Is This Really What We Want?

America must wake up. We must wake up now. We must wake up now before our nation devolves into irremediable violence and bloodshed.

We must, with one voice, determine that what happened on Saturday is wrong and does not represent us.

It must not represent us.

Donald J. Trump, the former president and 2024 Republican White House hopeful, narrowly—indeed, miraculously—escaped a near-fatal incident over the weekend—the first attempted assassination on a U.S. president since Ronald Reagan in 1981. By now, you know the details. In short, history unfolded violently before our eyes; God spared President Trump’s life.

I’ve spent the past two days attempting to wrap my mind around exactly what this means for our country’s already-fraught future. Countless times, I’ve watched the haunting video of Trump grasping at his bullet-grazed ear, collapsing to the stage, and rising again with a raised fist triumphantly to declare, “Fight, fight, fight!” I’ve read too many articles about the crime to count. As a political writer, I’m supposed to make sense of these things. I’m supposed to help others make sense of them. But when it comes to events so shocking, hatred so vicious, evil so brazen, perhaps we cannot simply “wrap our minds around it.” Perhaps—if we are at all pure and kind and decent and right-minded, as I verily believe many of us are—such atrocities are simply beyond “making sense of.”

Even so, I fear for America.

I fear for America because we are moving in the wrong direction in regard to our views on violence. Many of us, utterly consumed by our unbridled hatred one for another, have become too cozy with—or, at least, unfazed by—the prospect of civil war and the spilling of blood in America. But, the horrific, condemnable attempt on Trump’s life on Saturday should serve as our national wake-up call: No matter how strongly we disagree, no matter how much we may think we hate each other, we must never permit our anger to cause us to accept unethical methods as normative political behavior.

I encourage every American to take a long, hard look at the image of Trump, blood on his face, being dragged off the stage by his Secret Security, and ask a simple but crucial question: Is this really what we want?

Is this really what we want the future of our country to look like—marked by blood, bullets, hate, and fear? Because we’re heading in that direction.

Politics is blinding. It tends to warp our minds, causing us, if we’re not careful, to view fellow humans—fellow souls—as obstacles in the way of our obtaining political goals and aims. It knocks everything out of perspective until we find ourselves wishing death upon our opponents—or, perhaps, even justifying violence. We censure, attack, and vilify each other until we lose sight that, in the end, we all really are just humans, fellow travelers from the cradle to the grave. As J. R. R. Tolkien mused in the voice of Gandalf, “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.” If any of us have become “too eager,” may we turn to the God who enjoined us to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20), repent, and plead for mercy.

Our country desperately needs it.

Post the attempt on Trump’s life, America stands at a critical crossroads. Either we will allow the horrors of that fateful day to open our eyes to the dangers of flirting with political violence, or else it will further numb us to the worrying trend.

We are grateful that Trump has survived and that, in His boundless mercy, God has given our nation a second chance. We certainly do not deserve it. Now, we must decide—What kind of nation do we want to be? Will the violence we witnessed on Saturday portend future events? Or will it mark the end of our foolish fantasizing about civil war and death and remind us of what really matters when all is said and done in politics?

Millions of Americans have come to recognize the dire state of our country. Many have turned to an Article V convention—a constitutional remedy for achieving radical but peaceful change. Now, more than ever, this is our imperative. Join the movement by signing the Convention of States petition below.