Assassin
The goal of an assassin is to change history in one fraction of a second. In less time than it takes to hear the crack of the bullet, the path forward is unalterably changed. My generation is well aware of that deadly impact. In just two months, we lost Martin Luther King Jr, the leader of the Civil Rights movement, and Bobby Kennedy, a Senator running for President. Our world might have been a very different place if either Ray or Sirhan missed their shot.
Last night a twenty year-old white man from suburban Pittsburgh tried to kill Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. There are so many questions: what were his motives, why wasn’t the site line to Trump’s podium covered, what kind of weapon did he use and how did he get it? What we do know is that Donald Trump “got lucky”; a fatal head shot missed by mere millimeters. Trump ended up with a bloody ear. Some spectators were not so lucky. One died, two others were critically injured.
Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, missed his target. But his actions have dramatically changed the nature of our path. Crooks, in his failed attempt, gave Donald Trump a “bloody shirt”.
After the Civil War, politicians running for office would call on “revenge on the South for the deaths of the Union soldiers”. That campaign rhetoric was called “waving the bloody shirt”; sort of “elect me and I will get revenge”. And, of course, many of the candidates had their own “bloody shirt”; wounds left still evident from the War.
Bloody Shirt
It has a literal meaning as well. Teddy Roosevelt was President of the United States from 1901 to 1908. He chose not to run for a second term in office. William Howard Taft, Roosevelt’s friend, became President when Roosevelt left office. But after four years, Teddy was not satisfied with Taft’s performance, and ran against him for the Republican nomination. When he failed to get that, he ran under a third Party banner, the “Bull Moose Party”.
Roosevelt was to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee. As he got in his car to go to the auditorium, a shot rang out. Roosevelt’s secretary grabbed the gunman, preventing a second shot. But the first made it home, and Roosevelt found a small bullet hole in his chest. But his lungs remained clear, and he determined to continue his speech.
His first words to the audience were shocking: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.” He then pulled out the folded fifty-page draft of his speech, covered with blood with two bullet holes in it, and showed them his blood soaked shirt. The double-thickness of the document and his thick spectacles saved him worse injury. He then went onto to give a speech (albeit shorter than intended). It included the phrase, “…it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose”.
Roosevelt went to the hospital for treatment after the speech, and fully recovered from the wound. His second run for President was unsuccessful, though his candidacy did split the Republican vote and elected Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
God Alone
Today is not the day to compare Donald Trump to Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, or Teddy Roosevelt. But social media is already filled with pictures of the bloodied former President, raising his fist to the crowd and urging them to “fight”. And his social media post this morning emphasizes his avowed “place” in history:
“…(I)t was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness”.
Trump has his bloody shirt. The campaign of 2024 has shifted again. We don’t know what path this assassin has placed our nation on.
