The Culture of Violence is Killing Us

Who would have ever imagined that after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July, there would be another attempt just weeks later? That is what the country is grappling with again. Thankfully, the latest attempt did not produce death or injury, but it has caused harm to the nation.

With fifty days or so to the election, will the country witness a third, fourth, or fifth attempt on Trump’s life? And if the unthinkable happens again, how will people react? In future attempts, will we hear the same rhetoric from commentators on major media channels?

The Republicans claim the left incites the crazy people by continually painting Trump as a threat to democracy.  They often compare him with Hitler, as did Joe Biden and his minions on numerous occasions. The language of the left is inflammatory, trying to describe him as a potential dictator waiting to rally his MAGA troops to squash half of the country. If he wins, they claim, he will outlaw their prized possessions of abortion, gender fluidity, and censorship while weaponizing the government against them.

The media claims it is not their commentary causing the problem, but instead, Trump’s incendiary speech is the reason he is the cause of the violence directed at him. His less-than-eloquent style about illegal immigrants and the pet names of his political opponents have irritated a bunch of people, which they say is incitement needed for someone to try and take him out. The Democrats do not have a pristine argument because since Trump entered the political arena, they have berated him verbally and continue to this day. Politicians have parroted the same lies for years, stoking the disharmony in the country.

Kamala Harris, in the recent presidential debate, kept alive the lies of Charlottesville, the January 6^th insurrection, when she claimed police officers were killed, attempting to con the public into thinking they were killed as a result of the protest. The only person killed during the protest was the unarmed Ashli Babbit, shot by Capital Police Officer Lt. Michael Byrd.   These are only a few of the falsehoods spoken by Harris.

The heated and misinformed rhetoric only adds fuel to the fire of America, which is an ever-growing acceptance of the culture of violence, while offering no or little pushback. Nightly on news programs, violence in our cities is commonly reported as just another news story. How sad it is that the citizens of the country are becoming accustomed to violence as a part of everyday life. The public sees videos of beatings on New York streets, brazen shoplifting, and, of course, the shootings and deaths reported on Mondays following another bloody weekend in our major urban areas.  

Violence is so rampant in our country that citizens who are not victims are becoming desensitized to the harm these acts cause. There is great fear that assassination attempts will follow a similar suit. They will make news for a day and be forgotten by the next.

Sure, there have been assassinations in our country’s history before, like the deaths of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Still, those horrifying events galvanized the country against the wanton disregard for life based on a political stance. On both sides of the aisle, those murders were roundly condemned as unacceptable to a free and civil society.

The country now is a much darker place, and violence and death do not seem to have the same gravity as in years past. Too often, they are explained away as mentally ill people acting out for this or that reason.  The problem with that reasoning is we have always had crazy people, but they didn’t shoot up schools, parents, spouses, neighbors, or political candidates with such frequency.

Until moral and law-abiding citizens rise in mass and start rebelling against the violence in our society, the norm will be killing your adversary instead of beating them at the ballot box. Regardless of how much dark money flows into local elections, citizens must vote out those AGs, prosecutors, representatives, and judges who promote an environment with lax law, which only produces a ripe climate for violence without consequence. 

One election will not cure all our evils, but it is a beginning if you wish the Republic to survive and curtail the madness of violence, you can start by voting against it.