An unspeakable Supreme Court decision, a debate debacle, followed several weeks later by an assassination attempt. Trauma, different kinds of trauma, but trauma, nonetheless.
The Supreme Court sold out the Constitution and the country by granting once and future Presidents immunity from prosecution. Who would have thought that, on the cusp of an election where a coup plotter and would-be authoritarian may take back the White House, the Supreme Court would have offered an open invitation for criminality?
Then there is the Biden problem. The debate that President Joe Biden hoped would reset the 2024 presidential race may have killed his chances for re-election.
It was just plain horrible to watch. It left millions of Americans feeling desperate or despondent. They were traumatized watching a meltdown unlike almost anything else in recent American political history.
As the Washington Post reported, people who watched the debate called Biden’s performance “painful and sad.” The Post noted that “Biden’s debate performance…set off a swirl of political angst and upheaval in the Democratic Party, prompting questions about whether he is up to the task of defeating Donald Trump in November and calls for him to drop out of the race.”
As if that were not enough, there was Saturday’s despicable attempt on the life of former President Donald Trump, broadcast live. It was an act of violence perpetrated by someone using the kind of military-style weapon that his intended victim would not want banned.
As Trump wrote in 2015, “Opponents of gun rights often use a lot of scary descriptive phrases when proposing legislative action against various types of weapons. Ban ‘assault weapons’ they say, or ‘military-style weapons,’ or ‘high-capacity magazines.’”
“Those, he continued, “all do sound a little ominous, until you understand what they are actually talking about are common, popular semiautomatic rifles and standard magazines that are owned and used by tens of millions of Americans.”
If not for the tragedy of what almost happened to the former President last weekend, one could appreciate the irony.
Nonetheless, as CNN put it, “the horror of Saturday shooting is only beginning to distill into a shocking new national trauma.” Dr. Zachary Ginder, a psychologist, agrees with that description: “Regardless of party affiliation, violent acts against public figures can significantly impact our collective psyche and lead to feelings of uncertainty, stress and anxiety. Specifically, they challenge our sense of social order, control, trust, safety and security.”
Ginder said that “these incidents can trigger a form of vicarious trauma.”
In work that I’ve done on trauma and memory, I’ve noted that at the individual level, “Trauma always entails a gap one must overcome to the mechanisms of forgetting, denying, and enacting a new cognitive reality. At the same time, trauma calls for a digging in and a finding of reasons processes that entail efforts to comprehend, to remember.”
Others who have studied trauma note that “Traumatic experiences can have a profound effect on memory function, often leading to memory loss as a coping mechanism.”
At the collective level, trauma “influences historical sequences, the emergence of nations, and the collapse of empires.” One wonders whether the series of traumatic events of the last few weeks will contribute to the collapse of America’s democratic experiment.
It might if we allow those events to lead us to forget all that occurred before a shot was fired at the former president. That is what Trump and his allies now are trying to get us to do.
Here I want to focus first on the reactions to the attempted assassination and their inducement to national amnesia from MAGA Republicans. They are blaming Democrats for creating a political environment toxic enough to prompt someone to kill Donald Trump.
How rich. They are hoping Americans will forget what they have said and done for almost a decade.
As The Atlantic’s David Frum puts it, “Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well.” Frum reminds us that “when a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked.”
And “in the years since his own supporters attacked the capital to overturn the 2020 election-many of them threatening harm to speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence-trump has championed the invaders, would be kidnappers, it would be murderers as martyrs and hostages.”
Few in the Republican Party ever distanced themselves from the incitements to violence, or the excuses made for it, that routinely flowed from the man who is now its 2024 presidential nominee. So it is amazing, but not surprising, that they are borrowing from the MAGA playbook and accusing others of doing the very things they have condoned.
They are pinning the blame for political violence on leftists, Democrats, and the President.
On Sunday, the Washington Post listed a few examples:
From Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.): “Let’s be clear: This was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical Left and corporate media incessantly calling Trump a threat to democracy, fascists, or worse.”
From Representative. Mike Collins (R-Ga.): “Joe Biden sent the orders” for assassination. “The Republican District Attorney in Butler County, Pa., should immediately file charges against Joe Biden for inciting an assassination.”
And, not to be outdone, Representative. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that because “For years and years, … [Democrats and their media allies] demonized [Trump] and his supporters,” they “are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today,”
If we are to avoid succumbing to this role reversal, we need to remember not to forget who they are and what they have done to stoke America’s now poisonous political atmosphere.
In the wake of the assassination attempt, former President Trump has tried a different tack to induce forgetting. He has resisted the blame game and called for unity, a theme that is likely to be the centerpiece of his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night.
“In this moment,” Trump already has said, “it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.”
But we need to remember not to forget who Trump is and what he has done.
Americans got a taste of that when Trump took to Truth Social on Monday following Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents prosecution. “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday,” Trump wrote, “this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia ‘Perfect’ Phone Call charges.”
Trump gave everyone a reminder of what his version of unity looks like when he added, “The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System and Make America Great Again!”
As the journalist Greg Sargeant explains, “Those positions are irredeemably incompatible with any stated goal of unifying the country, at a very fundamental level. They embody the notion that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with trying to cling to power illegitimately, through violent means, in defiance of the votes and political aspirations of a majority of his fellow Americans.”
Sargeant added, “They also embody the idea that he and his movement should not be subject to the same laws that the rest of us are. Trump is telegraphing that he won’t back off any of that in the slightest.”
That is why President Biden and the Democrats need to quickly resume speaking out about what it would mean for this country and its Constitution for the Republicans and their presidential nominee to win in November. The hour is late, and the urgency is great.
In this moment of serial traumas, if Americans are to have any chance of holding on to the freedoms, rights, and ways of life that we value in this moment of serial traumas, we must remember not to forget.