The number jumps off the page like a shark out of still water, a missile plume off the horizon, an explosion before you can hear the sound – and it is scary. The latest Rassmussen poll reports that “more than a quarter of Democrats … said America would be better off if former President Donald Trump had been killed” in last week’s assassination attempt. Ominous.
This credible poll of 1000 registered voters says 28 percent of Democrats wanted the “man armed with an assault-style rifle and scope hiding in bushes near Trump’s … golf club” to succeed.
Stop everything. The horror in that number is palpable. It should be enough to make any serious, constitutionally respectful, peace-loving American – old, young, whatever their issues – shudder.
This is NOT the thinking of those schooled in American history, liberty, law, or political tolerance, who believe in non-violent representative democracy, in this constitutional republic.
This is, instead, the thinking of those who fall into other – scary – camps. This is the thinking of those brainwashed into believing anything is justified to stop a political opponent, and who have been convinced by Democrat leaders and the media that killing a presidential candidate is okay.
Historically, whether these respondents know it or not, they fit – in their blithe, hate-filled mindset – with those who passionately followed Marx, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler’s brownshirts.
This is exactly the mindset that justifies ending dissent – and stopping a candidate with whom they disagree – by any means. This is how a one-party state works, whether communist, fascist, autocratic, or just tyrannical.
This is how the Qing dynasty in China justified killing leaders and members of the Mongol community in the 1750s; how Jean-Jacquie Dessalines, Haiti’s black leader in 1804, ordered all whites killed; how the “trail of tears,” massacre of Native Americans, occurred 1830 to 1850.
This is how the Turks in the 1890s, under the Ottoman Empire, first demonized Orthodox Christians, allowing anti-Christian pogroms that killed 300,000; how the Ottomans watched Greeks and Armenians killed after WWI; how Hitler killed six million Jews in his “final solution,” and how communist leaders dispose of opponents – silencing 94 million in 100 years.
That is NOT how Americans think, or ever did, barbarically, in a conscience-deadening way, immoral, demonizing, violence-justifying way, imagining that the Republic is “better off” with political opponents conveniently killed by brainwashed, hate-filled assassins.
One is hard-pressed to place this horrifying number – 28 percent of Democrats – in proper context. Would 28 percent of conservatives – whatever their party – ever want Joe Biden, Kamilla Harris, or in yesteryear JFK, RFK, or Martin Luther King – assassinated?
Put aside how assassinations create political martyrs, sow tribal, personal, and intergenerational anger, and blood vendettas that grow from assassinating innocent leaders, Anwar Sadat, Mahatma, Indira, and Rajiv Gandhi to Yitzak Rabin – Just think just about our conscience, who we are.
Should any American wish any other American to die for holding different, albeit legitimate, and honestly grounded opinions? Should anyone want another killed for those opinions? Or for style, temperament, or approach to politics? Should any Democrat wish – even one, let alone 28 percent – a candidate killed? Is this in line with the idea of a peaceful republic’s survival?
Obviously not, yet here we are. That number gives a shudder and bodes ill for future political dialogue and our ability to “keep the republic,” as Franklin warned – never mind keep our minds, tempers, and peace in this blessed nation.
No, this is dead wrong. Yet no Democrat leaders – in government or the media – have condemned this group. Where are hundreds of peace-loving Democrats on congressional or state house steps saying they are against political violence? Crickets.
We had better stop this way of thinking, or unthinking – this sowing and fanning of political hate, explicit and implicit “threat to democracy” talk, and get our heads back in the right place, or what follows … may be a kind of history we should never want to repeat. Ominous.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
