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Quick quiz: Who was Jerry Parr?

Don’t Google it, that’s cheating! Without looking it up, do you know who he was?

Odds are, you don’t.

Jerry Parr was the Secret Service agent in charge of protecting Ronald Reagan on the day he was shot in 1981. When the gunfire began, Parr pushed Reagan into the presidential limo and ordered it to speed away. Inside the car, Reagan complained of chest pains. Parr checked him for bullet wounds; he found none. Both men agreed that Reagan had likely bruised a rib when he was shoved.

Parr, the man in charge, had two choices:

No. 1: Proceed to the White House to have Reagan’s personal doctor attend to him.

No. 2: Take Reagan to a public hospital.

No. 1 was the smart choice. Taking the president to a busy D.C. hospital with zero advance security preparations and no knowledge if the shooter acted alone or if there were other assassins lurking about seemed foolhardy. Taking Reagan to a safe, secure environment where he could be seen by his own physician appeared the prudent decision.

But Parr was uneasy. What if it was more than just a bruised rib? Parr noticed blood on Reagan’s lips, which the president claimed came from him biting his lip during the scuffle.

But for Parr, that was enough. He ordered the limo to go straight to George Washington University Hospital. It was as risky a move as anyone in that position could’ve made, and yet…it saved Reagan’s life. Reagan had been shot; the bullet was inside him, killing him slowly. Would-be assassin John Hinckley’s gun was cheap and the ammo small; the bullet had entered unnoticed.

It was only in the ER that doctors saw the tiny hole. And because he was already in a place prepped for surgery, Reagan lived.

And that’s why you don’t know Jerry Parr’s name. He had two choices, and he chose correctly.

If Parr had chosen incorrectly, you’d damn well know his name, as surely as you know Jack Ruby. Fantasists like Alex Jones (and his ideological brethren from the 1980s) would’ve filled your heads with bullshit about “Who was Jerry Parr working for? Why did he decide against going to the hospital? Was he an agent of the Russians? The Bush/CIA crime family? The JEWS???”

It’s easy to accept Parr’s good choice as organic; a bad choice would’ve been attributed to conspiratorial malevolence.

Dozens of bullets have been fired at presidents over the centuries. Most either missed, or the wounds were nonfatal (even Garfield and McKinley had survivable injuries; they were felled by poor medical treatment). Two different hippie chicks tried to pepper Ford with bullets, and the big stiff dummy didn’t get hit once. No conspiracy theories about that. But JFK suffers a head shot, and well of course that’s a conspiracy, because only trained CIA assassins can do head shots.

Yep—only trained CIA assassins. Or middle-aged Korean housewives. Soon Ja Du was the L.A. grocer who was violently slugged by black teen Latasha Harlins in a dispute over orange juice in 1991. As Harlins tried to flee the store, Du—beaten, dazed, shaking, and with zero firearms experience—reached for her husband’s handgun, kept under the counter. The gun had been fitted with a hair trigger, and the moment Du picked it up it went off, scoring a direct, fatal head shot on a running target.

I guess she was CIA.

When five-foot-tall leftist immigrant Giuseppe Zangara took a shot at president-elect FDR in February 1933, he missed the president’s head by mere inches, killing Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak instead (he was riding alongside FDR in the motorcade). Again, no conspiracy theories, because he missed the president. On the other hand, Oswald didn’t miss, so therefore there must be a conspiracy.

To be clear, there hadn’t been a clean head shot on a president since Lincoln, even though there had been dozens of attempts. It can be argued that it was just the odds that another direct hit would eventually be scored by someone. But the conspiratorial mind can’t accept that a commoner could get that lucky, not when the president was “great” (as in, consequential). FDR was consequential, so of course the unimportant loser missed (had he not, the course of 20th-century history would’ve been altered, and no ordinary man can alter history). JFK was consequential, and since the shooter hit a bull’s-eye, the shooter must therefore have been consequential as well.

Great men are not taken down by minor men. The course of history is not altered by the insignificant. This is the gospel of the “hidden hand” theorist. Or, these days, most rightists. Everything that happens is because of an all-powerful “them.” There are no accidents, no coincidences, no small people inadvertently influencing big things. From Alex Jones to Ron Unz to Trump and his MAGA army, there’s a unified worldview: Everything that happens is because of a mighty “they”—the Deep State puppet-masters, the Rothschilds, maybe Moloch himself.

But what if that’s not true? Have any of you with your vaunted “open mind” ever opened it wide enough to think that maybe you’re not always right? What if sometimes the smallest and most inconsequential things can alter history?

Take Derek Chauvin. Last week SCOTUS refused to hear his appeal (then he got shanked). Now, I’m no expert on the George Floyd details, but it seems that there’s a convincing case to be made that Floyd died from his own narcotics consumption. So let’s assume that’s true. Let’s assume Fentanyl Floyd didn’t snuff it from a knee to the neck.

If that’s the case, then American history was altered by the way Chauvin positioned himself on the ground that day. Had he squatted any other way, in any other position, perhaps with a slightly less hostile expression on his face (because, to be fair, his positioning, coupled with Floyd’s anguished cries, looked bad, divorced of context), think of what would’ve been avoided. The Floyd video led to billions of dollars in damage nationwide; entire city blocks burned down, untold numbers of Americans lost their income, dozens of murders due to the riots, and thousands of murders as the result of Soros DAs elected in the post-Floyd political hysteria.

Billions lost, thousands dead, the political landscape altered, perhaps even the 2020 presidential election influenced. All because of the way a complete nobody squatted. One inconsequential man, knowing he was being filmed, sitting a certain way with a certain expression on his face, altered history.

If you want to argue that Floyd wasn’t killed by the knee—that the knee wasn’t exerting any significant pressure on the neck—then, by logical extension, you must accept that an insignificant positioning of a knee changed history.

Moloch and all his satanic power can’t compare to the hellfire caused by one bad photo op of a nonentity.

That should humble you. It won’t, but it should. The reason people get lost in “hidden hand” fantasies is that it absolves them of responsibility. If small people can’t influence events, then your personal choices don’t matter.

And here’s why that gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of my alcohol-soaked stomach. Robert Keith Packer, the J6 MAGA thug who went to the riot wearing the “Camp Auschwitz staff” sweatshirt, must’ve gotten dressed that morning with no thought given toward how his clothes might influence events (and no, Packer wasn’t Antifa trying to frame innocent MAGAs. His own family confirmed at trial that he’s a Trumper).

The kind of imbecile who travels to D.C. to defend his beloved president while sporting an SS deaths-head T-shirt and Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt is the kind of imbecile who has no concept of how his actions might have consequences, likely because his cobweb-filled cranium had been stuffed with “hidden hand” nonsense that absolves “the little guy” of accountability.

That’s the pathetic thing about the J6ers. They stormed the Capitol under the impression that they were fighting a “they.” But it turned out that they were the “they.” That’s why there’s so much outrage on the MAGA right regarding the J6 prosecutions; the trials and convictions suggest that these little men were consequential.

That’s blasphemy to “hidden handers.” But it’s true. And J6 continues to haunt U.S. politics and lose elections for Republicans.

So back to that sinking feeling of mine. Next year, L.A. County District Attorney George Gascon is up for reelection. Gascon, like his mentor and backer Soros, is a mass murderer, a monster, as good a candidate for Hell as ever lived. Hundreds of innocent Angelenos are dead because he refuses to prosecute and imprison rapists and murderers. And next year, the county will have the opportunity to be rid of him.

To be clear, Gascon winning or losing is the literal difference between innocent people living or dying. It’s an existential choice in the truest use of the term: Moms, dads, daughters, sons, will cease to exist if he’s reelected.

But I know the Westside MAGAs, and I know them all too well. They’re nuts. And I know that these nuts are going to come to anti-Gascon rallies wearing wacky shirts and holding wacky signs. “Ironic swastika” shirts and signs. “Hey, I’m not saying I’m a Nazi, I’m saying Gascon and Soros are! Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Wait, I’m doing that to the TV cameras ironically! I’m sieg heiling to mock Gascon and Soros, and I’m certain my intent won’t be misrepresented by the media and misunderstood by voters. Oh, I’m such a clever little imp!”

Gascon will not be able to run on his record. His “record” is nothing but skyrocketing murders, rapes, and robberies. He will only be able to run on exploiting embarrassing shit his opponents do.

What I’m trying to convey is that history can be changed by the way a complete nobody squatted, or by the shirt a backwoods loser wore, or by that ironic swastika shirt you plan to wear at rallies for any of the existentially important political contests to be held next year.

Yeah, I know—Jones and Trump tell you that you’re at the mercy of puppet masters. But consider for a moment, utilizing that great, great open mind you claim to have when someone tells you the Holocaust may not have happened, that Jones and Trump could be wrong. Maybe you can be consequential. Maybe little people can change history. Not by doing “great” things, not via grand achievements, but because of the tiniest choices they make.

Maybe history is driven not by Moloch and Baron Rothschild pulling levers, but by minor things like how an ordinary man places his knee, or the T-shirt you may, or may not, wear to a rally.

Be Jerry Parr. Understand that sometimes it’s the ones who don’t stand out who do the most good.

Indeed, sometimes the very reason they don’t stand out is because they made the right choice.

Consider that as you decide how you’re going to comport yourself during next year’s exceedingly pivotal elections.