Trump assassination attempt exposes the mortal core of America’s politics
When the shots rang out in the clear blue sky and tore America’s fragile civic peace asunder, the former president was gesturing at a chart on a screen. “The worst president in the history of our country took over, and look what happened to our country," Donald Trump said as the sweaty crowd pulsed with its usual feverish approval. On the massive video monitors flanking the stage, a graph showed an increase in illegal border crossings in recent years.
Suddenly Trump was on the ground, clutching the side of his face as the people, realizing what was happening, began to scream and dive for cover. In an instant, it seemed, everything had changed—a nasty, all-consuming political season suddenly pulled up short and confronted with the harrowing mortal core beneath the abstract debates over the nation’s future. The campaign couldn’t go on as before.
No longer could the dehumanizing rhetoric, the apocalyptic warnings continue; something had to give. And yet it seemed more likely than not that nothing would—that the rudderless acrimony and pervasive alarm that got us to this point couldn’t be soothed or suppressed; that no convulsion could break the fever that continues unabated. Trump survived.
A man in the crowd was killed. The shooter lay dead on a nearby rooftop. Trump rose from the scrum, fist raised in an instantly iconic image, and mouthed, “Fight! Fight!" before the Secret Service dragged him to his waiting vehicle.
Read more on livemint.com
