To the editor: For multiple reasons, I thank God that former President Trump was not killed, injured or shot at in the latest assassination attempt.
There will always be those inclined toward violence for reasons we may never understand, but it is past time to attack one of the seeds of political assassinations: the rhetoric that we hear from our leaders. It is past time for them to do their part to attempt to restore a measure of domestic tranquility, to think about the words they speak before those words leave their mouths.
When one demeans, degrades and dehumanizes their opponent using extreme terms, when one implies that violence against foes is acceptable, we risk anarchy.
Can our political figures not disagree without being disagreeable? Can they not challenge an opposing ideology without engaging in vicious personal attacks? If we continue down the road of escalating polarization, our country and its system of governance are at risk.
I pray for the safety of Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Oren Spiegler, Peters Township, Pa.
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To the editor: In the 1960s, a pop group had a hit with the song, “Only in America.” A refrain in the song begins with the words in the title and continues with “land of opportunity.”
As I watched the recent reports on another would-be assassin with an assault rifle, those lyrics came to me, veering from the song’s patriotic hope and optimism to our current crazy opportunities: We have more guns than people, gun violence is the biggest cause of death for American children, and immigrants in an Ohio town are being falsely accused of eating people’s pets, leading to bomb threats there.
Land of opportunity, indeed.
Tim Vivian, Bakersfield
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To the editor: Vice President Kamala Harris is correct. As she noted in her response to the thwarted attempt on Trump’s life, “violence has no place in America.”
However, the insistence by some of the former president’s supporters that saying Trump is a threat to our democracy has caused these assassination attempts is ridiculous.
Trump routinely endorses violence, dehumanizes his opponents and non-supporters, and shows open disdain for the law, elections and institutions. His admiration for dictators is an unchallengeable truth.
Trump is a threat to democracy. That fact may lead some to resort to violence, but simply telling the truth about Trump isn’t the reason these attempts have been made.
Ray McKown, Torrance