Donald Trump gets shot at an outdoor rally; Joe Biden ends his presidential campaign; and the 2024 Summer Olympics launch in Paris with opening ceremonies conducted down the Seine and Lady Gaga greeting crowds in French (when has an American ever visited a foreign country and spoken the local language?).
Oh and this summer in the Northern Hemisphere is already smashing temperature records, plus we’re experiencing a COVID resurgence. I thought 2020 was chaotic (and it truly was), but 2024 has proven even more unusual. When I saw news that Trump had been shot by a would-be assassin, I simply responded the same way conservatives have reacted to school shootings: I offered my thoughts and prayers. At least Trump survived.
Vice-President Kamala Harris has scooped up the embers of the Democratic torch and hurtled forwards towards November 5, Election Day here in the U.S. (and my 61st birthday). A good birthday present for me would be a completely different candidate to win the race, but I’m smart enough to realize that just won’t happen. I may go rogue and vote Green Party, as I did in 2016. If enough people followed suit, it could probably cost Harris the election, but it could also cost Trump. Die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters blamed folks like me for siphoning votes from her and essentially handing them to Trump. No, I told them! I didn’t cost Clinton the election. She cost herself the election!
But that was almost an entire decade ago, and – unlike many social conservatives – time marches onward. Harris made history when she became the first female and first non-White Vice-President. For many women, the U.S. presidency is the ultimate glass ceiling. But I have to note that, in this country, only men have to register for Selective Service and we have no law that bans male circumcision. So what constitutes gender equity? Many liberals and some moderates have already invested a lot of hope in Harris to save democracy from the hands of the despotic Trump.
Right-wing extremists have already painted Trump as a martyr for surviving the assassination attempt. Tears fell from the eyes of some at the Republican National Convention last week, as their beloved self-anointed prophet recounted the sting of what might have been a fragment of glass that struck his right ear instead of an actual bullet. Meanwhile, congressional hearings are still trying to determine how a geeky 20-year-old managed to climb atop the roof of a building within firing range of the former president – and why. The latter question may speak to the sensitive issue of mental instability, but also attests to the pernicious gun culture in the United States. But at least Democrats in Congress are expressing their collective shock at the assassination attempt, unlike their Republican counterparts who dismissed the riots of January 6, 2021 as “trespassing” and, of course, extend those ubiquitous “thoughts and prayers” after each mass shooting.
Thus, the political pandemonium that is American democracy continues. I only hope none of it contains any firearms.
Image: Gary Larson, © 1988
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