Living And Dying By The Gun

Many observers think that US politics have been irreparably fractured for around 9 or 10 years .....

The US Politicians Are Bitterly Opposed

 ... in fact ever since the arrival of one Donald Trump on the political scene.

Of course the road to this fracture was much longer than that, and in fact consensus politics for the good of everyone, and not just one side or the other probably started to fail around the time of the election of a triumphant Ronald Reagan, who swept America to the right and using his control of Congress he cut taxes, while massively increasing the defence budget, thus creating the ever escalating budget deficits that so haunt the US today.

The trend towards ever increasing lack of consensus in the US has only increased over the decades since Reagan, but really accelerated in the last two decades (with many presidents tied up by political opponents during their time in office). Trumps road to the Republican party nomination, was to say the least circuitous. Trump first registered as a Republican in 1987; then as a member of the Independence Party (the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party), in 1999; then as a Democrat in 2001; then a Republican again in 2009; unaffiliated in 2011; and then finally as a Republican again in 2012 .... and Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican Party Presidential Nomination in June 2015 which in won in 2016 .... the rest as they say is history.

Butler - Pennsylvania

Shuffle forward to July 2024, and Trump (who is a firm advocate of gun ownership), and Trump attends a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a lone gunman, climbed on to a roof near the rally, took aim and fired with a semi automatic AR-15–style rifle ..... 

Trumps Ear Wound

...... hitting Trumps right ear (wounding him slightly), but killing one rally attendee, and critically wounding two others. The FBI subsequently identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter, who was killed on the scene by the Secret Service Counter Assault Team. The motive for the attack remains unknown a week after events.

Lone Gunman - Butler Pennsylvania

Of course Trump is milking this to the full (and if history repeats, as it did for Reagan, who survived an assassination attempt and won a landslide), in the hope of an election boost.

"Its Just A Flesh Wound" - Monty Python

.... But the fact is, that its Trump himself who has taken US politics to the point that some fear a civil war if he wins, or if he loses .... his inflammatory statements and often downright lies are believed wholeheartedly by some, perhaps even 50 per cent of the voters, while the other 50 per cent reject him and what he stands for entirely.

With the extreme old age of the two contestants (neither of whom who can dodge times bullet), and the extremely bipartisan nature of US politics, its hard to imagine what would have happened inside the US if Trump had been killed, but one suspects it might have been ugly. Of course, its not just many in the US who fear what the next four years may bring, many in the rest of the world, from the Ukraine, South Korea, NATO, through to Taiwan, also fear what the next four years might bring after the US election ....