On Monday, June 15, CNN journalist Jake Tapper tweeted, “A senior House Democrat tells Axios: ‘We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.’” What a difference a bloody ear can make in an election year!

More than half a century has passed since the dramatic decade between 1963 and 1973. At that time, Americans became inured to waking up in the morning to read about the latest political figure to be targeted by assassins. Two Kennedys, Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Governor George Wallace, Salvador Allende — to mention only the most newsworthy cases — saw their blood spilled or their lives ended thanks to these operations. Persons and institutions carefully executed their plots, applying the quickest and most definitive solution to an annoying problem.

At the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, that decade saw a cultural clash. In August 1968, it reached a climax at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. War protesters, hippies and yippies got together to stage a popular revolt against a sclerotic, bellicose political establishment. The nation was in a state of effervescence over an unjustified war taking place overseas, in Vietnam, presumably to prevent dominoes from falling.

Is America living a déjà vu moment? Next month, the Democratic National Convention will once again take place in Chicago. A president committed to supporting wars in Ukraine and Israel has refused to follow Lyndon B Johnson’s example and withdraw from seeking re-election. Another Robert F Kennedy (RFK) who doesn’t believe in dominoes is running. Assassination — which eliminated the first RFK from the race — has reappeared as a fact of political life. Some claim we are experiencing Cold War 2.0. Are we also on the brink of the kind of civil trauma that defined the US of 1968?

Following the attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s life, Edward Luce of The Financial Times wrote an article titled, “America is staring into the abyss.” Luce is worried. He writes of “an already existential election” that has now become more “fraught.”

“Violence was already implicit in much of the rhetoric,” as he reminds readers of the US gun culture. “But,” he continues, “the conditions in 2024 are unique. A bullet almost killed the man who is vowing retribution if he is returned to the White House. A spirit of vengeance is haunting America.” 

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Spirit of vengeance:

A factor of motivation guiding human behavior, particularly prized in societies that promote the idea of competition over cooperation.

Contextual note

Luce expects us to feel surprised that an event such as this should reveal the existence of an “abyss” in American society. He ignores the fact that the “spirit of vengeance” has always had a privileged place in US culture. He worries about the fragility of the nation.

“It is not just Donald Trump who dodged a bullet. Half an inch to the left and the cartridge that grazed Trump’s ear would have turned him into a martyr. There is no telling what his death would have unleashed.”

We too can speculate about what would have been “unleashed.” Anti-Trumpers have consistently forecast a civil war if Trump is eliminated, whether by assassination or a defeat in November’s election. Those fears should now be allayed. The brush with martyrdom has practically guaranteed that Trump will defeat Biden in November.

Some commentators believe this new drama has deflated a hitherto growing revolt among Democrats intent on forcing Biden to withdraw his candidacy. If Tapper is to be believed, they now appear resigned to a second Trump presidency. Does Luce feel relieved now that the threat of civil war has been prevented? Or does he think the election may now become more “existential” than ever and that Trump’s “spirit of vengeance” will simply be increased?

Politicians and even The Financial Times journalists have acquired the habit of evoking unrealized and often fanciful fears to grab our attention and obtain our adhesion. Luce’s evocation of an “existential election” conveys the widespread belief that Trump, if re-elected, will conduct an assault on democratic processes and literally cancel future elections.

The same type of fearmongering about other people’s outrageously evil intentions has been used to justify Biden’s foreign policy. The oft-repeated but clearly delusional assertion that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the prelude to his project to reconstitute the Soviet empire has become the go-to argument trotted out to justify prolonging the martyrdom of a generation of Ukrainians. No need to develop the reasoning around the fact, so helpfully signaled by Senator Lindsey Graham, that the real reason for refusing a negotiated peace is that the US covets the “ten to twelve trillion dollars of critical mineral assets” a subdued and fully colonized Ukraine offers for exploitation by Western governments and their enterprises. Trump’s assault on democracy mirrors Putin’s conquest of Europe. With such reasoning, vengeance isn’t required. Pre-emptive opposition gets the job done.

Some commentators have made the case that in recent decades, democratic processes have already reached a terrible level of degradation or dysfunction — one that calls into serious doubt the persistence of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Despite the token presence of third-party candidates, voters (“the people”) have become increasingly frustrated by the binary choice they are given in presidential elections. They are limited to two highly unpopular and ostensibly incompetent or incapable candidates. They have begun to realize that those pairs of candidates have been selected by channels dominated by anonymous sources of wealth and influence, with no connection to “the people.”

That same public may also soon realize that the culture they adhere to deploys a “moral logic” based on the reflex of addressing complex problems with violence rather than dialogue and reasoning. Luce appears to deplore this instinct. He calls it “the spirit of vengeance that is haunting America,” and imagines it’s something new.

Historical note

It will take time for this recent assassination attempt’s significance to unfold within US culture. For the moment, most people believe that it comforts and consolidates the advance Trump was credited with already, especially following Biden’s disastrous debate. The larger question is the one Luce evokes. Is it a sign indicating a “spirit of vengeance” that “is haunting America?”

Luce chose the verb “haunt,” with its connotation of the supernatural and its association with forces of evil, to inspire fear. As I mentioned earlier, politicians and journalists understand that fear attracts people’s attention. In this case, a simpler interpretation of Luce’s intention would be his appeal to the widely disseminated message that Trump inspires fear, is committed to vengeance and must therefore be defeated in this “existential” election.

If there is a spirit of vengeance, as Luce claims, hasn’t it always been a feature of US culture? The trend of issuing death threats to anyone with whom one disagrees existed long before social media. War and economic sanctions, a permanent feature of US foreign policy, are fully materialized equivalents of death threats. Washington, DC puts into practice a culture fostered by Hollywood. It works on a simple premise for its screenplays: For around 90 minutes a problem emerges, gains in complexity and emotional charge before being conclusively resolved in a spray of bullets or other forms of purgative violence. The villains fall, accompanied by the tragic sacrifice of one or two innocents (played by what Hollywood terms, “character actors”).

That was the scenario that might have played out on Saturday at Trump’s rally, if a Hollywood studio had been producing it. One innocent died and others were wounded, but in this real-world case, the villain, Trump, survived. The status of the sniper, Thomas Crooks, remains a mystery. Some Biden Democrats may secretly think of him as a modern but unlucky version of the romanticized “hero” archetype: the brave soul who, understanding the drift of history, had the courage to step up and assassinate America’s Hitler, thereby ridding the world of absolute evil.

On Saturday, June 13, the US was lucky. Crooks merely grazed Trump’s ear. Perhaps the experience will make the orange dictator more humble and less malicious after his predicted return to the White House. At least the civil war Luce feared has not yet been “unleashed.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

[Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.