Musing on Trump’s Attempted Assassination
Trump’s divisive rhetoric had inspired violence against other people at least 50 times. The close-shave attempt on his life is the consequence of the hate he set in motion. I DO NOT, however, think he deserves to be assassinated.
The hate that Trump spread through the victimization elements in his populist politics benefits him in two ways: it helps him maintain his base of rabid supporters who deified him as the people’s messiah, and also gin up sympathy — and later votes — every time the hate ricochets.
In the 2016 election, two-thirds of Americans said they detested Trump. His acceptance rating among the electorates kept dropping. In the middle of this, a 20-year-old British lad unsuccessfully tried to grab an officer’s gun and use it to kill Trump while Trump was delivering an election campaign speech at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the end, Trump won the 2016 election. From 2016 to now, there have been several attempts against his life and the support he keeps getting is almost as equal as the hate he’s getting.
Studies in social neuroscience have proven that voting is driven by emotion, and negative emotion manipulates voters more than positive emotion. Though this pattern works in reverse in Trump’s case (negative emotion against Trump seems to manipulate results in his favor, not in the favor of his opponent), it nonetheless holds true. It seems as though negative emotion against Trump makes him even more desirable at the polls. This is the enigma of Trump, and I think America’s supine will in addressing the enigma is far from dying.
All this is why, to some degree, I agree with those who opined that this assassination attempt might have sealed Trump’s victory at the polls in November.
The enigma of Trump and true test of America’s democracy
Looking at Trump’s behavior, rhetoric, brand of politics, and all the woes and unprecedented events that come with them, it’s not illogical to conclude that the enigma of Trump only exists to find out how strong America’s democracy truly is. Had the assailant succeeded in assassinating Trump, the world would have witnessed the beginning of the true test of America’s democracy.
For over 200 hundred years, America has surmounted a myriad of internal and external challenges that were deleterious to its democracy. It has incontestably valid reasons to glory in the power of its democracy and strong institutions.
But America’s democracy isn’t strong without its ruinous weaknesses. Here is a country that’s always racially charged, already dripping wet in political violence, and awash in citizen’s effortless access to all types of guns; and here is a country that citizens on its left–right political spectrum had been fed fat with lies, half-truths, and endless propaganda. The enigma of Trump and its sustenance are creations of the almighty American democracy.
Biden has jettisoned all his re-election plans, and the numbers aren’t convincingly showing that Kamala Harris — who seems to have better edge than other possible options in the Democratic party — has bigger chances against Trump. There are more reasons Trump will win in November than there are reasons he won’t. The second era of Trump is nearby. It appears that he will continue to test (from the White House, once again) everything that makes America’s 200-and-something-year-old experiment with democracy a celebrated one. But it doesn’t appear that America is ready for the serial, costly tests ahead—just the same way it wasn’t ready in 2016.
In his 2011 article published on Smithsonian magazine, Joseph Stromberg opined that:
“The dawn of American democracy didn’t come in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence. It didn’t come in 1788, when the Constitution was ratified by the states, or in 1789, when George Washington took office. According to Harry Rubenstein, chair and curator of the Division of Political History at the American History Museum, the symbolic birth of our system of government didn’t come until its noble ideals were actually put to the test. On September 19, 215 years ago, Washington published his farewell address, marking one the first peaceful transfers of power in American history and cementing the country’s status as a stable, democratic state.”
Going forward, peaceful transfer of power as the true test of America’s democracy will now include how to deal with the enigma of Trump. How will America’s democratic institutions deal with it when power is peacefully transferred to Trump or a Trump? From Trump’s first administration to now, America didn’t answer this question.
It has already been said that Trump’s first administration left America worse than it met it. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity that gives Trump, if re-elected, unprecedented latitude to act without legal repercussions. Trump would have more power to test the tensile strength of America’s democracy and politics.
Trump is ready but America isn’t ready.
