In an older America, an America that is now nothing but a fading memory in the minds of a few grey-haired old-timers, there used to be a saying: if you buy the ticket, you have to take the ride. Popular among users of psychedelic drugs, this saying was meant to warn the user about the reality of what they were getting into. Once you took that pill or swallowed those magic mushrooms, you were in for the ride, no matter what. The "trip" could be pleasant, it could be revelatory, or it could be a blood-curdling nightmare. But no matter how the trip turned out, you simply couldn't back out until it was all over.
The hippies are mostly gone now, but the old hippie saying now has a new air of relevance about it. For what goes for LSD and magic mushrooms also goes for political polarisation and violence.
Even as many now celebrate Trump's miraculous luck, and see his survival as a sign from God, such enthusiasm seems badly misplaced. The bullets destined for Trump ended up killing a completely innocent person sitting in the bleachers, and severely wounding at least one more; this was hardly the work of a merciful guardian angel. Still, there's a surreal quality to the photos of Trump standing defiant, blood streaking across his face. Had they been part of a work of fiction, they'd have been dismissed as too on the nose, too unrealistic. In America's ill-fated 2024 election cycle, truth has become stranger than fiction.
[su_pullquote]"In America's ill-fated 2024 election cycle, truth has become stranger than fiction."[/su_pullquote]When one looks at the sombre reactions to this assassination attempt, it's hard to avoid a certain sense of absurdity to it all. The shock, grief and dismay at what has happened is very real, and it is extremely bipartisan. Yet nobody can really pretend to be surprised. In fact, this shooting is singularly unsurprising: America has spent the last eight years warning about the unique evil of Trump; the Democratic Party's re-election slogan is literally that "democracy is on the ballot", and that if Trump were to win, a new era of fascism and darkness is sure to descend on the country. Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of marginalised people's lives are supposedly at risk; what then is an assassin's bullet or two, given the enormity of the stakes?
It is no wonder, then, that the mood in America at this point is one of despondency and depression. Having already bought the "ticket", people are becoming immensely uncomfortable with the way the "ride" is going. The same people who — either jokingly or seriously — talked about how someone needed to put a bullet into Trump now recoil in horror at the reality of political violence, like a kid playing too many violent video games and foolishly thinking this means he knows what real violence is like.
For a short while, most people in America are likely to try to back away from the brink, to dial down the rhetoric, to cool the talk about how the sky is falling and the other side is out to destroy everything you hold dear. And this seems to be exactly what is happening right now, on both sides of the aisle. Joe Biden himself has called for calmer tempers and cooler rhetoric: in America, differences should be settled with ballots, not bullets. Trump himself seems eager to play along: a recent Axios article laid out just how much this brush with death seems to have changed Trump’s thinking. His speech at the Republican national convention has been completely reworked in the aftermath of the failed assassination: apparently it is now aiming at trying to preach a message of political unity rather than further division. For now, both sides of America are talking about peace, love and understanding. It is their first time doing so in many, many years.
But as much as people would like this new era to last, it can't — and it won't. Political division isn't merely a product of bad thoughts; often, they are the surface level symptom of much deeper issues within a society. And the sad truth about America today is that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — as well as every other actor in the political system — completely depend on this kind of rhetoric. They cannot make do without it for very long, no matter how much they would wish to turn a new leaf. The real problem in America today is that the political system has simply been hollowed out; it is no longer capable of delivering solutions to either side of the partisan divide.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Lionel Shriver"]https://staging.unherd.com/2024/07/the-martyrdom-of-donald-trump/[/su_unherd_related]Biden himself now has historically low approval ratings and a supermajority of Americans think he is mentally unfit to serve another term. The only tool left in his toolbox is to talk about the other guy; without doing so, without stressing just how dangerous the enemy is and how thin the margins are, he has no chance. But the same goes for Trump. None of his voters really believe that he can drain the swamp, or reform the system, or somehow halt America's very dangerous drift into insolvency and economic chaos. For them, too, all that's left to talk about is the evil of the other side, and how sweet revenge will be.
In truth, for a well-functioning society, a bit of violent rhetoric here and there really isn't a big deal. It is only when the political elites lose control of the situation — when they can no longer maintain the military, fix the roads and bridges, keep the economy running and manage the state in such a way that it doesn't drown itself in an ocean of unpayable debt — that such rhetoric leads to violence and blood in the streets. But America's elites have lost control of the situation, and now they are waking up to a nightmare they've unwittingly created. There is not a single American politician today who even pretends to have a plan — much less a solution — for the massive fiscal time bomb located at the heart of the current system. Social unity is completely incompatible with economic bankruptcy: when things truly fall apart, political elites can either admit that the entire political class has failed and needs replacement, or they can try to blame the other guy. Unity is a luxury; one that the American political class can no longer afford.
One can certainly sympathise with the deep, profound sense of regret and sadness that is now visible among the American political class and punditry. But political violence and psychedelic mushrooms follow the same rules in the end: there are no takebacks, no mulligans and no refunds. Once you buy the ticket, you have to take the ride all the way to the end. All you can do, no matter how bad things become, is to sit back and try to endure.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeThis era is down right tame compared to the late 60’s and early 70’s. Same with the era before the Civil War and Reconstruction. Things got really spicy in the 20’s too. America has survived much worse than things are now.
And two world wars and the Great Depression. The people proclaiming the impending doom of the united states are typically focused on money and finance rather than food, productive capacity, energy resources, technology, and the other things that determine real wealth. There is no way to shuffle money around that changes these facts. These very facts are a large part of the reason the economic picture appears so intuitively frightening to those who see the world through a lens of finance. A fiscal collapse would be a short term crisis that would change a lot of things very quickly and result in massive shifts in policy. It would likely wipe out the fortunes of many elites before the political response from the people is even taken into account. I can see why they’re worried. I would be too if I were them. Elite incompetence is fairly easy to remedy. It consists of getting rid of the old elites in some fashion and picking some new ones. Nobody wants to be the modern equivalent of a French nobleman in 1789.
I think part of the problem with modern elites is they have a globalist attitude. In the old days, there was a connection to their land, their nation, their people. Even if they were a “upper class twit” as Monty Python would put it, they would still plan to pass down their business, their property, and their titles to the next generation. Their country was their home. What attachments do they really have now?
Yeah, it was a sad day when the Feudal System collapsed. Life was so much better then.
Great comment as usual and important perspective.
I loved the LSD analogy. A bit of a stretch, but he made it work extremely well. The rest of it is a bit nihilistic though. Trump can make two changes that will profoundly improve the economy – end the open border policy and get rid of net zero. These are two very tangible goals that can realistically be achieved.
He had four years to do them and he didn’t. He will do nothing of note, just as he did nothing of note before.
Yeah, he’ll just go on about building a wall, like he did last time, and build very little.
Why is there so much vituperation about Trump’s idea of building a wall along the Mexico border to keep out illegal migrants? With massive EU funding an 900km wall was built between Turkey and Syria several years ago; and yet there was hardly a ripple of reportage let alone vicious comment in the global media about this.
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/25/turkey-completes-first-phase-900-kilometre-wall-syrian-border/
What reality are you living in? He did both of those things. Biden reversed them.
Abraham Accords. Net exportation of gas and oil + energy independence. Ended money to Iran. No wars. Highest minority employment in history.
Just a few of the “nothings” Trump did.
Abraham accords? A fancy name, but a device to land permanence to the occupation of Palestine by murderous terrorists running a pirate state.
State of Terror
How terrorism created modern Israel.
Thomas Suárez · 2016
Hate Jews much? You would rather have the barbarians take over?
In the long run, he’d also do well to massively increase the stringency of voting. Indirectly, this would also help maintain a strong economy.
“His speech at the Republican national convention has been completely reworked in the aftermath of the failed assassination: apparently it is now aiming at trying to preach a message of political unity rather than further division“. Is it just me, or is the idea of Trump preaching “unity rather than further division” just a bit too weird?
It’s you.
Trump is not the one accusing his opponent and his opponent’s supporters of being the worst humans ever.
I’ve voted for President Trump twice, I will do so again. I think the election was stolen in 20. I’m all in. But I don’t have selective memory deficit. President Trump absolutely says things that mean “my opponents are literally Stalin.”
When Chris Hedges wrote America, the Farewell Tour, in 2018 his prediction that the American Empire would collapse within 10 years seemed wild to me. It doesn’t now. Maybe a little hasty, but not bananas.
It was all so very avoidable.
Decline isn’t collapse. The Greek Latins lasted for centuries after Rome itself was pillaged. The UK is still a livable society, even shorn of their Empire. Russia is still a regional power, after the dissolution of the USSR.
And the US is still the world’s largest economy, hobbled as it is by an egotistical, bumbling elite. America simply needs sensible reforms, and it usually enacts them after a series of wake up calls.
Certainly the 10/7 Hamas attacks, along with the left’s astonishing excuses for them, were a wakeup call. This latest brush with a history making event is another – public opinion can change, and is changing.
The very unpleasant results of Biden’s fatuous economic and foreign policies are very evident, as well.
Oh, I agree. Even the implosion of the Western Roman empire took a fair old while.
But the blow that accompanied the fall of the British (and other European) empires was greatly softened by the benevolence of the Americans – largely through the Marshall Plan. My concern is that there is no-one nearly big enough nor benevolent enough to bail America out now that its empire is on the brink.
Which takes me to the demise of the other Empire you mentioned. The USSR. Russia is doing OK now but I really, really, don’t want to see America go through what Russia went through in the 90s. If you call that “decline,” I don’t. That is collapse and it took 20 years to turn it around.
The sun does rise again afterwards (at least on a historical timeframe) but an analagous collapse in the west would occupy most of the remainder of my life. No thanks.
And not the least reason for that is that, however poorly placed America might be to survive such a crisis, the UK would be vastly worse off (not least because the Americans own so much of it)
Now, I don’t think China will see it as being in its interests to see the Americans or the Europeans collapse as badly as the USSR (their economy is more entwined with ours than the USSR was) but I don’t know that they are big enough to stop it. And anyway, I don’t look forward to being at the economic mercy of Beijing.
Of course, it’s unsurprising. This is what 8 years of “literally Hitler” predictably leads to, just like it’s unsurprising that the reaction on the left is a mix of frustration that the target was missed and that it’s all a hoax. The only comedic aspect is that the people who routinely call him a dictator having to issue those pathetic statements of how grateful they are that Trump survived.
Bring back ‘grass before breakfast’? They might control their mouths if they are staking their lives.
Repeated assertions that Biden is enabling genocide are disgraceful, much worse than the word bullseye.
The accusations of enabling genocide are putting the President’s life in danger.
Can’t people disagree with each other without inciting violence?