The unseen shooter never got past the first ring of security. Shots were fired two stories up. The sound carried just enough to trigger a reaction. People turned, pressed together, got on the floor, under the tables.

Within seconds, the scene began to resolve. Security emerged and moved. The image began to loop almost as soon as it formed.

Modern life has trained us to treat every political jolt as theater. A shooting, a disruption, a near miss, and before the facts settle, a counter-narrative is in motion. Not just healthy skepticism, but cynical certainty. This had to be scripted. Too neat to be real.

It's a self-flattering instinct. You get to feel clever--the one who spots the wires. History, as usual, doesn't cooperate.

Take Benito Mussolini, who understood spectacle, and what could be done with it after the fact. Between 1925 and 1926, he survived a series of assassination attempts, some nearly successful. Tito Zaniboni planned to shoot him from a hotel window and was arrested before he could fire, likely because the regime already knew more than it admitted. Violet Gibson grazed his nose in a crowd. Gino Lucetti threw a bomb at his car. Anteo Zamboni fired in Bologna and was lynched before anyone could ask questions.

If anyone might have staged his own martyrdom, Mussolini would make the list. The Zaniboni plot carries a whiff of convenience. But the record never closes that case. What it shows instead is a politician who didn't need to invent danger because he knew how to use........

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