Thoughts on the State of the Nation

The Attempted Assassination of Trump

Photo by Bruno Figueiredo on Unsplash

I was reading Dostoevsky’s Notes from a Dead House yesterday when my phone buzzed. I glanced at it; a text from my mom in gray bubble saying, Trump shot!

What?

I immediately set my book down and Googled it. And, sure enough, Trump had been shot at during an open-air rally in Pennsylvania. The shooter was 20 and had never voted and was officially registered as a Republican.

Jesus.

Perhaps this might become our collective “come to Jesus” moment as a nation? The time when we all admit that we’ve all fallen prey to the satirical, glittering distraction of extremism? The time when we pause and sincerely reflect and how far this culture war stuff has actually gone on both sides?

I don’t blame Biden or Democrats for what happened. I think that’s dishonest. It is not within Biden’s character to actually encourage anyone to take out Trump (vile and lying and wholly dishonest as Trump may be.)

And yet. One has to admit, if one is morally and intellectually honest, that the constant drumbeat of “Trump will be the end of Democracy as we know it” certainly doesn’t sound very good at this point. If assholes on Jan 6 could interpret Trump’s words as storming the capital and preventing certification of an election, then it seems eminently reasonable to make the same claim about rabid darts being constantly hurled at Trump by the media, Biden and Dems in general.

Again. Not blame, but just a rational recognition that the temperature in the room—on both sides—is far too high.

Can we look at this shooting as a high-mark of our contemporary culture wars? As a symbol of how detached we’ve become from each other, how polarized, how divided, how bigoted, prejudiced and angry?

Biden now has a very complicated needle to thread, and it requires great precision, care and accuracy. (Not to mention clarity.) I do not know that the octogenarian is up to the job. But Trump can carry a lot of water here, as can his Republican counterparts. How will Trump respond to what happened? He and Biden had a brief phone chat which sounds like it went well. Biden has already publicly condemned the shooting. That’s a good start. Yet some Republicans have already started blaming Democrats for the assassination attempt, fixating on the anti-Trump “democracy is in peril” language. While I don’t fully disagree with them, I’m also not sure how honest and helpful this blame is.

In the end we want all our politicians—regardless of party or perspective—to be protected and safe. Obviously. That shouldn’t even have to be said.

My point here is: This could be an opportunity for both sides to turn the loud angry punk rock music down; to actually attempt to see each other as full human beings again, not as bad ideas, statistics and cliches. I remember when Covid descended and we all thought, Finally, something that will at least unite us. Nope. Not even then. Well, maybe for about a month in the very beginning. And then the knives came out. Everything, boringly, predictably, became yet again somehow about race and ethnicity and gender and which victim groups are getting it worse and who’s voting for whom and why, etc.

Gross, man.

But those of us here now survived all that craziness. It’s 2024. We seem to have more or less reached “Peak Woke” except for in academia and the Arts and the Media, sadly, where Hamas is praised and natal men are women no matter what and Black men are murdered every five seconds by rabid racist white cops, despite the clear and obvious data pointing to a very different and less intense reality.

Could we all possibly use this moment as a portal through which to calm the fuck down?

It sounds largely naïve, I know. In our current environment, I’m just waiting for Republicans to start unleashing the lies and Democrats to start saying it’s too bad the kid missed his target. The wild thing is that this doesn’t even sound out of the question at this point. Everything, literally everything, has been polarized at this point, including a global pandemic. (The joke goes, Global pandemic kills all; Black women hit hardest.)  

I’m trying to tease both sides because both sides have become absurd. A total caricature and satire. Mirror images of each other. No, that’s not a “Republican talking point.” (Yawn.) No, it’s not “both-sides-ism.” It’s I-have-my-fucking-eyes-open. No, it’s not a “false equivalency.” Both sides truly believe they are the vanguard of democracy and that “the other side” is inherently immoral and a threat to Democracy. (“I know you are but what am I?”) Both—yes, both!—have been lying and gaslighting themselves and The American People more or less since Trump rose to power in 2016.

Trump pretended the 2020 election was “stolen.”

Biden’s people told us he was doing backflips and black-belt Karate behind closed doors.

Trump tried to convince Georgia’s governor to “get” him 11,000 votes.

We were told many things by Dems during Covid that turned out not to be correct, true, or scientifically viable. (“Believe the science.”)

Republicans in some states (Florida, say) have begun using the State to ban books.

Democrats have for the past decade been proudly participating in Cancel Culture, removing books, preventing books from being published to begin with, pulling books from the shelves after a Woke Twitter Outcry.

Big Tech colluded with Dems to remove and censor conservative speech online, especially during Covid.

Republicans want to turn public schools into semi-authoritarian Christian camps.

I could go on and on but it’s boring and obvious. Trump tells way too many lies; Biden is way too old. *(And also lies; in his presser a few days ago he claimed there was “no poll which shows me behind Trump.”)

Most Americans don’t even want either candidate. (Me included.)

But we’re stuck with these two for now.

We cannot condone political violence, whether it’s Jan 6, the massive “mostly peaceful” (eyeroll) BLM riots and protests in 2020 devastating whole chunks of American cities, or some whacko kid trying to kill Trump on stage at a rally.

What happened to us? Remember the “good ole days” circa 2014? We used to be normal, at least compared to now. Somehow over the past decade we’ve lost our collective political minds. I do think it “started” with Trump. Trump has been and continues to be an extremist. The pendulum swings, my friends. Extremism begets more extremism. It’s a mirror, a negative-feedback loop. The problem is that neither side wants to be the adult in the room. Again: I know you are but what am I?

Double, triple, quadruple down. Ignore, distort, spin, lie, cheat, steal; it no longer matters. All that matters now is “winning.”

But at what cost exactly? If you use illiberal means to “gain back” liberalism, you’ve already lost the game. Read Orwell’s Animal Farm. Those who feel oppressed next rise up and become the new oppressors. Trump’s words and behavior have often been grotesque in my view. No question.

But look at the far Left. Look what they’ve said and tried to do.

The progressive race-essentialism, making racist, paternalistic claims about “Black people,” calling white people evil white supremacists. Look at how they’ve repeatedly ignored American voters (Black, Hispanic, Asian, White) who, for example, shut down Affirmative Action. Look at the white Woke DAs in cities across America who made crime “legal,” harming non-white working-class locals the most. Look at how hard Leftist media has tried to create a forced, untrue narrative onto us all. (This is why NPR has lost 18 million listeners since 2020 and The Washington Post hemorrhaged $77 million just last year alone.)

And with Republicans: Jan 6; election denial; state-sponsored bills banning books; anti-Woke excesses which only make the problem worse; mirroring the Left by saying that it’s actually Democrats who are the threat to democracy; etc. Watch Fox News for two seconds and tell me that isn’t straight-up political propaganda. Fox—like MSNBC—isn’t telling you honestly what’s going on; they’re trying to tell you what and how to think.

Americans are smarter and better than all of this bullshit.

We can do this, I think. We can let this be The Moment. We can unite. I am not going to embrace Trump. I do not like his ideas and do not want him to win. I also think Biden is too old and untrustworthy at this point. It feels like the whole country sits on the balance of Biden’s ego. I think any other reasonable, moderate Democrat would defeat Trump, if given a chance.

I think we’re all—young and old, Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, trans and non-binary—Americans. You can be proud of this country and also disgusted by some of its legacy and past. We engaged in slavery but, historically speaking, we also ended it quickly and helped to destroy it. There are places in the world where slavery still happens even today. And many nations engaged in slavery—such as Africa—way, way before America was even an independent nation.

It's time to move on. On Bill Maher’s show Real Time the other day, Bakari Sellers (lawyer, former politician, political commentator, about 40 years old) claimed that things were harder for Black men now in America, in 2024, than they were in 1954. This. Is. An. Insane. Statement.

There is so much drama and baggage and exaggeration on both political sides nowadays. If Trump wins he’ll be a Hitlerian dictator and Democracy will crumble. This is bullshit. Trump contradicts himself constantly. He lies all the time. He knows nothing about history. He makes shit up half the time. Are you aware of what Hitler did? Are you aware of the vast differences between 1930s Germany and 2024 America? Are you aware of the robust powers and institutions which would not allow this grim reality to occur?

Trump’s not a dictator. He’s a narcissistic TV host who came to power because Democrats ran a terrible candidate in 2016, and because the Left has lost touch with the working-class and has become hopelessly elite. Progressives are 8% of voters yet they run media, publishing, academia. They have an outsized voice and they shouldn’t.

Similarly, Republicans need to grow a pair and find their way back to some sort of political rational center. Trump or Biden are not the solutions to our problems. We need change. Younger, more diverse, and less extreme.

It’s time to pass the torch. And if for now all we have are these two guys, then we have to at a minimum attempt to find our way back to sanity. Enough of the culture wars; it’s exhausting. We’re all exhausted by it. Horseshoe theory, man. Circling firing squads.

Let’s find our way out of this morass, out of this Rubik’s-cube-like jungle of bullshit. Let’s shake hands again, cross the aisle, express love and honesty and a willingness to hear all sides of a debate. No more censorship. No more shutting down speech. No more gaslighting. No more pretending.

We can do this.