Political Violence and Blame
Terry H. Schwadron
July 14, 2024
Except for the outrageous audacity of an attempted assassination at campaign rally, the unfolding of the drama of a shooting attack on Donald Trump is following a depressingly familiar track.
As with many of our most public instances of violence, we saw immediate chaos, vows that it never should have happened, and promises to scale back on the kind of divisive encouragement of rage — only to be followed within hours by renewed partisan antagonism and blame.
Apparently, it wasn’t a single deranged 20-year-old who pulled the trigger, the storyline said. It was violence arising from overheated political divisiveness and a politics that made the assassination attempt almost inevitable.
Once it was apparent that the shot had missed, hitting Trump in the ear, the question was how long it would be before this incident just fueled more partisanship. For the first hour, the airwaves were filled with wild speculation and search for political meaning before even the first official announcement of any fact in the matter. This week is, after all, the Republican National Convention where Trump gets the official nomination.
Moments after that bullet came within an inch or two of killing him, Trump’s instinct to pump his fists in testament to survival and a continued political fight created instant memorial that will mark the presidential campaign. The image of a battling candidate even as Secret Service protectors tried to hustle him off-stage will be replayed endlessly as a message that Trump took a bullet for his followers, martyrdom by any name.
Chaos, Speculation and Blame
That the information was missing did not halt an avalanche of instantaneous blame across social media. For the Trump faithful, an attack on their guy meant it was the fault of Joe Biden’s re-found forceful political talk about Trump, or the media’s constant portrayal of Trump as an opponent of democracy, or the Secret Service’s failure to have found the would-be assassin before an AR-15 rifle was fired from hundreds of yards away.
Most comments from across the political world condemned the shooting and called for a moment of nonpartisan respect; Biden pulled campaign ads.
Then there was Sen. J. D. Vance, the Ohio Republican who is among the three choices for Trump vice president this week, who said on social media that the shooting “is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer already has demanded that Secret Service personnel face his panel to explain how the shooting could have happened — before we have even the first steps in finding out. Trump followers called for the dropping of all outstanding criminal charges against Trump as if that would balance the political books.
For ten years, Trump has promoted violence and ugly confrontation in one form or another as part of our politics. At times, his opponents have risen to the verbal bait, but uniformly have cautioned against physical violence.
There is no question that our politics are ugly. So are our gun policies and our mental health service availability. That we must worry about and plan for assassination attempts should prompt some re-thinking that goes beyond partisan blame.
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