Will Trump’s shooting unite or further divide our turbulent nation?

The Butler County, Pennsylvania, of my youth was an idyllic place to live, — farm country with a few small, peaceful towns dotting the landscape. My family moved there from California, while my father served in Vietnam. He wanted us to live in his native state where he thought we would be safe.

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And we were. But today, I can’t square my memories of that bucolic setting with the horrific scene Saturday of former President Donald Trump’s being rushed bleeding from the rally stage following an assassination attempt that killed a man and wounded two others. A bullet struck Trump’s right ear, but fortunately, he was treated and released without major physical harm.

I fear, however, the scar on our nation’s psyche runs deeper as we struggle to recover from past wounds caused by political divisions.

We lived in tiny Marwood, a farming community with a general store,   church, lumber yard and not much else. Nearby Butler, with a population now of about 13,000, was the big city in a conservative county northeast of Pittsburgh. It’s a place that makes perfect sense for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee to find a friendly audience in a pivotal swing state.

If political violence — the latest incident in our nation’s long, violent history — can shatter the relative calm in Butler, where can any candidate be truly safe?

Both Trump and President Joe Biden made appropriate remarks that called for unity in the wake of the shootings.

“While we may disagree, we are not enemies,’ Biden said in an address to the nation Sunday. “We’re neighbors, we’re friends, co-workers, citizens, and most importantly, we are fellow Americans. We must stand together.”

“Politics must never be a literal battlefield,” the president added. “God forbid — a killing field.”

In a Washington Examiner interview Saturday, Trump said his speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday will focus on a message of “unity” rather than the one he planned to give criticizing Biden.

“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together,” Trump told the Examiner.

Gov. Mark Gordon was one of many Wyoming officials who sounded a similar theme .

“We are thankful for the professional and quick response of the Secret Service,” Gordon said in a statement. “This is truly a sad day for our Republic, and should serve as a wake-up call for Americans to express disagreement without resorting to violence.”

Yet that is not what’s happening throughout much of the country. People have jumped to conclusions and made damning accusations while the incident is still being investigated.

Several congressional Republicans and right-wing media have wrongfully blamed Biden and other Democrats for supposedly stoking political violence against the former president. Meanwhile, some conspiracy theorists have claimed the shooting was staged. Others attacked the Secret Service for not doing more to protect Trump.

The FBI said Sunday that the motive of the shooter — identified as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who was killed by law enforcement — is still unknown. Until the probe is completed and evidence presented to the public, most of what’s circulating on social media is speculation not based on facts.

Americans, of course, often respond to official investigations with skepticism. I’m not suggesting questions about political violence aren’t justified. Sixty years after President John F. Kennedy was slain in Dallas, much of the country is still divided about whether a lone gunman, the mob, Fidel Castro, the CIA, then-Vice President Lyndon Johson or a host of other suspects were responsible.

But pronouncements from any politicians and others who purport to know exactly what happened in Butler are irresponsible, and could potentially fan the flames of violence against people who had nothing to do with it.

Looking back I feel fortunate to have entered my teen years in Butler. It was a peaceful contrast to the heightened atmosphere of hate and violence that spread throughout much of the country in 1968.

Shortly after we arrived in Pennsylvania, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The next day my teacher made an impassioned speech to our class about how the tragedy would impact America. Deadly riots had broken out in Detroit.

In June, my crying mother woke me in the middle of the night to tell me my favorite politician, Robert Kennedy, had been gunned down in Los Angeles.

The war in Southeast Asia was raging, and it was the first conflict where people at home could follow the war news daily on TV. With my father stationed near Saigon, nothing could have been more frightening.

Protests against the war were also televised, including the bloody demonstrations outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

This all helped form my core political beliefs. I was adamantly opposed to the Vietnam War, a stance that caused a lot of family turmoil when my father came home to take us to his next assignment in Cheyenne. He defended the war, while my mother vowed she would put me on a bus to Canada if I was drafted. Fortunately, I wasn’t. Crisis averted.

Before he died in 2021, my father told me the war he fought in was meaningless, and wasted the lives of so many young Americans who shouldn’t have been sent to Vietnam. In his last year, we bonded over our mutual disdain for Donald Trump.

I loathe Trump’s political beliefs, but I also recognize, I hope with most Americans, that the place to show our disagreements is at the ballot box. Assassination is an affront to everything this nation is supposed to stand for.

I fear for our immediate future, particularly during both the Republican and Democratic national conventions. The United States hasn’t recovered from the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, when Trump lied about it being rigged against him and tried to prevent the peaceful transition of power to Biden.

I didn’t think politics in 2024 could get any crazier than it’s been recently, with many Democratic leaders and media giants like the New York Times and Washington Post calling for Biden to drop out of the race after his dismal debate performance. Obviously, I was wrong.

One tragic moment in Butler, when shots rang out, has forever changed this historic contest, and heightened fears that future campaign events could spell more disaster for our turbulent democracy. And there is no longer any place — not even bucolic Butler County or the Equality State, which I have both proudly called home — immune to political violence.

I don’t think our society can withstand the divisiveness that is so prevalent in politics today, when so many talk about — and seemingly look forward to — a “new American Revolution” or another Civil War.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,” warned John F. Kennedy, before his own life was taken by an assassin’s bullets. Will we heed his words, and break a chain of political violence before it breaks the soul of our nation?

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