A Chilling Assassination in Wisconsin (The Atlantic)

[Nevilledog]

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Charlie Sykes
@SykesCharlie
“Maybe the United States has only gotten lucky that there haven’t been more assassinations already,” writes @GrahamDavidA.

theatlantic.com
A Chilling Assassination in Wisconsin
Could the killing of a retired judge in Wisconsin signal more attacks to come?
12:14 PM · Jun 5, 2022

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/political-assassination-wisconsin-judge/661192/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/AdArg

Any individual murder in the United States right now is unlikely to make much of an impression—not when elderly Black people at a grocery store or young children at school are being gunned down in large groups. But the Friday murder of a retired judge in Wisconsin is ominous enough to give some pause.

Although little is known so far, authorities say they believe that the killing was politically motivated. The victim, Jack Roemer, 68, had served on the local circuit court. Police said he was found tied to a chair and shot at his home. (The alleged assassin was found with a self-inflicted wound and hospitalized.) What relationship, if any, the two men had is not clear—“It appears to be related to the judicial system,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a news conference—but the suspect also had a list of other potential targets, which news outlets have reported to include Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, also a Democrat; and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican.

Given McConnell’s presence, that list doesn’t lend itself to straightforward ideological interpretation. More information might shed some light on what agenda, if any, the shooter had that linked all of the targets, or if there were others. Regardless, the incident is chilling for what it might augur. Assassination remains rare in the United States, but in the past it has spiked at times of acute national tension, including following the Civil War, around the turn of the 20th century, and in the ’60s. In a country as divided and angry as the United States is today, it’s surprising that more assassinations haven’t occurred. Perhaps this one is a sign of what’s to come.

As uncommon as high-profile assassinations are, they tend to leave a deep mark. The killings of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and Martin Luther King Jr. are pivotal moments in American history. The Ku Klux Klan committed a string of politically motivated murders during Reconstruction that aimed to hasten its end, and Presidents James Garfield and William McKinley were killed in 1881 and 1901, respectively. (McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, survived a shooting in 1912, and his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 dodged a bullet that instead killed the mayor of Chicago.) Not since the wounding of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981 has a president been in serious jeopardy, but U.S. political figures are regular subjects of threats, attempts, and occasionally murder.

*snip*

[Sneederbunk]

1. Nothing surprising comes out of Wisconsin anymore.

[Delphinus]

2. Holy hell ...

[bucolic_frolic]

3. There's no cabal but the political climate could spawn copycats

Since we have so many loose cannons on the edge of derangement

[malaise]

4. Did they forget this one?

https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-judges-son-shot-killed-husband-injured-attack/story?id=71871708

The suspect in the fatal shooting of a federal judge's son, who was an attorney that had a previous case in front of the judge, has been found dead, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

The son of Judge Esther Salas was shot and killed, and her husband shot and injured in an attack at the family's New Jersey home on Sunday night. Salas was not hurt in the attack.

Her son, Daniel Anderl, 20, died, Francis "Mac" Womack, the mayor of North Brunswick, New Jersey, told ABC News. Salas' husband, Mark Anderl, is in critical but stable condition as of Monday morning, according to law enforcement sources.
————
She’s lucky to be alive

[Hortensis]

5. The attempt on the federal judge and her son's death was included, Malaise.

I thought initially this article might be about assassinations to advance a group's political agenda. Hitler's Nazi party came to power in Southern Germany initially through extensive use of criminal acts like assassination, blackmail and other violence. So, very good that they're not reporting signs of an upswing of that type. Apparently fear of our legal system and policing has been effectively discouraging it, because I don't believe for a moment that many of the characters who've taken over the GOP aren't the same kind of people, just in a different environment.

As for the kind of murderous passions it is talking about, we know people are leaving office and being intimidated out of running because of threats on their lives and their families'. More assassinations not needed to have grave effect.