Why Wasn’t I Surprised?

A Tale of Our Time

Like everyone else around the world, I too woke up on Sunday morning to the news of the attempt on the life of Donald Trump. The constant stream of images from the tragic and disturbing events was flooding every conceivable portal.

The first time I saw the image of the former president’s bloodied face and raised fist, my instinctive reaction was: oh, here we go, another publicity stunt.

While I am most certainly not Donald Trump’s fan, neither am I proud of such a reaction. Not at all. On the contrary, it worries me. Because it would not have been the case if the victim wasn’t Donald Trump.

Even someone like me, who has not only marginal interest in the politics of the United States of America but also filters the content I am exposed to, my initial reaction was still as described. Above all, I wasn’t surprised.

As I asked myself why, the answer slowly formed itself.

What happened at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, had and may still have the potential to be one of those singular moments in history which change the world forever.

We needn’t reach for the overused example of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked the outbreak of World War I, because every significant revolution in modern history — from the French to the American to the Russian — was a product of events that no one could have predicted having the outcome they did.

Likewise, the unanticipated and still not fully understood consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and the global financial crisis continue to plague us to this day.

It seems obvious that for some time now we’ve lived in a society in which the kind of violence seen at Trump’s rally could conceivably happen and be received as a “tragic, but unsurprising” event. Which is to say — violence has long ceased to surprise us.

It would be too easy to blame the assassination attempt on a favourite political complaint, as politicians and commentators of every stripe have done over recent days.

Republicans tried to present recent comments by Joe Biden, in which he argued that enough time has been spent on debates about his mental acuity, as the motivating factor for the attack.

Apparently, the public is supposed to believe that Biden incited the shooting when he said, “We can’t waste any more time being distracted, I have one job and that’s to beat Donald Trump,” before adding, “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Others have gone further, tweeting that the “Democratic Party just tried to murder Donald Trump,” and similar.

On the other hand, Democrats seem to have abandoned their pretence of being the party of good people and indulged in disgraceful messages about the man who lost his life and whose only crime was to be in the crowd.

Corey Comperatore was killed when he dived on top of his daughter to protect her from the gunfire with the only thing he had — his own body.

But even that had not stopped mighty tweet warriors posting to their global audience of millions such pearls of wisdom as, “A person in a crowd cheering for and supporting a traitor to this country caught a stray? I’m so sad, please.” Nothing is too low to score publicity and political points. Nothing at all.

And yes, of course, all of this is abominable behaviour in and of itself, and even more so when it concerns an event in which an innocent person died and several others were seriously injured.

That said, what is also clear is that focusing on these behaviours conceals a more fundamental and self-evident truth — the manner in which political discourse is held and political opponents spoken about is simply criminal.

As we are already seeing, the so-called “right” is busy painting the rhetoric jokes, and military metaphors deployed by the so-called “left” as the cause of the assassination attempt.

The so-called “left” deflects by citing Donald Trump’s suggestion that the “problem of Hillary Clinton could be solved by the Second Amendment,” and his other irresponsible comments.

Paradoxically, both sides are seen as right because, as with most issues nowadays, whatever the case you want to make — the evidence is all there.

But the real question for anyone who doesn’t believe that jokes and metaphors make people shoot politicians is — what is the context in which an attempt on the life of a presidential candidate is not a surprise?

I know nothing, or only what I have seen and heard in the media, about Thomas Matthew Crooks. I heard someone on TV describe the 20-year-old dietary aid worker as a “nut job,” but is that the most logical explanation? I don’t think so.

After all, in a political climate in which a presidential candidate has been described almost daily as Hitler, a fascist, Nazi dictator, and so on — would it really be crazy to attempt to eliminate him?

You, and I, might think of ourselves as emotionally well-regulated, sensible people who could never take such outrageous allegations seriously, regardless of what we think or how we feel about Donald Trump.

However, and as we all witness daily, many of us are neither emotionally well-regulated, sensible, nor educated about history, or a number of other things. Including how fear-mongering propaganda works.

What if you are a 20-year-old loner who, like most 20-year-old loners, seeks a mission worthy of the ultimate sacrifice?

What if you’re emotionally dysregulated, if you lack the judgment, insight, or plain common sense to disbelieve the people on your screens who keep screaming that Donald Trump is a Nazi dictator who will inflict despicable evil the moment he returns to the office?

Is it really too far-fetched to imagine that in this situation, where you actually thought of Trump as Hitler, as a patriot, a dedicated citizen who wants to go down in history, would you not be duty-bound to grab a rifle, climb on a roof and pull the trigger? After all, how would history remember a man who managed or even attempted to eliminate Hitler?

Do we not make movies about men like Claus Von Stauffenberg who did just that?

To be clear, I make no claim as to the shooter’s actual motivations. I am merely attempting to understand my own lack of surprise at the assassination attempt.

The self-evident truth is that we, humans, have not only ceased to love our neighbour, but we have also become desensitised to the point that even the most vile acts provoke no more than a posting/points-scoring opportunity.

I cannot think of a single act of violence, from wars to various other atrocities, images of which have not been circulated around on every available platform.

We may never know what the true reasons for the shooting of Donald Trump were.

What we do know, as it stares us in the face, is that this type of politics, politics based not on robust, even fierce debates about policies, but on fear-inducing and fear-mongering, must stop.

Because if it does not, something else will, as seen many times throughout human history.