A few thoughts at the end of a very trying day — a day when a former president nearly got assassinated, and at least one person lost their life just because they went to an otherwise peaceful political rally.
First off, let’s start by praying for those who lost their lives and/or got wounded in the assassination attempt tonight. One person has been confirmed killed, as I said, and the last report I saw states that two people were also critically wounded. With the number of shots concentrated on the stage — and with the apparent skill of the shooter — one could have expected more casualties. Pray for their families, friends, and medical personnel attempting to save their lives.
However, this assassination attempt raises profound questions about our current political environment as well as our current security environment. It may take a few days to get answers to the latter and its failures, but it had better not take much more than that. Both Trump and Joe Biden have big political events coming up — not just the conventions, but also rallies and other public appearances. If the Secret Service didn’t secure a roof within sniper range and sight line of the stage before the event, we need to know why. If there weren’t enough resources applied, then we need to know that too before the next shooter gets luckier in assassinating a target no matter who it is.
Speaking of which, it may take a while before we know who the shooter is. An early rumor, since withdrawn, had identified him as a certain kind of radical. There’s no point in describing it further than that since it turned out to be nothing more than speculation, but the FBI had better get us some answers fast before that kind of speculation overwhelms the real developments in the case. We have no way of knowing whether this was only one nutcase or some sort of coordinated effort at this point. Was this a “known wolf”? A foreign agent? A random lunatic? We need firm answers as fast as possible.
One thing we can assume at this point is that the shooter had real skills with firearms. A shot from 100 yards away (as the distance has been roughly described in media reports) in the open air is no easy feat. That takes training, or an unbelievable amount of luck. A different head turn by Trump could have made this story soooo much different. How those skills were acquired will be almost as interesting as how the rifle used got acquired, I’d predict.
But until we know more about the shooter and his background, we can’t know too much about his motivations. Without that, we can’t understand what lessons to take away from it, including some of the issues raised about rhetoric. I recall the rage after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting that left her profoundly wounded and several dead, with everyone pointing the finger at Sarah Palin and her “extreme rhetoric.” The shooter turned out to be a apolitical delusional nut who had descended into psychosis long before, but that accusation unfairly stuck to Palin for years. We can wait a few days to find out what this shooter was really thinking in order to get it right.
But even that comes with a caveat. Will the media report it when those motivations become clear? Look how long it has taken to get the Nashville transgender mass murderer’s ‘manifesto’ published. We need a lot more transparency in this case, and we need it as soon as humanly possible.
What about the current political environment? In the absence of real data on the shooter, it’s tough to be specific. However, the insane descriptions of Trump as Hitler and as an “existential threat to democracy,” the latter from Biden himself, certainly isn’t helping people remain sane. Demagogues rely on fear to herd voters like sheep, and this cycle is as bad as I’ve ever seen for that kind of demagoguery.
Mike Huckabee had a great observation on Fox News a little while ago. He wisely avoided speculating on specific motives and incitement, and instead diagnosed the country as having a spiritual crisis. That resonates with me, because I see the same spiritual crisis in our flashpoint issues. We have adopted very strange religions in our aggressively secular culture. We need to put more effort in fighting for that culture and the moral rot we see, and fighting for a country where we can fight in effective but non-violent means — debate, dissent, and ballots rather than censorship, retaliation, and bullets.
And that brings us to Donald Trump and the iconic moment that will reverberate for decades:
Imagine having the courage to stand back up after an assassin shot you on stage, rather than the rational impulse to remain in cover. And not just stand up, but also having the courage to rally the crowd to “Fight!” as Trump did while under fire. No one, not even Trump’s worst critics, can possibly deny his physical and mental courage in that moment just after he barely missed having his head blown off.
That will also have a veeeery big political impact on the electoral cycle, but we can cover that as it unfolds. It will have a galvanizing effect on Americans who have seen Trump as their champion, of course, but it may well have just as much of a galvanizing effect on millions more Americans who haven’t seen anything inspirational in politics for years. It might remind them that our country and our culture is worth fighting for.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for tonight. Pray for Trump, pray for all the people who went through that trauma in Butler County, and pray for the lost and wounded. Most of all, pray for America and for the better angels of our natures to transform this country in a way that restores civil politics and a spiritual commitment to the values that make it the greatest experiment in self-governed liberty in human history.
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