by Rob Lyons
I was in the shuttle van at O’Hare, on my way to the car rental place, when the news came over the radio that Trump had been shot at. I had hardly any reaction, oddly, maybe because they said he wasn’t seriously injured.
I was 9 years old in the third grade when JFK was assassinated, and I had no idea what was going on – but within days I had absorbed the shock and grief of my father, who like Kennedy was Boston Irish Catholic, and to whom Kennedy had been a hero. For my father this was a cataclysmic event, a soul-killing event, the death of his optimism, and that deep pain lingered in him for the rest of his life. I was 15 when Dr. King was killed in April 1968. RFK was shot two months later. Assassinations have profound consequences. Imagine how our nation’s history might have unfolded, had Lincoln not been assassinated, imagine if Dr. King and RFK had lived, what a different world we’d be living in now.
10 years later, in November 1978 I was living in San Francisco when we heard about Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre, and then a mere nine days after that, George Moscone and Harvey Milk were gunned down inside City Hall. There’s something about these one-two punches that is so profoundly unsettling that world seems not to obey the laws of physics anymore. Water runs uphill, freakish weather predominates, plagues of frogs and locusts, eclipses and wildfire tornados. This is beginning to happen now with the current campaign: first Biden’s debate meltdown, now the assassination attempt on Trump’s life. Time is out of joint and I feel like I’m inhabiting the body of a stranger. What next?
I’m here in Milwaukee for the RNC, and I expect further hammer blows to my carefully curated reality. I expect the Republican delegates and their MAGA auxiliary will be angry as the wasps nest I fell into when I was 6 years old (stings all over my body and monstrous swelling). I fully expect that security will be cranked down. Under the present scheme, which the Secret Service approved in June, guns are allowed within walking distance of the Fiserve Forum but not within the inner security perimeter. That will surely change. This event will have a palpable effect on everyone here at the RNC, the delegates, the left-leaning protestors, the counter-protestors, the people of Milwaukee – everyone will be that much more on edge and quicker to rage and violence, as tensions and temperature rise.
And then I wonder how Trump himself will respond to this attempt on his life. He doesn’t seem a courageous man to me, maybe this will shock him, the realization that there is an enormous reservoir of personal hatred toward him, abroad in the land. Maybe he becomes more paranoid and even more hellbent on vengeance. Expect him to lean heavily into the victim syndrome, and claim he’s being martyred for his people. Just think of the fundraising bump this will give him.
I have to say that I don’t wish harm to Donald Trump, I would much prefer to see him beaten soundly, thoroughly, decisively, by Joe Biden or any other Democratic candidate, in an irrefutable demonstration that the American people reject the culture of lies and hatreds and violence that Trump and his enablers whip up for their own personal gain. Let’s get back to looking out for one another, building community based on honesty and trust, and working together for the common good.
