The attempted assassination of the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump by a gunman at a Pennsylvania rally confirms that this is the modern US of A, the land of guns in which the atmosphere is vitiated by the incendiary nature of the political rhetoric in highly polarised times.
The United States may have had a dark and troubled history of presidential assassination attempts, from the hits on Abraham Lincoln and the Kennedy brothers John and Robert that succeeded to the shots fired at Ronald Reagan which the then serving President survived. As a former President vying for the job again as challenger, Mr Trump fits perfectly into this profile of political targets.
The Second Amendment that guarantees every American the right to own a gun for his personal protection is not the only culprit in this age though the AR semi-automatic rifle used in a five-bullet bid by a 20-year-old lends itself easily to the argument about how to regulate such firearms which can be bought and owned so easily.
In these politically fraught times, there have been attempts on major political figures, including the then Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was attacked in her home with a hammer, but this sensational sniper’s bid at a public rally has stoked the worst kind of posturing and posting in the era of social media salience.
The wildest theories have been floated with one side blaming the other for setting up the bid to kill Mr Trump and the other suggesting it may have been a staged hit for invoking sympathy for a martyr. Let it be said that since the final word has not yet been heard on the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1964, around which conspiracy theories still abound, there will be plenty more to come on this scary 2024 event.
This bid by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot in the head by Secret Service agents, will undoubtedly spawn many theories about an event that may have dramatically changed the odds in the November 2024 presidential election with the Republicans, scheduled to hold their convention this week to formally nominate Mr Trump for the presidency, bound to milk this deadly attempt to twist the poll scenario by getting rid of a candidate.
The language of politics is so smeared with the vocabulary fuelled by hysteria of the coarsest imagery by words like “monsters”, “hell”, “fight”, “bullseye”, “dictator” and so on used by the incumbent as well as the challenger that an attempt at a major figure was predictable, even predicted in a famous cartoon strip series. Such are the times the world lives in, and the US even more so.
It appears as if the leaders of the world’s oldest democracy were prepared to, figuratively at least, live by the sword. Reasonable people know instinctively that such attempts at eliminating leaders are a live and present danger to democracy.
It is certain that a former President covered in blood and holding a defiant fist in the air will define the current election cycle. But the truth is, the political discourse from both the far right and the hard left had left too much to be desired.
It is at once sad and frightening that a leader can be shot at. India, which has suffered the assassination of two Prime Ministers, knows the threat to freedom and democracy from such acts too well. And the US, reminded of the dangers of extreme reactions as evidenced in the attack on the Capitol, may have to learn lessons about damping down political hysteria.
