Deeply polarized US society is playing with (gun)fire

Love or loathe Donald Trump, the only reaction to the assassination attempt on the former US president and current Republican presidential nominee should be of shock, revulsion, utter condemnation, and mainly relief that it ended in “only” a grazed ear. After all, whatever the political persuasion of a candidate, the outcome of any election should be decided by the ballot and not by the bullet.
And, yes, it was most probably the case of a deranged lone-wolf individual, writing his name into the book of political infamy, leading to his own demise, and for us to probably never understand what motivated him. Yet, dismissing it as the mere act of one isolated individual would completely miss the main and most important aspect of this unfortunate incident: that America is a violent society, and the toxicity of its political discourse, to which the target of this assassination attempt had made a very significant contribution, has created the permissible atmosphere for such a violent act to take place.
Releasing the genie of political extremism and violence from its bottle has proved over the years to be too easy, while putting it back is enormously difficult, particularly in a society where violence is as prevalent as it is in the US, and more so than in any other Western country. Serious intentional violence — homicides, gun crimes, mass shootings, and police killings of civilians — is exceptionally more common. The most recent available figures, those for 2021, show that 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the US; 26,328 of these were cases of suicide and 20,958 of homicide. Staggeringly, for a country whose politicians claim that they are committed to law enforcement as a top priority, Americans are 26 times more likely to be shot and killed than those in other high-income countries.
This clearly points to a culture of violence fueled by an ideology of the supposedly divine right to carry arms. The ease with which firearms and other weapons can be bought in the US, often in supermarkets, is shocking and grotesque. US National Public Radio reported last week that adults in some US states can now buy gun ammunition from AI-powered vending machines at their local grocery store. Normalizing the possession of guns creates a culture of using them, with tragic consequences. The situation worsens when the political discourse also becomes violent, as has been the case since the 2016 presidential election.
Although political violence is infrequent, political assassinations nevertheless have a long and disturbing history in the US, where four presidents of the 45 that have so far served, among them Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, have been murdered while in office, while others, such as Trump, have had lucky escapes. We know little about the gunman — 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper — and it is confusing that records show he was a registered Republican, yet had donated a small sum to a progressive action committee in 2021. Nevertheless, at least until last Saturday, according to some who knew him well, Crooks did not come across as highly political or radicalized by events or organizations, which makes this assassination attempt appear frighteningly banal, and makes one wonder how many like him are lurking behind the scenes.

The ease with which firearms can be bought in the US is shocking and grotesque.

Yossi Mekelberg

For Trump, only a few millimeters separated life from death. But this lucky escape also saved the US from descending into unprecedented turmoil and likely more political violence. As it is, the American political system is polarized and deeply tribal. Research by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has concluded that although this applies to the electorate, it is their representatives, the politicians, who are significantly more polarized and polarizing.
Party chairpersons, mainly among the right, “often select and support extreme candidates,” setting the antagonistic and destructive tone for all levels of political discourse, from the local to the federal, based on a belief that more polarizing candidates are more likely to win elections. Although Trump did not start this trend, he “perfected” it as he rode to victory in 2016, and has paved the way to his current nomination by questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. His claim that the election was “stolen” is widely thought to have been a major cause of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol building, which is still being investigated. And whoever opposes Trump will endure the most vitriolic vilification.
Consider, for instance, how the former president amplified posts on his social media website Truth Social calling for a televised military tribunal for former Republican Representative Liz Cheney, and included a post by another user declaring — in capital letters —  that “Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason. Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.” What she is “guilty of” is investigating Trump’s role in the Capitol attack. It was also reported that during the Jan. 6 riot, he supported the chants calling for Mike Pence, his vice president, to be hanged. Trump’s habit of lashing out wildly against Democrats, for example his characterization of US President Joe Biden as an “old, broken down pile of crap,” is long and disturbing, and soils America’s political debate.
Biden himself was right to admit his mistake and apologize for saying, just days before the assassination attempt on his rival, that it was time to put Trump in a bullseye. It was, no doubt, meant to be a metaphorical bullseye; but leaders, more than anyone else, must be cognizant of the impact their words can have, because at the end of the day it is not necessarily about the literal meaning, but how they are interpreted by people in the street, and most significantly by those who are inclined to resort to violence. Sometimes the path between mere rhetoric and resultant action can be very short.
Both presidential candidates were shaken, as were most Americans, by the attempt on Trump’s life, and their immediate reaction was to call for unity and calm before the forthcoming election could become further tainted by more political violence. Could this set the tone for a calmer campaign? One might hope so, but now that Trump is the victim, and unless this turns out to have been a transformative event for him, we can expect him to yield to temptation and further weaponize the situation by using it to attack his opponents with even more vigor. If this is the case, the main losers will be the American people.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at international affairs think tank Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg