An ear is for listening.

Our American future

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Trump's attempted assassination is old news already, but I am sure it will dominate the news stations for probably longer than it should. After all, the guy is unharmed, but America might have dodged a bullet, too.

Presidents get shot at. That's a risk presidential candidates should accept when they put in their resumes. Here's a list you may have forgotten or didn't know about. I asked ChatGPT to compile it for me because I had the feeling America has seen this before a lot more times than I knew about it.

1. Andrew Jackson (1835)

Assassin: Richard Lawrence

Details: Lawrence, an unemployed house painter, attempted to shoot Jackson as he exited a congressional funeral. Both of Lawrence's pistols misfired, and Jackson reportedly beat him with his cane until bystanders subdued him. Lawrence was found to be insane and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

2. Abraham Lincoln (1864)

Assassin: John Wilkes Booth

Details: Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Booth, a famous actor and Confederate sympathizer, shot Lincoln in the back of the head. Lincoln died the following morning. Booth believed he was aiding the Southern cause, but his act ultimately solidified Lincoln's legacy and intensified the Union's resolve during the Civil War's closing days.

3. James A. Garfield (1881)

Assassin: Charles J. Guiteau

Details: On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., by Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker. Garfield did not die immediately but succumbed to infections and complications from his wounds on September 19, 1881. Guiteau was captured and hanged the following year. The assassination highlighted issues with the patronage system and led to civil service reform.

4. William McKinley (1901)

Assassin: Leon Czolgosz

Details: McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley twice in the abdomen. The president initially appeared to recover but died from gangrene caused by his wounds on September 14, 1901. Czolgosz was quickly tried, convicted, and executed in the electric chair. McKinley's assassination led to increased security for the president and the eventual formation of the Secret Service.

5. Theodore Roosevelt (1912)

Assassin: John Flammang Schrank

Details: During a campaign speech, Schrank shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet was slowed by a steel eyeglass case and a thick speech manuscript in his coat pocket. Despite his injury, Roosevelt continued to deliver his 90-minute speech before seeking medical attention.

6. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933)

Assassin: Giuseppe Zangara

Details: Zangara fired shots at Roosevelt while he was giving a speech in Miami. He missed Roosevelt but killed Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Zangara was executed for the crime.

7. Harry S. Truman (1950)

Assassins: Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo

Details: The attackers attempted to storm Blair House, where Truman was residing during White House renovations. In the ensuing gunfight, Torresola was killed, and Collazo was captured and sentenced to life in prison (later commuted to life imprisonment).

8. John F. Kennedy (1963)

Assassin: Lee Harvey Oswald

Details: Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Oswald fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository, hitting Kennedy twice. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Oswald was captured but was himself shot and killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Kennedy's assassination remains one of the most scrutinized events in U.S. history, spawning numerous conspiracy theories and extensive investigations.

9. Richard Nixon (1974)

Assassin: Samuel Byck

Details: Byck planned to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House. He attempted to hijack a commercial flight from Baltimore/Washington International Airport but was shot and killed by police before the plane took off.

10. Gerald Ford (1975)

Assassins: Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme and Sara Jane Moore

Details: Fromme, a Charles Manson follower, pointed a gun at Ford in Sacramento but was quickly subdued. Seventeen days later, Moore fired at Ford in San Francisco but missed. Both women were sentenced to life in prison (later paroled).

11. Jimmy Carter (1979)

Assassin: Raymond Lee Harvey

Details: Harvey, who had a history of mental illness, was arrested carrying a starter pistol at a Carter rally. He claimed involvement in a larger plot to assassinate Carter, but there was insufficient evidence to charge him with conspiracy.

12. Ronald Reagan (1981)

Assassin: John Hinckley Jr.

Details: Hinckley shot Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan was hit by a ricocheted bullet, which lodged near his heart. Hinckley, found not guilty by reason of insanity, was institutionalized until 2016, when he was released under strict conditions.

13. George H.W. Bush (1993)

Assassin: Iraqi intelligence

Details: A plot to kill Bush with a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait was foiled. U.S. intelligence attributed the plan to Iraqi operatives, leading to retaliatory missile strikes on Iraqi intelligence headquarters.

14. Bill Clinton (1994)

Assassin: Francisco Martin Duran

Details: Duran fired shots at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue. He was tackled by tourists and later sentenced to 40 years in prison.

15. George W. Bush (2005)

Assassin: Vladimir Arutyunian

Details: Arutyunian threw a live grenade at Bush during a speech in Tbilisi, Georgia. The grenade failed to detonate, and Arutyunian was later sentenced to life imprisonment.

16. Barack Obama (2011)

Assassin: Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez

Details: Ortega-Hernandez fired several shots at the White House from a distance, aiming to kill Obama. No one was injured, and Ortega-Hernandez was apprehended and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

These incidents highlight the constant danger faced by public figures and the bravery of those who protect them. They also underscore the varied motivations and mental states of would-be assassins, ranging from political ideologies to personal grievances and mental illness.

This particular incident comes at a time of major division in the U.S., so much so that most of the population lives in two different universes.

In one of the universes, Trump is validated and glorified now more than ever. That moment, he got up from under the secret service agents shielding him with their bodies, waved a feast, and repeated "Fight! Fight! Fight!" kind of tells it all. It goes with that time in Waco, Texas, earlier this year, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), when he proclaimed, "I am your warrior, I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."​ (YouTube)​. Now, he's going to be their resurrected rich Jesus, and they will be his army of loyal apostles.

In the other universe, some people believe this was a "2 inches from a perfect Saturday" incident. In their estimations, Trump is nothing but bad news for American democracy, values, justices, and peace, summarized here in a video, and here by the Lincoln Project, and in this new documentary interviewing multiple people working for Trump during his previous term.

The point is – there are two completely different Americas right now, and they have nothing in common other than Starbucks. This makes me think that if Trump was actually dead, he'd be the MAGA's George Floyd, and that crowd would respond in ways the rest of the country would be unprepared to deal with.

Trump said it himself – "a blood bath." And Project 2025 organizer and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said, "The second American revolution will be bloodless if the left allows it to be."

With all that blood talk, it's no wonder that Biden and politicians on both sides of the aisle came out to come down the American public. "Violence is not what America is all about," they say. We should be settling our differences in political discourse.

Sounds good.

But that's not what happened after the last election. Instead, we got January 6. It's not what has been happening for the last ten years or ever. The Black Lives Matter movement wasn't that long ago. Before that, there was the Ferguson, Missouri (2014) riots, the Baltimore Protests (2015) riots, the Charlotte, North Carolina (2016) riots, and the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally (2017). All violent!

America reacts with violence the way people instantly pucker their lips when biting into a lemon. It's an instant reaction. Shoot first. Justify yourself later.

Meanwhile, the rhetoric gets more and more violent. The finger-pointing is more and more aggressive. The guns are more and more plentiful. The discontent gets deeper and deeper. Trump's speeches are more and more outrageous. And the calcification of the two universes has become more and more hardcore. Each sees the other as their mortal enemy to be eliminated at all costs and by any means. Hence, Mathew Carzypants, who failed his shooting range tests, decided to "save" the world by aiming at what he saw as an existential evil.

Immediately, many on The Left gloated and pointed out that Trump brought this upon himself. In the opposite universe, pundits used this as proof of why their political opponents are indeed an existential threat to their existence.

America is stuck in a power struggle it hasn't seen since I don't know when. No one is happy about it, but most readily participate in it. People yell at each other or avoid each other so they don't have to yell at each other.

That's no way to live.

I am not going to pretend that I know how this event will influence the election. I am also not going to talk about how the Right and the Left spin this to benefit their already-established narrative. You can turn on Fox or CNN and hear it for yourself.

As an independent, I want to see both candidates gone. Most independents want a "normal" candidate. We don't want Grandpa Joe or Trump Juses. We do not want to vote for one in protest of the other. We actually want someone we can get behind.

But no one is listening to us.

Now, with Trump's ear shot off, it's probably going to get worse for us. If we don't vote for Biden, we might lose American democracy and our votes altogether, as Trump believes that all the decisions on candidates should be made at the caucuses and primaries rather than the general election, meaning we will have no voice at all if he has his way.

Meanwhile, we worry about what kind of instability a Biden death would bring. Nature frequently does this to 80+ year-olds, of which Trump will be one very soon, too.

On Saturday, America might have come a couple of inches away from a shattered, barely sustained, fractious peace to which the current government may not have been able to respond properly. Perhaps we should count our blessings as small as they are. At the same time, it's getting harder and harder to find blessings in American political life.

There's no guarantee that if Trump loses this election, fair and square, he will just ride into the sunset without an incident. We might be witnessing January 6 on steroids soon after. At the same time, if Joe Biden wins and the 25^th amendment has to be invoked a year or two into his term, I worry about the ensuing instability, especially in a world full of increasingly blood-thirsty dictators coming at democracies from multiple directions. Can a Joe Biden presidency protect the free world?

I guess "instability" will be the name of this new chapter in American history. I am infinitely grateful to have lived, worked, and played in Hawaii in the 90s and California since. Perhaps we have to go through this pain so the chaos could birth a better future eventually led by conscientious leaders invested in "we, the people," not in their own political careers.

But meanwhile, buckle up friends. Turbulance ahead. That kid shooting at Trump just turned on the seat belt sign. You might end up shitting your pants in your seat. You won't be the only one. This will be one stinky ride. Let's hope it will be over soon.

Oh, yeah, and innocent people will die, or the dead will be called innocent.

Sorry for the darkness in this post.

Thanks for reading. Stay sane!

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Yours truly,

V