On Saturday, July 13, Americans witnessed something our country has not seen for almost half a century – a near-assassination of a major political party leader. In a split-second ten or fifteen-degree tilt of the head that can only be attributed to the grace of God, former president Donald Trump received a wound to the ear from an assassin’s bullet aimed at his head.
Perhaps almost more surprising was America’s lack of surprise. Reported journalist Roger Mudd of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, “rare was the person who did not cry that long weekend.” Conversely, the response to the 2024 assassination attempt of Trump was a mixed bag of tears in support of the former president and tears that the marksman missed.
How did the America of 1963 get to this point?
Disposable Human Life
The answer, sadly, is simple. America’s pervasive culture of death that has its roots in the 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade treats human life as disposable.
When a mother finds herself with what she may sinfully consider “the inconvenience of a person growing in her womb,” she unfortunately has been given the option to dispose of the child through abortion.
When a person decides that living life has become inconvenient, he may seek to dispose of it through euthanasia. And now, when a political leader becomes inconvenient and all other methods have failed – smearing him, bankrupting him, jailing him – some culture of death group determined that the next logical step was to dispose of him.
The Antidote
The antidote to the sinful attitudes and promotions of this culture of death is also simple: a renewed focus on Biblical Personhood.
Star Parker stated this position well. “It is my great hope,” she wrote, “that what will come out of all this is a renewed sense that human freedom, the ideal on which our nation is founded, is rooted in the sacred. Each human life is unique so each must be free to live and express and do what no one else can. … And that this will inspire respect for others, knowing that each one is created in the image of God.”
Parker has reason for her hope. The tide is already turning. Just days after the shooting, the Republican National Convention convened in Milwaukee. Suddenly, instead of the partisan-palooza that it could have been, the focus was reoriented toward the Personhood of the now-Republican nominee.
Beginning with the former first lady’s letter to the American people that drew a stark contrast between the popular view of Trump as “an inhuman political machine” and her love of “his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration … the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times,” the Convention likewise focused on Trump’s Personhood: his love for his grandchildren, his relationships with his allies, his own recounting of his emotions during the July 13th attack.
At the culmination of the event, former president Trump responded in turn by avoiding ad hominem attacks against his rival, President Biden, in his rewritten acceptance speech at the RNC.
In an era when name calling and inflammatory rhetoric in politics no longer causes one to bat an eye, and specifically from a man who is known for the nicknames he attaches to his opponents, Trump’s speech was truly a hopeful sign to a nation drowning in this culture of death.
Made in the Image of God
The reality is, no one can predict if the small political shift in the direction of Personhood will remain through November and beyond. But each individual does have control over his own actions and perceptions.
It is easier to look at political opponents as “inhuman political machine(s).” It is easier to roll an eye at the political sign in the yard of a neighbor than to recognize said neighbor as a valuable person, made in the image and likeness of God who, unlike an actual political machine, was made for eternity.
Perhaps the twitch of Trump’s head that saved his life was God opening the door for America to return its focus to the sacred. It is a start. And in the words of Star Parker, one can hope “that our sense of the sacred will extend to and include that magical moment when life is first conceived in the womb.”
Rachel Krause
Georgia Right to Life
Newsletter Coordinator