ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Remember when presidential assassination attempts used to be rare and not something that happened once every quarter? What’s even more disturbing than their current frequency is the desensitization that seems to have set in.

The discrepancy between official and public reaction to the latest instance of a young man allegedly targeting Trump was stark. Back when assailants took aim at former presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, a lot of theories swirled, but none ever suggested that the president arranged for himself to be picked off for self-centered reasons. Clearly, it was a different era.

Within minutes of an intruder attempting to rush a Hilton hotel ballroom in Washington, DC, where President Donald Trump was recently scheduled to speak to the White House Correspondents’ Association, cynical theories abound online that perhaps it was all just a sales pitch for the ballroom that Trump desperately wants at the White House.

It’s not like this theory was entirely unfounded, either. A gaggle of pro-Trump online influencers, paid to promote MAGA messaging, all launched the same talking point on social media platforms at the same time, within minutes of the incident, suggesting that it illustrates why the White House ballroom is needed.

From there, it didn’t take long for the idea to migrate out of the online echo chamber and into the mainstream press.

This led some to wonder if perhaps Trump was in on the marketing campaign, despite offering no logical explanation for exactly how the perpetrator slammed into the ground by the Secret Service would have tied into and somehow benefited from this grand conspiracy.

More broadly, that leap from shocking incident to instantly monetized theory speaks to something larger. When everything these days under Trump — from new wars to new taxes on Americans dressed as tariffs — feels like a piece of junk that some carnival barker is trying to sell you, the distrust and skepticism that it sows risks becoming the new baseline across the entire board. The pitches never seem to end. If they fall flat, they just get rebranded, as though Trump is running marketing agency- style focus group testing in real time.

Meanwhile, European leaders were quick to call the attempt on Trump an attack on the kind of political institutions that he’s supposed to embody but that he doesn’t seem to have much use for himself. Except when he's personally targeted. Trump, almost as if to get the Europeans up to speed on his recent "renovations" to these same institutions, turned around and randomly slapped a 25 percent tax on Americans buying European cars — even after the Supreme Court had quashed his previous unconstitutional efforts to tax Americans on European and other foreign imports.

Granted, Trump was elected to shake things up and to flush out systemic corruption. Even so, what exactly is he replacing it with?

Nothing against Fox News talking heads — I used to co-host a nightly weekday show for them, myself — but loading up the administration with a bunch of them, who then seem to spend their time in front of c ongressional committees performing exclusively for Trump, doesn’t exactly scream positive systemic reform. Of particular note in that regard is Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s performance a few days ago that underscored the fact that war crime allegations are piling up so fast that the supposed institutional checks and balances struggle to keep up. It’s starting to look like a spectator sport whose referees can’t keep up with the play.

Similarly, Trump going to a seniors’ community in Florida recently to riff on the theme of the “Golden Age of America,” while referring to affordability as a “line of bull***t,” even as his war on Iran for Israel spikes fuel and living costs, isn’t American democracy’s shining moment.

Neither is his use of his real estate pal and son-in-law to spearhead negotiations on conflicts from Ukraine to Iran, while Bloomberg reports that Trump's own sons are cashing in on Pentagon contracts.

Even rhetoric around democracy itself reflects this drift. It seems to be a convenient catch-all these days, unmoored from any real substance. But then so do a lot of things. Take, for example, even just a notion as simple and supposedly universal as shock. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, currently riding shotgun with Trump on yet another pointless Middle Eastern war, said that he was “shocked by the attempted assassination” of a world leader. Really, how “shocked” can Netanyahu really be when his own modus operandi is to assassinate world leaders that he doesn’t like, most recently in Iran.

Simply evoking democracy, or related values that are normally taken for granted as essential political scaffolding, doesn’t truly say anything anymore of actual substance about what’s actually going on under the surface, or what material interests the label is serving. But hearing it is enough for some folks to hit the snooze button.

What is emerging from all this is an administration that has successfully turned even outrage into background noise. Like elevator music. Except the elevator is on fire. And everyone just shrugs. Because no one can be bothered to be shocked anymore. At this point, accountability risks becoming optional, if it isn't already.