OPINION | Violence’s greatest hits, or don’t you remember?

A political figure says something a person doesn’t like, a person picks up a gun to kill said figure and their offending opinion. In America, it’s a tale as old as time.

Saturday’s attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is not a nadir in this nation’s contentious election cycle or even its 248 years of history and counting… hopefully. We are not at peak low. The violence in Pennsylvania Saturday is merely par for the course.

America is a violent nation. Always has been. And as long as gun rights are proffered above and preferable to a person’s right to life, as evidenced by the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision , America always will be. Violent.

How short are the modern memories of people, pundits and politicians in this country?

Before a man pulled the trigger of a semi-automatic assault rifle — which Congress refuses to ban no matter the depravity of tragedy — in an attempt to kill the Republican nominee for president, that same nominee, four years prior, watched for hours as 2,500 people stormed the U.S. Capitol looking for then Vice President Mike Pence, then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to lynch from the gallows erected outside on the lawn.

Speaking of former Speaker Pelosi, it was only two months ago a man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for breaking into her home and bludgeoning her husband with a hammer in 2022. The long-serving Congresswoman from California was the intended target.

Have we forgotten that rounds from an assault rifle were found in the White House residence windows in 2011 during the Obama administration? That too was an assassination attempt.

Four U.S. Presidents have been assassinated, but political violence is not limited to those who occupy the highest office in the land.

Republican U.S. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana was shot during practice for the Congressional baseball game in 2017. Democratic U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot at a rally in 2011. In 1856, U.S. Representative Preston Brooks caned U.S. Senator Charles Sumner because of his abolitionist views. That the nation devolved into a civil war just five years later is prescient irony. And let’s not forget about the founding fathers. Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel because he was politically jealous.

Political violence in America, which is generally centered on the ideas of justice, liberty, freedom and equality, is not only heaped upon those who hold office. Every person in this country with a differing opinion than that of their neighbor or even their next of kin can become a victim: killed, assassinated, lynched, maimed, murdered, beaten, bludgeoned, caned or connived against.

This violence happens to the politicians and the people. It’s been 104 years since the Election Day Massacre in Ocoee, Florida , where 50 Black people were killed because they exercised their right to vote. It’s been 151 years since hundreds of Black people were killed in the Colfax massacre in Louisiana after a contested gubernatorial election.

The massacre of voters, the assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents, other politicians like Robert F. Kennedy and political influencers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, Medgar Evers, or Florida’s own Harry and Harriette Moore are all links in a never-ending chain of America’s bloodlust for violence.

This country has long been off leash.

We violence because we don’t talk, we don’t try to understand, and we definitely don’t try to restore or repair. We hate. We fight. Then lie and say we’re united, one and indivisible.

The United State of America is an idea. The pithy prose and venerable verse associated with our most beloved iconography are goals. They are not nor have they ever been a reality in which any of us have lived. Not Democrat. Not Republican. Not independent, Libertarian, or non-party-affiliated. Not white. Not Black. Not rich. Not poor. Not indigenous or native. Not citizen. Not immigrant. Not gay, straight, gender-nonconforming or anywhere else on the alphabetic rainbow of pride.

We violence over suspicion: loud music and hoodies and pretextual traffic stops and fittingness of descriptions i.e. race.

We violence over rights: a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her life, body and family; a person’s right to live proudly as femme, masc, two-spirit, non-binary, cis-het, trans, or poly; a child’s right to learn truth in history and not the parts that make certain groups look better than they are.

We violence when we’re angry.

We violence when we’re depressed.

We violence when we worship a different God—or sometimes even the same.

We violence when we’re afraid.

We violence when we hate.

We violence when we claim to love.

We violence when we think we’re superior.

We violence in the name of imperialism.

We violence in the name of excellence.

We violence because we’re violent.

The United States ranks 28th in the world for gun violence . Among our supposed comparable developed nations, though, we are dead last. There were 656 mass shootings in the United States last year, 40 of them qualified as mass murders. We routinely ship weapons of mass destruction to other countries to aid in genocide and call them noble war efforts in the name of safety, security, protection and peace. As a nation we have been at war with ourselves since the revolution and continue to be so torn.

Our courts act with impunity flouting precedent and setting new ones that deny democracy in favor of a future coronation of a king. And the answer to these legalistic aggressions has been and is still violence.

That doesn’t make it right.

But let’s not act like it isn’t who we are.

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