That a bullet came within millimeters of killing Donald Trump is a scandal and a horror. That it failed is a blessing for all Americans.
In the wake of a near-tragic assassination attempt of a widely reviled figure, some people who loathe him may be wrestling with or suppressing emotions that feel contradictory. But the notions that Trump is dangerous, and that attempting to murder him is also dangerous, are not in tension with each other. The ethics and the practicality of liberal democracy both affirm a strong norm against political violence.
In comparison with most societies throughout history and the contemporary world, the United States is blessed with domestic peace, the rule of law, and democracy, even if we fall well short of the ideal on all three measures. That is the foundation that enables continued social progress, albeit slow and sporadic. Other countries have endemic political violence, corruption, coups, and authoritarianism that create a settled expectation that social differences can be settled only through brute force.
Progressing from a violent equilibrium to a peaceful one is extremely difficult. And so maintaining the expectations of social peace and the rule of law is one of the most important tasks in American politics. It is simply one that we have long taken for granted until recently.
Even though American history has seen a long litany of murders and attempted murders — Gerald Ford survived two attempts on his life within a few weeks of each other — this one feels scarier. That is because our social peace has grown more precarious. An assassination attempt on Donald Trump is a far more dangerous thing than an attempt to kill Mitt Romney would have been a dozen years ago or Al Gore a dozen years before that.
And while the responsibility for maintaining social peace and the norm of nonviolence is shared equally across the political spectrum, the blame for its decay is not.
Trump stokes and feeds upon a lust for violence. He possesses a demagogue’s skill for manipulating his supporters’ most elemental emotions. As a private citizen, he exploited a white woman’s rape in Central Park to demand the execution of innocent young men of color. He continues to call for various critics to be executed for their disloyalty. When a maniac attempted to kill Nancy Pelosi and smashed the skull of her husband, he cheered it on. He continues to glorify and promise to free the criminals who assaulted police in the attack on the Capitol in an attempt to seize an unelected second term.
It is not Trump’s fault that someone tried to kill him. It is absolutely his fault that it has immediately set off a widespread fear of reprisals and chaos.
His authoritarianism was the quality that sprang into the minds of both his opponents and his supporters immediately after the shooting. For the latter, the assassination attempt provided an opportunity to discredit those who have sought to uphold democratic norms. “Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse,” wrote Tim Scott, a Republican senator and vice-presidential aspirant.
Trump, obviously, labels his opponents fascists and communists as a matter of course. Scott’s position is not an attempt to uphold some kind of democratic norm but to undermine it. The rule he is following is that Trump can both attack democracy and delegitimize his critics and his critics are not permitted to point out what he is doing.
Fellow vice-presidential contender J.D. Vance went even further. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” he wrote. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
This is not true at all. Biden has not said Trump must be “stopped at all costs.” He has said Trump must be stopped through a free and fair election.
The distinction Vance elided is not trivial. In it lies the whole difference between continuing the American experiment and ending it.
Trump and his allies have preemptively stated that restoring him to power is the only legitimate outcome of the election. He has repeatedly declined to accept the possibility that he could legitimately lose in 2024. Large elements of his party have joined his belief. Hours before the attack, Mike Howell, a project director at the Heritage Foundation, was quoted saying, “As things stand right now, there’s zero chance of a free and fair election. I’m formally accusing the Biden administration of creating the conditions that most reasonable policymakers and officials cannot in good conscience certify an election.”
Political violence is a tool favored by radical causes. Assassination attempts of authoritarian figures, successful or unsuccessful, generally do not prevent authoritarianism. They enable it.
Even by the coldest calculation, murdering Trump would not protect American democracy because the threat of right-wing authoritarianism would not die with him. Had he been killed, his martyrdom would have only fueled his movement’s will to power.
The country is lucky Trump survived. And now we must protect the system from him.
