Something Is Wrong: We all should have known that this was coming. Those who speak words of death should be called to account. (Opinion)
“I knew immediately something was wrong,” former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after the assassination attempt against him on Saturday night. Something is certainly wrong with America today. The United States has strayed far from the values of its founders, away from the faith that once held us together, and distant from the cultural commonalities that we once shared.
Thousands of people have turned their backs on the ethics of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and the pursuit of virtue that built this nation and sustained it for nearly a quarter-millennium—which was an astounding, unprecedented achievement. They work actively to undermine those values and punish the “bitter” people who stubbornly continue to “cling” to them. Government, businesses, and social and cultural institutions actively work to undermine those principles and punish those who hold them.
Last Monday, in a video call with top donors, the sitting president of the United States said of his opponent, “It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” The very next day, first lady Jill Biden said of Trump, “He’s evil,” in a campaign rally speech. The Democratic National Committee planned to put up billboards in battleground states calling the Project 2025 effort by think tanks unaffiliated with Trump’s campaign “Trump’s plan to be a dictator on Day 1.” In a campaign speech on Friday night, Joe Biden said, “Most importantly, and I mean this sincerely, Trump is a threat to this nation.”
A continual torrent of similar statements has flowed from other politicians opposing the former president. Trump’s rhetoric has regularly been caustic and exceedingly low-class, and he has had a strong hand in the ongoing vulgarization of political discourse. Nonetheless, Trump’s mockery of Biden has generally centered on allegations of incompetence and incapacity. Trump’s barbs are nothing like the incendiary statements emanating from the White House calling Trump an “evil” “existential threat” and an aspiring “dictator” who belongs “in the bull’s-eye.”
President Biden’s expression of sympathy in the wake of the shootings at the Pennsylvania Trump rally was appropriate and appeared heartfelt. It was far too little, however, and much too late a gesture to have any real effect in restoring some basic decency to the political process.
Power has thoroughly corrupted the people who now rule over the United States. The greedy and increasingly brutal and unprincipled pursuit of power has unleashed previously unimaginable levels of public indecency. Yet, somehow, we are surprised by the outcome.
No one is blameless in this situation. We have all done wrong. Some, however, are far more to blame than others. It is incumbent upon us, as a people, to face up to that and stop ignoring or making excuses for those who speak words of death.
It seems clear to me that a reckoning is on the way and has just moved much closer to the present. Either we, as a people, will honestly conduct that process of national self-evaluation, repentance, change, and renewal ourselves, or it will be imposed on us from outside, with far worse and pitilessly indiscriminate consequences.
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