The apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, evidently carried out by a lone shooter at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killed one spectator and severely injured several others. The shooter is also dead. The former president himself suffered a minor injury to his right ear, and has been discharged from hospital. While little is known so far about the shooter and his motivations, the incident was a grim reminder of the new era of intensified political violence in which we are living.
There has long been violence in American politics. The Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords was injured in a mass shooting at a constituent event in Arizona in 2011; President Reagan survived an assassination attempt in 1981, carried out by a stalker of the actor Jodie Foster. Black Americans have faced violent oppression when attempting to exercise the franchise, which for decades was kept a white-only privilege throughout much of the country not only through the cold calculation of law but through the bloody use of force.
