The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, Pa., was a sickening manifestation of the ugly division that suffuses American politics. While virtually every prominent leader initially reacted with appropriate calls for calm and unity in the aftermath — including Trump and President Joe Biden — the attack by now-deceased 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks also ended up providing more one more illustration of how much liberals and MAGA conservatives hate and assume the worst about each other.
On social media, pundits with hundreds of thousands of followers quickly alleged that Secret Service agents let Crooks get a “line of sight” angle to shoot at the Republican presidential nominee from a nearby rooftop because they wanted Trump dead. Politicians like Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, immediately blamed intense Democratic criticism of Trump for creating an atmosphere that made the shooting inevitable.
To any sober observer of recent history, the idea that Trump backers — specifically, those who who share his view that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was a good thing — hold the moral high ground on the question of political violence is on its face indefensible. Just this month, the head of the Heritage Foundation, not a click-hunting blogger, implied violence may be necessary to achieve Trump’s goals.
But the Trump-had-it-coming tone of many social media commenters and the history of many on the left show they also lack credibility on this issue.
In 2022, Nicholas Roske — a 26-year-old Simi Valley man with a Glock 17 pistol, two ammo magazines, zip ties and pepper spray — was arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home. The FBI found Roske planned to assassinate Kavanaugh, who was nominated by Trump, because of his views on abortion and guns.
In 2017, before being killed by Capitol police, James T. Hodgkinson — an ardent 66-year-old Trump critic from Belleville, Ill. — fired 60-plus rounds at members of the Republican congressional baseball team as they practiced in the D.C. suburbs. Four people were wounded, with Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, then the House majority whip and now the majority leader, the most badly hurt. He fought for his life for days before overcoming a coma.
Both these incidents should have been causes for bipartisan anguish. Instead, the Kavanaugh incident was quickly memory-holed. And the Hodgkinson assault — described by the Washingtonian magazine as “one of the most brazen acts of political violence in American history” — was often depicted not as being a loathsome attack on democracy but as the predictable result of Republicans’ ardor for guns.
Alas, many readers will look at the last few paragraphs providing context on the weaknesses of both parties on the topic of political violence and be triggered — “This is whataboutism! How dare anyone note the side I’m on isn’t pure and doesn’t always stand for all that is good and right!”
Forty years ago, this wouldn’t have happened, at least not to this extent. But in America, circa 2024, millions of people get their information from sources that frame every issue in ways that reinforce the view that they are righteous and that those on the other side are despicable. The warning of Irish poet W.B. Yeats can’t help but come to mind. In 1919, observing the post-World War I chaos in Europe, he lamented, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
Going forward, here’s hoping the values of the millions of Americans who are not in thrall to us vs. them thinking prevail. How would this be reflected? By a quick, thorough FBI investigation of how Crooks was able to get off several shots aimed at Trump even after some in the crowd saw him with a rifle on the roof. By the Trump and Biden campaigns toning down their rhetorical extremes and disavowing the bile of some or their surrogates. By broad resistance to the conspiratorial impulses that fuel this bile.
But most of all by a universal acceptance that others can have different views — so long as they express them in a peaceful way. The center must hold.
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