Shooting on Trump shocks the world

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was attacked. Trump, who was campaigning in Pennsylvania on Saturday for the upcoming presidential election in November, was hit above his right ear by a flying bullet. It was a dangerous moment, but U.S. media reported that, fortunately, there was no threat to life. The sniper was killed on the spot after firing eight shots with a semi-automatic rifle from the roof of a building about 100 meters away. A supporter nearby was killed by a stray bullet, and two others were seriously injured. The shooter, a white man in his 20s, was identified as a Republican, with details on the shooting under investigation.

The attempted assassination displays the dynamics of American politics, where hatred reigns. Washington politics has been repeatedly at odds over gender, immigration, abortion rights, and welfare policies. Since Trump’s appearance on the political scene in 2016, provocative language has become more common. As president, Trump mocked his critics and promoted hatred, undermining dialogue and compromise and stifling democracy. It is ironic that Trump, an axis of political degradation, was hit by a bullet of hatred.

With American politics reaching extremes, the culture of sound dialogue is collapsing. Voters become indifferent to facts and truth. A new term was coined called ‘alternative facts,’ which refers to false stories that are believed to be accurate by certain people. Trump claims that he would have won if it had not been for election fraud, referring to the presidential election he lost four years ago. Many Americans believe this to be true, and some even violently charged to Capitol Hill.

As fandom and cynicism spread, the idea of using violence has spread in the United States, regardless of political affiliation. A University of Chicago poll last month found that 10% and 7% of respondents, said they endorsed the idea of using force to prevent Biden or Trump from becoming the winner of the presidential election, respectively. One third and half of the respondents were gun owners. The assassination attempt is not unrelated to such public opinion.

In the United States, the Kennedy brothers and Pastor Martin Luther King were assassinated in the 1960s, and an attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan took place in the 1980s. The recent attempt shows a return of political assassinations, which had not occurred for more than 40 years. This means that political polarization and the politicians' instigation that gave rise to the violence have reached intolerable levels. The more I think about this trend in American politics, the more it resembles the situation in Korea. Korea also had a terrorist attack targeting the opposition party leader early this year. Unless we learn lessons from the incident, we are at risk of the same event.