The strange shooting of Donald Trump remains a mystery, but presidential assassins, and would-be assassins in general, have as a result gotten renewed attention from the media.
Unfortunately, this new coverage suffers from the same egregious flaws as earlier media stories about these history-shaking events. So, even before I began reading a recent New York Times Magazine article about John Hinckley Jr., then who almost assassinated Ronald Reagan, I felt a sense of dread.
I knew before I read it almost exactly what it would say — that it would be a platform for platitudes and falsehoods perpetuated for more than half a century, and that the single most interesting thing about Hinckley and his shooting of Reagan would never be mentioned. But I plunged in.
The mere fact that major media like The New York Times and their contributors instinctively play this game of Hide the Object worries me deeply, largely because much of what they report is true — creating the false impression that all of what they report is true and complete.
From what they write, you would never guess that there might conceivably be more to acts of domestic political violence than a random sad delusional character — like Hinckley — acting out some self-generated sick fantasy.
For example: You would never have guessed that the psychiatric hospital where Hinckley was placed after the shooting had been historically involved in the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program with its mind control experiments focused on “programming” killers. And that while George Bush Sr. was director of the CIA — he presided over suppressing the truth about this program.
Nor would you have guessed that Bush was also a personal friend of the Hinckleys (like Bush, Hinckley Sr. was a Texas oil executive), and would surely have known about the son’s problems — and that he was in that particular hospital. Had Hinckley succeeded in killing Reagan, Bush would not have waited eight long years in the shadows before becoming president. (The Bush and Hinckley families were so close that Hinckley Jr.’s brother Scott and his date were to dine with Neil Bush the night after the shooting, but the dinner was canceled after the shooting.)
Hellbound and Down 