Opinion: Donald Trump assassination attempt: How is this 'antithetical to America'?
After an assassination attempt against former US President Donald Trump on Saturday, the headline of a New York Times editorial read: “The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America.”
In a similar vein, President Joe Biden gave a nationally televised speech in which he told Americans: “We debate and disagree. We compare and contrast the character of the candidates, the records, the issues, the agenda, the vision for America. But in America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box. You know, that’s how we do it, at the ballot box - not with bullets.”
One can perfectly understand such fine and refined, and entirely delusional, sentiments at a time of national strife, with the president aiming to settle nerves and restore calm, even as conspiracy theories and blame games heat up.
Delusions can be useful; even in Plato’s philosophy, myths and deceptions can assume the status of “noble lies”. But if Americans were to be honest with themselves, was this violent act targeting a political figure out of character and “antithetical to America” - or was it definitive to the entire history of the US, written, as it were, into the very DNA of its violent political culture?
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