July 14, 2024

Rome is burning, the deck chairs on the Titanic have long toppled into icy waters, and the emperors of the world are standing before their people stark naked.

Don’t bother getting up. I know you’re busy.

If you don’t realize we’re living through treacherous times, then obviously you’re not paying attention—to anything. But make no mistake: Your silo is running out of oxygen, too.

We’re in trouble, and no amount of TikTok frivolity will preclude our even further decline. On Saturday, the leading contender for the American presidency survived an assassination attempt. It took place at one of Donald Trump’s rallies, those Republican Woodstocks for red state, flag-waving, elite-loathing Americans. It’s all but certain that the sniper was not wearing a MAGA hat.

It just goes to show that when perverse duties call, support for the Second Amendment crosses party lines.

Many Democrats, and far more progressives, having worn down all their teeth and blown their tops despising Trump, privately must have wished for an assassin to emerge and take the 2024 election out of the voters’ hands. Make a Trump presidency a nullity, the old-fashioned way—not at the ballot box, but in a coffin. That’s how desperate Trump’s detractors have been. Praying for a Hail Mary aimed from an AR-15. Remember Madonna at the Women’s March in 2017?

Sometimes you get what you wish for. Sometimes the irresponsible rhetoric of one is fulfilled by another.

And Trump’s the threat to democracy when a vast conspiracy seems to have unfolded—involving the First Family and the West Wing, an ex-president, Hollywood actors, and mainstream media—to shield Americans from the truth about Joe Biden’s competence?

It goes without saying that when a country reaches a point of polarization where people can’t speak to one another civilly without having a stroke, refuse to treat each other with mutual respect, and where political opinions become litmus tests of moral standing, guns, eventually, come out.

Given the recent turmoil at universities, railway stations, sporting events, Christmas tree lighting and college graduation ceremonies—all ostensibly about freeing Palestine but ultimately about imprisoning America in an Islamofascist fiefdom—rising, unpunished criminality, 11 million unvetted immigrants who are responsible for some of that crime, the betrayal of allies, an unabated heat wave, and now, with the election looming, a failed assassination attempt against Trump, is all pretty gasp-producing.

So discombobulating, the improbable takes many new forms: The Democratic Socialists just withdrew its endorsement of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Apparently, as of late, she has been exhibiting insufficient hatred of Jews and Israel.

The pandemic brought many changes to our lives. But now America’s ancient history has noisily returned. America is still a young country, but four of our presidents were assassinated (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy), three injured (Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump), and 13 assassination attempts were foiled. We just celebrated our 248th birthday.

The social upheavals of the 1960s, with its racial riots, antiwar protests, bra-burnings, and tie-dyed hallucinogens, are starting to look quaint by comparison. There was gridlock on the way to Woodstock, but the information superhighway conceals no speed traps. The rapid changes in our society—the speed with which we receive information, and our susceptibility to misinformation—only exacerbates the feeling that we can’t keep pace with the jerky movements of current events.

Several weeks ago, Trump was scheduled to be sentenced for a crime no one could quite explain. Then the Supreme Court ruled that he was presumptively immune from some acts of criminality altogether. A few days ago, he narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet.

Less than a month ago, Hollywood’s most sparkly heavyweights turned out to raise $30 million for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. Last week, in an all-out casting call, they recanted. George Clooney and Jeffrey Katzenberg had recommended the wrong horse. And they publicly admitted it—the former in the New York Times! Suddenly Biden’s box office appeal looked like Democratic donors, in LA parlance, had invested in a flop.

Suddenly, however, the horror that we share with the turbulent 1960s has revealed itself: assassinations. Back then, America lost John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. In this new decade and millennium, Trump survived, but the stakes have been raised. The barbaric allure of assassinations has resurfaced as a political option. Just when our leaders were getting used to the weaponization of our justice system, now they have to countenance real weapons that might foil their candidacy.

We were already having trouble enticing the best among us to run for elected office. Good luck making the case for public life now.

And we are left with yet another national security problem. Someone just re-introduced the idea of voting with your gun. He missed, but we must guard against a repeat of the 1960s.

Robert Kennedy’s son, and namesake, is running for president, too. Assassins are not discouraged by third-party candidacies and low polling numbers. The Republican National Convention is set to take place this week. It will be filled with elected officials who are no longer just targets on MSNBC and the New York Times. They could become actual targets.

Trump dodged a bullet, literally, but Biden, figuratively, has so many knives sticking out from his back, his campaign is looking a lot like elder abuse, replete with Shakespearean betrayals worthy of summer stock. No wonder he shuffles his feet and slurs his words.

Europe is going through its own period of renewed political violence, which explains how England and France ended up with extreme left-wing governments while the rest of the continent has swung to the right. Beware the encroaching caliphate has become an unspoken dread.

Political alignments are much more difficult to come by; antisemitism is present everywhere. We have come to learn—albeit a lesson never actually remembered—that violence against Jews always portends much worse difficulties for everyone.

There are those who believe that Trump is the answer to righting what’s wrong in the world, and he will be especially adept at curing the ailments within America. That’s quite an assignment and grandiose campaign pledge. Fortunately, albeit not a sentiment shared by all, he is still alive to possibly make good on those promises.

For the rest of us stuck in this unrelenting heat, and for New Yorkers, in particular, the summer of 1977 comes to mind. That’s when the Bronx was burning, Harlem was the scene of widespread looting, and the Son of Sam terrorized all the boroughs. So far, at least the lights haven’t gone out.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”