- As any honest law-abiding citizen from around the world would vouch with passionate clarity, violence of any nature simply destabilizes the foundational values of a sovereign nation. No civic-conscious citizens would ever consider extending/allowing sympathetic reasons to exist, as violence is not an answer for diverse political ideologies/philosophies. One may differ from the philosophies being propagated, but that does not entail resorting to violence to eliminate someone who propagates opposing ideas. The beauty and the basic tenet of any democratic country is to allow free speech, including dissenting voices, to voice opinions. However, lifting a gun with diabolical intentions of muzzling voices and eliminating divergent viewpoints is unacceptable.
PC: WDET 101.9 FM
- What’s happened with Donald Trump recently, when a suspected shooter was apprehended, is condemnable. Thankfully, the gunman couldn’t get to Trump. Worryingly, political violence is getting to America, as can be seen with the shooting incidents being reported. From Republican Abraham Lincoln (1865) to Democrat John F Kennedy (1963), four US presidents have been assassinated while in office. But a 2007 Congressional Research Service report documented that there had been direct assaults on 10 of the 42 persons who had served in this office until then. A broader definition, including credible plots foiled before execution, or threats serious enough to trigger Secret Service investigations, would put the assassination attempts at well over 30.
PC: WDET 101.9 FM
- Thus, when, after surviving a third such attack in two years, Trump said that his is a ‘dangerous profession’, he was being bleakly, highly factual. Still, a distinction should be made between America’s legacy of political violence and the political currents feeding it today. After all, the country born out of revolutionary conflict, interrupted by a bloody civil war, the 1960s social unrest is not experiencing present violence as simply a historic feature of the system. Instead, there is a sense of alarm. Whether it is the man who shot dead Charlie Kirk, or the one who fractured Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s skull with a hammer, these actions are being experienced by Americans as shocking, even cataclysmic. This is barbaric.
PC: The Independent
- Most importantly, as systemic, as if something has happened to their country. This suggests that political rhetoric has outpaced the violence. Such is the dehumanization of political opponents, so vicious is the polarization, that a feeling of civil war is near-omnipresent in society. Whether institutions and culture can recalibrate before real violence spreads, and peace is truly shattered, is arguably the central national question about the Trump era. And it doesn’t cleave to party lines.
Despite tight security, the instant shooting did happen. A lot of unstable human beings carry violence inside them. But any country in which politics incites them to aim towards political targets should correct course forthwith. Or, things can always get worse, and it will be detrimental.
