilient, and said she wouldn’t be intimidated. Good. But the fact that she had to is the indictment. The fact that we’re watching elected officials get physically attacked while the president fuels hatred and mocks the victims is the indictment. The fact that entire communities are being painted as criminal, stupid, subhuman, and disposable by the highest office in the country is the indictment.

 

This isn’t politics anymore. It’s moral collapse. It’s leadership failure. It’s state-sponsored cruelty. It’s a culture of incitement masquerading as governance. And the most obscene part is the gaslighting afterward, the pretending that Trump’s words don’t matter, that rhetoric isn’t real, that dehumanization doesn’t translate into action, that violence just “happens” in a vacuum.

 

It doesn’t. It’s built. It’s fed. It’s cultivated. It’s encouraged. And it is owned.

You don’t get to spend months attacking a woman, her faith, her ethnicity, her community, her legitimacy, her humanity, and then act surprised when someone decides to act it out physically. You don’t get to poison the well and pretend the water didn’t make people sick. You don’t get to light the match and deny the fire.

This is what Trump’s America looks like: violence normalized, cruelty excused, racism mainstreamed, victims mocked, and leadership replaced by spite. A president who doesn’t calm the country, he destabilizes it. Who doesn’t protect communities, he weaponizes hatred against them. Who doesn’t condemn violence, he metabolizes it.

 

And a nation watching, horrified, grieving, angry, exhausted, knowing exactly where this came from, even as the man responsible keeps pretending his hands are clean while they drip with rhetorical blood.

 

Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition