Those of us who lived through the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the horrifying assassination of John F. Kennedy remember the aftermath as if it was yesterday. In both cases, as in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a sense of sadness, depression even, overcame America. People did not smile again for weeks. The country was paralyzed.
And here we are again. After Donald Trump miraculously avoided a sniper’s bullet to the head with no lasting injury, spared by what so many are calling divine providence, July 13, 2024 is now added to the short list of dates that live in infamy. If Trump had not turned his head one second or less before the shots rang out, and in the one direction that would ultimately save his life, we would now be discussing a state funeral and likely bedlam in the streets that would make the riots of 2020 and January 6 look like petty disturbances.
Instead, the world is now processing what must be the picture of the century, the still image perfectly framed showing a defiant Trump, face bloodied, fist raised, the American flag as the backdrop. If that happened in the movies, the audience would dismiss it as mere Hollywood fantasy.
But for all the shock Americans on both sides of the aisle are experiencing right now, we should remember that moments of national calamity have proven to pull the nation together in a way that only calamities can. The unforgettable image of President George W. Bush standing atop the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn, or arch-enemies Bush and Tom Daschle embracing as Bush prepared to address a joint session of Congress days after 9-11 are indelibly etched into the American consciousness.
That kumbaya moment, as we well remember, did not last long before the two sides returned to their corners and the nation began to divide even further over issues of war and peace, WMD’s, and torture. Indeed, through the four presidencies of the 21st century, the divisions have grown so toxic as to be unsustainable. It is almost inarguable that what happened on Saturday in Butler, PA, was not a one-off engineered by a lone deranged gunman, but the logical conclusion to an era of extreme political balkanization and violence that left many Trump supporters believing an attempt to murder their man was inevitable. And now we came within a whisker of that darkest of nightmares altering the course of history.
Bullets and Ballots
What stands out beyond the inexplicable failures of the Secret Service, where heads will certainly roll, is that this occurred in the heart of a presidential campaign. It is hard to argue against the proposition that Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old suburbanite who was both a registered Republican and contributor to the far-left Progressive Turnout Project – a national group that specifically rallies Democrats to vote – was attempting to perform the quintessential act of election interference.
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Political violence has a relatively robust history in the US. Four presidents have been assassinated, and ten other presidential candidates, former presidents, or presidents-elect – including Trump – survived assassination attempts. But as will almost certainly be the case in the upcoming election, it has usually proven to achieve the opposite of its intended effect. When Kennedy was felled by an assassin’s bullet, he was in Texas to shore up his shaky re-election prospects. One year later, with Americans still processing their shock and grief, President Lyndon Johnson, running to sustain the JFK legacy, was elected in a landslide attributed mostly to his martyred predecessor – a fact that haunted LBJ for the rest of his days.
Trump might now expect a similar one-sided outcome since the single argument remaining for a Joe Biden on the ropes was to scare the country about his opponent’s dark motives. And that is now out the window, as leftists desperately attempt to fend off accusations that their rhetoric led to this near-tragedy – just as they claimed about Trump regarding January 6, which is now also off the table. To put it bluntly, absent a second and successful attempt to take Trump out with a bullet or bomb, this election is over. Preparations might as well begin immediately for the transition back to a second Trump presidency.
Bullets do affect ballots. They alter the course of democracy. They terrorize. And, at the extreme, they can turn a crucial presidential election upside down with a rifle. Now we know what it must be like to live in a banana republic, where this type of political violence is common. Is this what we have now become?
Will We Allow Assassination to Rule America?
It would be a natural reflex for Americans, particularly Trump voters, to be boiling over with anger, resentment, and outright fear, and open to the inevitable wave of conspiracy theories sure to abound in the days ahead. We will hear arguments that the assassination attempt was the final solution for Democrats scared to death of Trump’s return to power and that it proves that Trump was right all along about the lengths to which the left is willing to go to stop him. But that will only generate more bitterness, chaos, finger-pointing, backside-covering, handwringing, and another dose of national humiliation at a time when the globe is on fire and we have been repeatedly embarrassed on the world stage. In the end, America will most assuredly decide its future with ballots, not bullets.
The scriptures say it, and Abraham Lincoln, the first president to die from an assassin’s bullet, repeated it in the most famous speech in American history, his Gettysburg Address: A house divided against itself cannot stand. Will everyday Americans be willing to take a deep breath, step back, stop screaming and conflating our opponents into evildoers, and now accept, if not embrace, the truth that what unites us is far greater than what divides us? To say the least, the jury is still out on that existential question. But this is undoubtedly a moment for the time capsule that generations to come will ponder. It is up to all of us, left, right, and center. When they look back on this explosive era, will historians conclude that this tragedy served to bring the aspirational goal of national unity one step closer to reality, or rip apart the fraying fiber of a nation on the brink?
