By the time the Secret Service got former President Donald Trump safely off the platform at the Pennsylvania rally where he barely escaped assassination, the theories had already started flying.
One common theory floated in social media was that a narcissistic Trump staged the entire thing.
Today’s political climate has become so nasty and fractured that the thought of a politician stage managing his own assassination attempt is not out of the realm of possibilities.
But Trump could not have faked the events of Saturday. It would have taken the cooperation of the local and state police, along with the Secret Service. It would have taken a marksman so skilled that he could shoot someone in the head and miss the brain by millimeters, and the shooter would have to agree to surrender his own life in the attempt.
Furthermore, the idea that being an assassin’s target will boost a politician’s chances of winning elections does not stand up to the historical record. In 1912, former President Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest on the way to a rally. Roosevelt was lauded as being “stronger than a bull moose,” but Wilson still trounced him at the polls.
Everyone who is pointing fingers and crafting theories is missing one very major point: a man, a civilian who just went to a presidential candidate’s rally, a man who was a husband, father and leader in his community, was shot dead with a bullet intended for said candidate. And two others were gravely injured.
The journal Macroeconomics published a peer-reviewed article entitled: “Hit or Miss? The Effects of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” which concluded that America shared the top spot with Spain and the Dominican Republic as having the most political assassinations in the world between 1875 and 2004.
This information should give us all pause.
It has long been said that politics and religion should never be discussed at family gatherings because the topics are too explosive. We disagree.
Politics should be discussed, especially political disagreements, face-to-face in a civil manner. By honest debate, we might not only learn something new, we might come to see our political opponents as human beings and not just “collateral damage” when a tragedy occurs.
Further, we might find our way back to a place where disagreeing about politics is considered healthy, something good citizens do with respect for those with differing views.
Violent rhetoric has been part of American political culture at least since John Adams’ presidency, but that doesn’t mean violence should be condoned, or that it should outshine the unintended victims when it does.
Let’s each of us pledge here and now to tone down the rhetoric, ignore outlandish conspiracy theories and reach across the political aisle to our fellow Americans with a hand of bipartisan friendship.
