Tucked away in a plastic bag buried in a box of odd memories, I have a small, flat piece of stone.
It’s very crumbly and jagged, so the bag is in a small box. There is a typed note inside the bag, since nothing drives historians, collectors and heirs crazy like miscellaneous bits of ephemera with no context as to their origin.
“Washington Hilton, where Reagan was shot,” was what I typed on the note, more for myself than posterity. I stayed there in 1989, eight years after the incident. For years I’ve collected rocks and chips from odd places: battlefields, historic sites, even a Roman wall in London (I hope the statute of limitations has expired on that one).
We like physical reminders, souvenirs if you will, of the wheres and whens of history, even in those circumstances when we will never know the whys.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for President of the United States. I think he got a raw deal most of the time he was in office before, because established politicians, those who would lord their power we gave them over us, couldn’t control him. Indeed, I’m reasonably sure they fear him more than our foreign enemies do; it’s notable the amount of respect they held and hold for what America was under Trump.
For years now, the Democrat party on the national and sometimes local levels – note I said the party, not the individuals – have waged war against Trump.
Trump has been called Hitler, a dictator, a tyrant, all kinds of names. The scales of justice were twisted, turned and bent to create laws out of other laws so he could be convicted of newly-created crimes which will never been charged against his predecessors. A special prosecutor was hired in violation of the Constitution to spend millions of tax dollars to find some way to jail Trump.
Video and audio were edited to change the context and content of things he said. The media, who are supposed to be the watchdogs of democracy, instead were content to be the lapdogs of Trump’s detractors. They happily fell into the role since he wouldn’t play their games and worship them, as had so many others.
Trump refused, and refuses, to be anyone’s plaything. He will not be bullied or frightened. The way to drive a bully crazy, whether in person or in the digital world, is to call them out for what they are – or simply ignore their screeching. He does both.
Trump understands, I think, that the average American is finally fed up with much of what is going on.
Many don’t feel like they can trust the media, their elected officials, or anything agency controlled by those elected officials.
The current administration hasn’t done anything to regain that trust; indeed, in many ways they have made it worse. Many of us can’t fathom that the Justice Department and the national teacher’s union sicced the FBI on parents who dared question what schools were teaching their kids. Illegals are given free shelter, health benefits, food, phones and money while our veterans have to deal with cockroaches and mold in hospitals – if they can get any help at all.
I’ve sat in a lot of murder trials, as well as other court hearings, but I have never heard of Hollywood producers being hired to create a video of evidence being presented to the judge,- or in this case, a supposed bi-partisan committee who set out not to find the truth, but to prove how Trump was alleged to have attempted to foment an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
That isn’t the type of thing to build trust.
Trump was accused of calling soldiers losers and suckers for dying in combat, a quote that was denied by more than a dozen witnesses and attributed to him by someone who wasn’t even close to Trump when the words were allegedly said – but the statement fit the narrative, it was posted as gospel, defended by the media, and anyone who denied it was pilloried.
Since 2021, when Joe Biden took office, the federal government and others have been after Trump like a hungry hound on a hot trail. In televised addresses to the American people, Biden has declared Trump and anyone who supports him to be dangers to democracy.
“Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.” That’s an official X post from Biden on June 28. He told donors in a well-documented statement that “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.”
On Saturday, a sad lost soul did exactly that.
Thankfully, Trump moved at just the right moment, and a bullet went through his ear instead of his skull.
To his credit, Biden made a very heartfelt and sincere sounding statement Saturday night. I think part of his confused mind realized that things truly had gone too far. Then on Sunday he made a brief appearance to update the American people on what had happened. His address Sunday night showed signs of veering back to the same old story.
In less than 12 hours, members of the media were speculating if Trump was to blame because he used some rather forthright rhetoric regarding those on the left who continue to attack him. One said it was his own fault because of Jan. 6. Others wondered if the whole thing was somehow arranged by Trump to gain votes and sympathy. With the media saying things like that, it’s no wonder so many people wonder if it was a setup.
Whichever side you’re on, it’s frightening that the best security detail in the world somehow didn’t cover a position that the below-average deer hunter would immediately see as a perfect spot for a shot at history.
I think the folks complaining and making horrible jokes about marksmanship have no idea what might have been unleashed. I am horrified at the idea of any former or sitting president being assassinated. It doesn’t matter if the shooter was politically motivated, trying to show off for a girl, or needed a hug or whatever. As it was he killed a firefighter who shielded his daughters, and injured two other innocent people.
But in a time like this, when we are so polarized, to suggest (much less attempt) killing a leading political figure supported by millions of Americans – the result terrifies me, as a Christian and an American.
People are angry, frightened at the potential future for children in our country, and they need answers and solutions, not namecalling. They know grocery prices have gone up, good jobs have gone down, the drug and immigration problems are insane, children shouldn’t get life-altering sex change surgeries, and men don’t belong in women’s bathrooms.
I hope and pray the angry words and attention-getting, click-generating social media posts fade away. They probably will, since some now-cooler heads have realized they bear responsibility for a disturbed young man deciding to try to assassinate a former and possible future president.
My sister sent me a copy of one of my past columns the other day. I noted in that column that we are all Americans. We are better than this.
I hope and pray we still are better than this, and that there will never be a day when someone picks up a piece of a crumbling wall, puts it in a plastic bag, and notes that it came from the site of one of battles in the war that destroyed America.
