Politics Without Blood

I’m old enough to remember the day they shot President John F. Kennedy. All these years later, the memory is still painful. Killing the President creates a national trauma that you have to experience to understand.

In those days, the media were more respectful. We were spared bloody photos. But we learned that after the Secret Service had rushed Kennedy to the hospital in his limo, a man came up to the Dallas police and handed them something he found on the street. It was a piece of the President’s skull. That was too much to bear.

Then politics grew less violent – still acrimonious, but nonviolent. Years passed, and I relaxed. I should not have. A would-be assassin shot at candidate Trump’s head, missing by 1 to 2 centimeters and bloodying Trump’s ear.

Even then, leftist haters laughed it off as a publicity stunt. Now they blew out Charlie Kirk’s carotid artery on live TV. And still we have the haters celebrating, utterly without shame.

I don’t want to live through another political murder. Let us turn down the heated rhetoric before that happens. Because if it does happen, it will be followed not merely by trauma, but also by reprisals. And who knows where that will lead?