Dodging Bullets.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Had the assassin’s bullet found its mark and killed Donald Trump, America’s descent into widespread and murderous violence – possibly spiralling-down into civil war – would have been immediate and quite possibly irreparable. The American Republic, upon whose survival liberty and democracy continue to depend, is certainly not out of danger, not yet. But, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, 13 July 2024, the USA also dodged a bullet.

HE’S UNSTOPPABLE NOW. The photographic images transmitted across the planet mere minutes after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, USA, are already icons. The former President, blood on his face, raises his clenched fist above his head in a gesture of fierce defiance, as the stars-and-stripes billows theatrically behind him. Together, these elements constitute a tableau that leaves absolutely no room for doubt. Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States.

In a nation that still believes in a God that blesses America, the message taken from this deadly incident is easily intuited. Had the path of the assassin’s bullet deviated by even an inch, the Republican candidate’s head would have exploded, live, on national television. Instead, the bullet nicked his ear. Another rally-goer was not so fortunate, fatally struck by the shooter who had so very nearly killed the former President, and who, just seconds later, was shot to death by Secret Service snipers. Half of America will now be firmly convinced that the Almighty’s plans for Donald J. Trump are beyond the power of mere mortals to alter.

In the hours and days following the attempted assassination, the merest of these mortals will be the incumbent President of the United States, Joe Biden. Impressively fired-up before a hugely responsive rally of Democratic supporters in Detroit, Michigan, just 24 hours before the shooting, Biden had called Trump a “loser”. But losers do not dodge bullets. Losers do not create instant and iconic campaign posters a minute after being shot. Losers do not have the presence of mind to gesture defiantly to the crowd even as their Secret Service detail is bundling them into an armoured people-carrier. No, Donald Trump may be the person who was fired-at on 13 July 2024, but it was Joe Biden who got fired.

This shocking event has made the Democratic Party’s dilemma even more acute. The contrast between the two candidates, already skewed dangerously in Trump’s favour, is now untenable. Biden looks old. He has the tentative shuffle of the frail elderly. Deprived of his teleprompter, the look of incipient panic in his eyes is painful to observe. Overwhelmingly, politically engaged “progressive” Americans have come to the same conclusion: “We love you, Joe, but it’s time to go.” Now, they have no choice.

In the years following the American Civil War, the triumphant Republican Party won election after election by waving “the bloody flag” that flew over that unparallelled American tragedy. Over the next four months, the Republicans have only to re-play “the bloody footage” of 13 July.

At the time of writing, the full identity of the shooter and his political affiliations – if any – remain unknown. But, if the profiles of previous presidential assassins are anything to go by, then he is likely to be an embittered individual, in the play of whose life Fate has repeatedly refused to assign him a meaningful role. By killing the President, the assassin seeks to become the hero of a new and deadly drama of his own devising.

Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, the actor John Wilkes Booth, unable to win genuine renown on the battlefield, fighting for his beloved Confederacy, and, perhaps, sensing that the hated leader of the Union had already won admittance to the company of the immortals, sought vengeance, and a darkly kindred immortality, by shooting Lincoln dead with a Derringer in Ford’s theatre.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a left-wing extremist who, like so many American leftists, found his fellow citizens’ indifference to the political causes that moved him so reprehensible that he determined to punish them by taking the life of the young President so much of the nation admired and loved. Marksmanship was one of Oswald’s few personal accomplishments, and unlike Trump’s would-be assassin, he didn’t miss.

There will be many Americans who received the news of Trump’s attempted assassination without surprise. For many years now the polarisation of American society has been growing increasingly perilous. Inevitably, if enough people at the margins of political discourse become convinced that there is nothing to be gained by communicating conventionally with opponents they have come to regard as irredeemably evil, then the prospect of communicating with one’s enemies “by other means” acquires an ever-greater salience.

This is what makes the identity of the sniper seen scrabbling up the roof of the building overlooking Trump’s enclosure at the Butler agricultural showgrounds so potentially explosive. If the man shot dead by Secret Service counter-snipers turns out to be an “Antifa” (anti-fascist) extremist with an online history of violent anti-Trump rhetoric, then the baying of the Right’s attack-dogs will be deafening. Fox News will declare the entire American Left guilty by association.

In response, the Democratic Party will likely tack aggressively to starboard, leaving its “progressive” wing alone and unprotected. One-time darling of the Democratic Socialists of America, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, might find her re-election chances in free-fall. It is unlikely that political aspirants proudly asserting their radical left-wing credentials would continue to attract the same level of enthusiastic journalistic support.

But, if the assassin turns out to be a right-wing extremist, then it’s the conspiracy theorists of the Left who will go hog-wild. (What even the extreme Right would have to gain by eliminating conservative America’s most effective champion since Ronald Reagan is not exactly clear – but then, if extremists acted rationally they wouldn’t be extremists, would they?)

Certainly, it is easy to picture the nuttier sort of leftist arguing that the shooter was a fanatical anti-abortionist who believed that Trump had “gone soft” on the rights of the unborn child. Handed a rifle with defective sights by the conspirators, and told that he would be permitted to flee the scene by “God’s people”, who would then spirit him out of the country, the “patsy” assassin, having missed his target, would instantly be shot to pieces by the Secret Service. The political consequences would be pure gold for these MAGA conspirators. Trump, bloodied but unbowed, would roll on implacably to a landslide victory.

The only aspect of the assassination attempt at Butler, Pennsylvania, that lends even the tiniest skerrick of credibility to this sort of wild speculation is the undeniable fact that somebody, hauling an AR-15 automatic rifle, was able to get on the roof of a building offering a clear shot at the former President of the United States without being confronted by a heavily-armed and body-armoured “Hawkeye” from the USSS’s tactical squad. It is Close Protection 101 that all potential “sniper’s perches” must be reconnoitred, located, and neutralised. The assassin, clearly visible to multiple witnesses on the ground, should never have made it as far as the building, let alone onto the roof. The deadly attack at Butler must, therefore, constitute the most egregious failure of the US Secret Service since Dallas.

Whatever the true story turns out to be regarding the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, its most crucial element is that it was just that, an attempt. Had the assassin’s bullet found its mark and killed the “deplorables’” champion, America’s descent into widespread and murderous violence – possibly spiralling-down into civil war – would have been immediate and quite possibly irreparable. The American Republic, upon whose survival liberty and democracy continue to depend, is certainly not out of danger, not yet. But, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, 13 July 2024, the USA also dodged a bullet.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 15 July 2024.