The Buzzwords Have Become Bullets

As the whole world knows, Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on Saturday July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania. As Catholic America must know, this may be the defining political moment of our lives, when we as members of the Mystical Body of Christ must rise and stand unflinchingly for life, liberty, and love. And that means nothing less than voting for Donald J. Trump.

As the former president spoke at a rally north of Pittsburgh on a hot summer evening, five gunshots cracked in the distance. Trump put his hand to the side of his head, dropped to the stage, and was immediately buried under Secret Service agents. He was shot in the ear, grazed by a bullet that was an inch away from being lethal. 

The rounds that missed their mark left firefighter Corey Comperatore dead and two other attendees critically injured. The FBI has identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as the man who fired on Trump. Crooks was over 100 yards away in an elevated sniper position from a rooftop outside the venue grounds, beyond the security perimeter. He was shot through the head by the Secret Service.

The attack on President Trump was an attack against those who believe in the sanctity of life, the gift of liberty, and the divinity of love. Leftwing politics and its votaries are taking up the final form of their mounting hatred: murder. And Catholics have a duty to seize this moment in solidarity against the influences and forces that would tear down—now, gun down—their political opponents. The attack on President Trump was an attack against those who believe in the sanctity of life, the gift of liberty, and the divinity of love. Tweet This

Recall over the years the escalating overtures threatening the demise of Donald Trump, coming largely from entertainment personalities. Though these appeared as nasty foolishness, their long-term effects were deadly. When the standards of culture are set by liberal entertainers, fed by the Brave-New-Worldview they champion, the result is a culture attuned and directed towards total selfishness, which is to say, an anti-culture or a culture of death. 

Though that culture of death may begin with casual threats and dramatic drivel from actors who have been brainwashed by swamp fumes and a total obsession with self-service, they bespeak a very real attitude that those who do not fit the established mold, whether a baby or a politician, might be relegated to the grave. Saturday’s shocking events have proved this, once again. The Left and its minions weren’t succeeding with mere political assassination regarding Donald Trump and moved on to actual assassination.

This horror show began years ago with the temper tantrums of entitled celebrities who used their platforms to sow seeds of hate, the ugly fruits of which we witnessed on Saturday. During the 2017 Women’s March in Washington D.C. (an event intended to combat the March for Life), Madonna said to the crowd that she “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Or how about that music video where the rapper, Snoop Dogg, executed a Trump clown. 

Kathy Griffin had her infamous photoshoot holding an effigy of Trump’s blood-soaked severed head. New York City saw a Shakespeare-in-the-park adaptation of Julius Caesar where Caesar was portrayed as Trump and stabbed so brutally by the conspirators that sponsors pulled their support. Johnny Depp turned some heads at the Glastonbury Festival in the U.K., saying, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?” seeming to refer to the assassination of President Lincoln by actor John Wilkes Booth in 1865. 

Then came the Trump-as-Hitler fixation, and the deadly contempt broadcast by Stormy Daniels, and the grim warnings of the end of democracy and the shredding of the Constitution that the Democrats have been churning out. Even Joe Biden was recently quoted saying to his donors, “it’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” Rhetoric like that all comes to this. Shots fired, Trump down—and up again, bloodied but not beaten. The buzzwords have finally materialized into bullets.

Were all those stunts and propaganda tactics over the years authentic threats? No. They were petulancies. (Although, the 2017 shooting of Republican Congressman Steve Scalise by a murderous never-Trumper indicated something more serious on the rise.) Seven years later, we have the result of such unbridled hatred. But from the edgy statements of entertainers entertaining the idea of Trump’s violent death to this heinous attempt on Trump’s life, what we are witnessing is a culture in collapse caused by the godless contempt of those who believe that everything is permissible.

Of course, nothing approaching the overtures we have seen leveled against Trump would be tolerated by those who perpetrated them, should such sentiments ever arise from the Right. They who preach tolerance as though it were a religion are incredibly intolerant. The Left has a wildly hypocritical willingness to flirt with intimations of death, and now, an assassination attempt against the one who won’t toe their line is the newest sign of the culture of death they are promoting, and which Pope St. John Paul II warned against. It will tighten its chokehold even until that government of the people, by the people, and for the people will perish from the earth.

Now, the deceased shooter may have been a psychopath and not a political operative or Leftist martyr, carrying out a plot that no government official had any hand in whatsoever. I’m not suggesting that this was a scheme hatched by Democrats. But I am saying that the Democrats set the stage for this attempted assassination by making Trump out to be more than worthy of death and erasing the inhibitions of natural law.

Our culture deals death as a means towards self-realization, from abortion to IVF procedures, from international wars to assisted suicide. President Trump doesn’t fit that mold, and so he has been subject to disingenuous threats of death, and now, a genuine attempt on his life. When abortion is hailed as a flagship of “freedom,” as it is by the Biden-Harris campaign, it should not be surprising that other forms of murder are bandied about. Death-on-demand is an unspoken principle of the Left, and it was only a matter of time before the expedient of a rifle would be brought against Trump since they couldn’t affect the expedient of prison.

And these escalating intimidations in magazines and memes were not necessarily free speech. Under the United States Code, threatening the president is a class E felony and anyone who “knowingly and willfully” makes “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm” upon the president could be sentenced up to five years and/or be fined. 

While the Secret Service is assigned to investigate any suspected cases, according to Stanford University Law Professor, Nathaniel Persily, “People are allowed to wish the president dead,” however, “to threaten someone you need words that encourage some sort of action.” The allusions to Trump’s death over the years were not specifically meant to encourage any direct action—most offenders apologized once the press got in their grill—but they did encourage an inclination on the Left to incite violence, however subtly, when their path was impeded.

After her outburst at the Women’s March, Madonna quoted the poet, W. H. Auden: “We must love one another or die.” And she added, “I choose love.” Does she? Do they? Or is this an ultimatum between a liberal definition of love and good old-fashioned death? Angry, outraged expressions of violence do not proclaim love—unless it is the “all you need is love” philosophy that John Lennon imagined with no heaven, no countries, and no religion. That is an anthem of the Left, and, if that is love, then even death doesn’t matter much.

The love that the Left chooses is not love—it is creeping totalitarianism, till death do you part. Such is the shrug of individualistic, secular, modernism, as it praises the career of Jack Kevorkian, brushes aside the murder of Terry Schiavo, and obfuscates the fetal organ harvesting operations of Planned Parenthood. This is the age when the media dictates ethics in practical terms—from the abortion of a baby to the assassination of a president.

Human life does not achieve fulfillment through death. It is a crisis when cartoons and captions lead to bloodshed. Catholics must stand with Trump, who nearly fell for standing against insanity. Catholics must vote for Trump just to defeat those whose ideologies lead to murder and lawlessness. And, most importantly, Catholics must resist hating as the Left hates. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. 

Pray for Donald Trump, thank God for his survival, and ask Him to give the man the strength he needs to carry on. Pray for the wounded and the dead. Pray and vote for Trump’s return to the White House. Just hours after the incident, the news organs were criticizing how Trump, his face streaked with blood, called out, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to his supporters as he was being borne off by the Secret Service. Such hateful speech… Evil doesn’t sleep. It’s time for Catholics to band about Trump. 

[Photo Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images]