The assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a rally this past Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania must be a wakeup call for our deeply divided nation.
While Trump fortunately emerged with non-life-threatening wounds, tragically, 50-year-old Corey Comperatore lost his life and two other attendees remain hospitalized.
Whatever the particular motives of the now-deceased gunman, it should be apparent to any civically engaged American that the political temperature must come down for the long-term health of our republic.
In recent years, Americans have come to not only disagree with each other, but to openly and predominantly despise those with different points of view.
Polling from Pew Research Center has indicated that most Trump or Biden supporters divide have few or no friends who support the other side. Absent direct experience with people who think differently, many Americans are left to conjure hollow stereotypes and caricatures of those who disagree with them.
With growing polarization comes reduced social trust and reduced confidence in institutions that have long held the country together.
“Liberals and Democrats today, for example, have lower trust in traditional family institutions, traditional religious institutions and the economic system,” Frank Newport of Gallup reported in December 2019. “Republicans have lower trust in the scientific process, higher education, the mass media, and the role of the state (government).”
Is it any wonder that political discourse and civic life have seemingly both decayed and devolved?
Of course, politics can and even should be contentious. There are big issues at stake and our democratic republic is designed to encourage frequent debate and public input through the ballot box. But we cannot sustain the toxic and overwrought politics of the last decade.
To be sure, both the Democratic and Republican factions are to complicit in what we have today.
We have seen the president of the United States declare that, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” We have seen the Biden-Harris campaign and liberal institutions like the New Republic directly compare Trump to Adolf Hitler. And we have seen progressive figures like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez frivolously raise the idea that they could be jailed or placed in “massive camps” if Trump is re-elected.
On the other hand, we have also seen Kevin Roberts of the influential Heritage Foundation declare recently that, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” We have seen Trump himself build his political brand on overheated rhetoric. And we have seen fervently misguided Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol, assault police officers and disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
This is not sustainable, nor should it be.
Radicalism begets more radicalism and radicalism ultimately begets violence. We cannot continue down this road as a nation. We must all strive to be more civil and more constructive.