Is America Ready For What May Come Next?

A screengrab captured from a video shows former President Donald Trump being rushed offstage after shots were fired during a rally on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

What’s that old expression? If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.

I thought of that after a friend texted about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump when he added, “Crazy times.” Whenever someone says we’re living in crazy times, I tell them, “Yeah? Just wait.”

The narrative of the 2024 presidential campaign changed dramatically Saturday after a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania. Before, coverage was entirely focused on President Joe Biden’s age and fitness for office. Now, the focus is on Trump, framing him as a victim and martyr, which will almost certainly galvanize his base, likely elicit sympathy from undecided voters and become a feature theme for Republicans at their national convention.

Trump has long positioned himself as the candidate of grievance and retribution, appealing to voters who feel disenfranchised or targeted by the political establishment. Saturday’s incident reinforces that narrative. He can now claim literally to have been attacked, “just like you,” he might say in his nomination acceptance speech Thursday.

The shooter has been identified , though despite whatever authorities may uncover in an ongoing investigation, we may never know for sure who he was or why he did what he did, nor believe what we might hear about him. Conspiracy theories already abound.

Trump is OK (he played golf the next day). Biden condemned the assassination attempt and called for unity (as did Trump in a social media post on Sunday).

Regardless of your politics or any feelings one might have about Donald Trump, any attempt to resolve an election through violence is entirely antithetical to the nation’s political process. It doesn’t matter if you dislike a candidate or even despise him. We resolve our political differences with ballots, not bullets.

Political violence has a long history in America, from Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Ronald Reagan, Gabby Gifford and Steve Scalise.

But the fear now is that someone, anyone, might see the shooting as justification to respond with further violence. Social media wasted no time posting memes (humorous or tasteless, depending on your perspective), heartless comments and extremist language. That’s our reality today, that Saturday’s political violence isn’t an aberration, much the way many say school shootings are no longer an aberration.

Ask yourself: If another act of political violence were to occur as retribution in reaction to Saturday’s shooting, if Saturday’s terrifying incident led to something even worse, would anyone be surprised?

Two surveys by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats revealed two sides of the same coin. One conducted last month found 10% of respondents agreeing that the use of force was justified to prevent Trump from becoming president. A 2022 survey found that 8% of respondents believed force was justified to restore Trump to the presidency. By extrapolation, that’s roughly 33 million and 21 million Americans, respectively.

We are a nation polarized culturally, politically, resentfully. We are awash in guns and suffer from a human vulnerability to be easily radicalized by the internet and our media choices for “news.”

It is easy, tempting and even understandable why many will see Saturday’s incident as schadenfreude, the shoe on the other foot. Those “very fine people” in Charlottesville where a rally resulted in a woman’s death. Or that the Jan. 6 rioters were patriots who now deserve a pardon. Were the people who gathered outside of Trump Tower Saturday night in a sympathetic homage the same people who, in their likemindedness, wanted to hang Mike Pence?

JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, blamed the shooting on Joe Biden’s rhetoric. But he has no comment about Trump’s history of hateful invectives. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Sunday that Vance’s comment should disqualify him from consideration as Trump’s running mate. But the next day, Trump announced that he picked Vance. What message does that send about Vance’s comment, and do Trump supporters care about what Vance said?

Ironically, it is Trump who embodies this very malevolence. Someone who famously said “We have to get over it ” after a school shooting and who mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi (as did other Republicans ).

Or who wanted to punch a protester in the face (to the roar of an approving rally crowd), or — speaking of political assassinations — suggesting that “Second Amendment people” could take care of Hillary Clinton (Trump’s circuitous wording leaving far too much room for interpretation).

Nor would Trump dismiss the potential for political violence from his supporters should he lose in November. “It always depends on the fairness of an election,” he told Time magazine .

It’s almost a “be careful what you wish for” scenario.

What I see in all this are two systemic problems:

1. We are a society in which a sizable number of people wish ill will on anything discordant with their values, a “with us or against us” mentality, but far more hostile, hateful or prone to violence.
2. Far too many of us are unwilling to hold ourselves accountable for our support of bad behavior or the bad behavior of the public figures we support. We may know it’s wrong, but we’ll say so only about “them,” never “us.”

For many, that second point points a finger at conservatives. Vance’s comment is a perfect example. A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that of the more than 440 extremism-related murders committed from 2010 to 2021, over 75% were committed by right-wing extremists, white supremacists or anti-government fanatics.

But the retaliatory language of liberals in response to Saturday’s incident, readily found anywhere on social media, is equally troubling to me. I’m not saying that the language is equivalent to the violence. But both come from the same place.

Had the gunman succeeded, how many on the left would be gleeful? How many were disappointed that he failed? I get it: Trump is a toxic, dangerous individual. But an assassination? Really?

Two wrongs don’t make a right, we are told as children. But as grownups, we act like children who don’t care about right or wrong, so long as we get payback.

These problems are systemic because it is our nature, like the fable of the scorpion and the frog .

We have forgotten, or maybe we don’t care, that our responsibility as citizens is to understand, accept, and even embrace the idea that democracy is a noisy laboratory, that disagreement doesn’t mean disagreeable, and that the process of governance is more important than the results of that process.

We seem to be sleepwalking toward a place where one-third of the country is actively supporting violence, another third is oblivious, and the final third is scared to death but feels powerless to do anything about it.

But instinct doesn’t have to rule over intellect.

Both President Biden and former President Trump face significant challenges in responding to this crisis. Biden’s age and perceived decline may affect his ability to lead effectively through such turmoil. Conversely, Trump’s history as a divisive figure raises concerns about his ability to deescalate tensions and promote unity.

A gunman’s bullet has sent the country toward an abyss, testing the resilience of American democracy. The ability of political institutions, leaders and the public to respond to violence and polarization with a commitment to democratic principles and peaceful resolution will be crucial.

The choices are these: Either elected officials come together through civility, tolerance, and mutual respect, and actually mean it, or the electorate throws out of office those politicians who cannot come together for the greater good of the nation.

This is about more than winning elections, and for you, dear citizen, this is about more than the price of eggs, gas or the rate of inflation.

But until that realization happens — and I hold little hope for that — never tell me we live in crazy times. I’ll just tell ya, “Yeah? Give it a minute.”