On Saturday, hours after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump with an AR-15-style assault rifle, President Biden sounded a familiar refrain: The United States, he assured the public, settles its differences peacefully; political violence is un-American and abhorrent.
“The idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard-of.”Americans transfer power peacefully from one party to another most of the time, and most elections are fair and free from the taint of bloodshed.
But the attack on Mr. Trump is one on a list of fairly common attempts on presidents’ lives — acts endemic to the political culture and part of an alternative tradition of political violence.
This tradition contradicts a kind of mythic faith, held widely by Americans, in a political system that shuns the bullet and embraces the ballot.
Presidents and former presidents are members of one of the most intimate clubs on earth, and they have almost always described political violence, especially attacks on one of their own, as unnatural exceptions to an otherwise peaceful polity.
Persons:
Donald Trump, Biden, ”, Trump, ’, Harry Truman, Herbert Hoover, Truman, ” Ronald Reagan
Organizations:
Puerto
Locations:
United States, America