An assassination attempt and the American way

It has been difficult to look away from the assassination attempt at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner on Saturday in Washington, D.C., where a left-wing radical named Cole Tomas Allen ran through a security check point toward the ballroom where President Trump and the first lady had already been seated. Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and some knives as he shot a federal officer at the checkpoint but was apprehended before becoming a threat to dignitaries and guests gathered in the ballroom.

Before his failed attempt to kill officials from the Trump administration, Allen sent a manifesto to family members explaining and defending what he was about to do. He wrote, “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” Allen says he had ranked Trump administration officials from highest to lowest and expressed his intention to kill as many as he could. He also explained which security personnel and bystanders he would be willing to kill or maim if they got in his way. He rationalized that anyone he might kill is “complicit” in Trump’s crimes simply because he or she “chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor.”

The manifesto reads like the ravings of a madman. And yet how mad is he? Maybe he is simply someone radicalized by what has become standard fare accusations about the president from those on the left—that he is guilty of rape, pedophilia, treason, or worse.

President Trump is not above critique. I have publicly criticized him for a number of moral and political failures, including undermining longstanding political and moral norms. Nevertheless, President Trump has never been charged with or convicted of rape, pedophilia, or treason. How unhinged does one have to be to commit a terrorist act on the basis of claims that are so contested? Yet that is what Allen did. He will likely have the rest of his life to think about whether it was worth it. Ten or twenty years from now, Trump and his administration will be a fading memory, but Allen will still be rightfully rotting in prison. Madness.

This is at least the third time that there has been an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. The hatred for the man has reached an irrational and undemocratic boiling point, and it is activating fringe elements on the left to political violence. What is going on in our nation right now that political violence is becoming more and more common—and that more and more people seem to think it justified? Or at least plausible?

I’m not the only American exhausted by the acrimony that has poisoned our politics. In the aftermath of what happened Saturday night, Robbie George wrote, “Please, can everyone, right or left, MAGA or anti-MAGA, Republican or Democrat, stop catastrophizing and trying to get everyone on your side worked up into a rage? It's not Flight 93. We're not on the verge of fascism. We do not need to take desperate measures. Our fellow citizens with whom we disagree are not devils incarnate or personifications of evil. We need to argue with our political adversaries—passionately perhaps—but with respect for their humanity and dignity. We don't need to destroy them.”

What Professor George is describing used to be the way everyone thought about politics in this country. Politics have always been tough and at times ruthless. But we have always put a premium on preserving our fellow citizen’s right to be wrong—and to be so publicly. Our grandfathers were willing to storm the beaches of Normandy to preserve the right of their neighbor to be a jackaninny. We seem to be losing that common sense of civic identity. The order of the day now is to treat political opponents with ruthless indignation and public denunciations. None of this is serving any good end, much less leading to the endurance of our great republic.

And yet we cannot simply “fix” things by calling for everyone to be nicer (although that wouldn’t hurt). Nor can we melt the malaise by holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Our problems are much deeper than that. The problem is in the soul of our nation—or to be more specific—within the souls of our nation. Our difficulties are spiritual to the core, although few are willing to admit it.

Politics matter, but they are not ultimate. Nor can they fix what is fundamentally broken about the human condition. Until we come to terms with that reality, we will keep putting band-aids on cancer—as if some program or new policy or politician will somehow lead us to a promised land where citizens are no longer radicalized like Cole Allen was. That’s not how this works.

Our only way out of the mess we are in is through a deep repentance and renewal. And that begins with recognizing that there is a transcendent moral order to which we are all accountable and that bears witness to a transcendent Being from whose hand we all have ours (Acts 17:28). That fundamental sense has been lost, and it is never more apparent than on occasions like we witnessed Saturday night. I’m praying that we might get it back—and soon.