RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Trump survived an assassination attempt

For Americans, these times aren’t just interesting. They’re also terrifying. And complicated. Like many people, I’ve spent the past few days trying to process the moment in which we find ourselves after the assassination attempt aimed at former President Donald Trump. We need to figure out what it means for our country going forward.

Answers are tough to come by. Yet questions, we have plenty of.

What has happened to our country? How did our politics become so toxic? Is this what we are now? Will this latest act of political violence — aimed at a former president and presidential candidate — lead to more of the same and become the new normal?

Has a nation that was, nearly 250 years ago, born of political violence when the colonists picked up muskets to fight the redcoats, returned to its roots? Have we given up on ballots as the preferred tool to effect change and opted instead for bullets? Can things get better from here, or will they only get worse?

And how will all of this affect a presidential election that is less than four months away? An election that was supposed to be about inflation, abortion, immigration, Ukraine and the Middle East will now be about none of those things. Instead, it’ll be about something much bigger — ending acts of political violence and healing a badly divided nation.

How can the Biden White House advance two conflicting narratives at once — continuing to argue that Trump is a threat to democracy while also insisting that we have to turn down the temperature on our overheated political rhetoric?

And how can the Trump campaign simultaneously bash the Biden administration over inflation, abortion and the border while also trying to unite the country, as Trump said he intends to do with his speech this week at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee?

It’s a lot for all of us to think about. But aside from what we’re thinking, what interests me at the moment is what we’re feeling about everything we’re living through.

In my case, the answer is the three “F’s”: fury, frustration and fear.

I’m furious that we let incendiary political speech and acts of political violence get so far out of control. Trump himself played a major role in turning our political process into a hybrid of a reality show and professional wrestling match. The former president mocked the marginalized, insulted the weak and even humiliated members of his own Cabinet. But the left wasn’t innocent. Remember when comedian Kathy Griffin posed for a picture holding a Halloween mask bathed in ketchup that was made to look like Trump’s severed head covered in blood? Or when Madonna declared to an anti-Trump rally that she had — since Trump was elected — “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House?”

I’m frustrated that, following the assassination attempt, Americans were so quick to suit up in their respective jerseys and shout their usual responses. Both liberals and conservatives pointed fingers, and neither camp was willing to take even a sliver of responsibility for the fact that our political discourse has veered off into a ditch. It’s never our fault, always someone else’s.

Lastly, I’m fearful that it may already be too late to fix what’s broken in this country. Presently, the internet is polluted by dueling conspiracy theories, advanced by both the right and the left, without any evidence to back up any of them. There are those on the far right who insist that the Biden administration was behind the assassination attempt and that the Secret Service allowed the shooter — 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks — to get within a few hundred yards of Trump. And meanwhile, there are also those on the far left who insist the whole incident was staged and that Trump delivered a first-rate theatrical performance as a presidential candidate who was nearly martyred.

This is a dark moment for America. We can only hope and pray that the days ahead bring us what we so desperately need: more light and less heat.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.