Twice in two months, there have been assassination attempts on the life of Donald Trump. Thankfully, this one was thwarted by the secret service before shots were fired at the former president. The assailant, Ryan Wesley Routh, was captured, so perhaps we will learn more about his motives soon. He has a history of minor run-ins with the law, although his son has said that this apparent attempt is out of character for him, and a Newsweek reporter in Kyiv who met Routh while he was there rallying support for Ukrainian troops said he seemed like a sincere citizen activist.
Trump has pointed the finger at the Democratic campaign against him which has used what he asserts are inflammatory arguments suggesting that he poses a threat to democracy. That said, if Routh is most agitated about the plight of Ukraine, Trump's refusal to pledge continued support for Ukrainian efforts in the debate last week might have pushed Routh over the edge. Obviously, what Routh was trying to do is totally repugnant, and he should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Many of us probably feel in our bones that we are living in a deeply unsettled, trauma-ridden moment. Crooks’ and Routh’s actions indicate first and foremost an awful disturbance of some sort within each of them. It also probably reflects, in some way, the awful disturbance of this particular time.
I looked to see if anyone else had survived two attempted assassinations. As I dimly recalled, one other person had - President Gerald Ford, who was targeted twice in just two and a half weeks in September of 1975. First, Squeaky Fromme, a member of the Manson Family cult, tried to kill Ford with the professed aim of stopping environmental degradation. Then, seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore tried to kill him, with the professed goal of igniting a violent revolution to change America.
Two things immediately stand out to me. First, both shooters were women; honestly, I don't know what to make of that, but it's a statistically unlikely detail. Second, I don't know that there has been in my lifetime a president more pathologically dull or non-inflammatory or anti-confrontational than Gerald Ford. His personality is almost completely opposite Trump's. And yet twice in little more than a fortnight, a fellow American tried to end his presidency and his life with a bullet. This tends to buttress my earlier speculation - that in addition to whatever disturbed the specific assailants, some society-wide disturbance also most likely played a role. 1975, though different from today, was another unsettled moment in American history. Ford had assumed office the previous summer after Richard Nixon's ignominious resignation in the face of impeachment; Saigon had fallen to the North Vietnamese in April of 1975; and, well, it was height/depth of the 70s with all the change and roiling that entailed.
This is a scary time in a lot of ways. A precarious feeling time. There is a very short, stirring Jewish song based on a quote from the renowned Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810):
The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all.
That's the main thing, not necessarily the easy thing. But every day we need to try.
I'm not sure this most recent 'attempt' was actually an attempt. He did not shoot. Not sure if he even lined it up to do so. Additionally, I cannot help but wonder if Trump hired him to fake an assassination. It seems quite likely to me that Trump would find that is a very good idea to get more people to support him. (and I still wonder if Trump used a razor blade on himself to cut his ear on the first attempt, there was just too much weirdness about it all like 'where are my shoes' and how quickly his ear healed)
You might say that Fromme and Moore were the Left's version of MAGAts in the 1970s. They lived with blinders on demonizing the establishment as too corrupt to repair.