With all the furor about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and all the rhetoric about how political violence needs to stop, and how we’re a “better people” than that, I thought a little perspective might be helpful.

To begin with, political violence has been, if not common, certainly prevalent in the United
States over the last 175 years. We fought a Civil War over differences in basic political views. Following that, we had well over a century of violence and civil unrest over civil rights, complete with shootings, hangings, and lynchings, not to mention rampant vigilantes, certainly a political issue if ever there was.

On the political level, we’ve had four Presidents assassinated, and four others attacked with lethal force.

Former President Theodore Roosevelt was shot and wounded in 1912 while running for President on the “Bull Moose” ticket. President Gerald Ford was attacked twice in 1975. In one case, the shooter mischambered the pistol and in the second, the shooter fired twice and missed. President Ronald Reagan was shot and came close to dying in 1981, and five others were wounded, several seriously. President Trump has suffered two attempts on his life but only had a minor gash on his ear from the first, while the would-be assassin was caught before he could act in the second attempt.

I don’t know about you, but to me, eight out of forty-seven Presidents seems rather high, and that doesn’t include Presidential candidates.

Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed while running for President in 1968, and Governor George Wallace was shot and partially paralyzed in 1972 while seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Over 28 recognized U.S. civil rights crusaders have been shot and killed, most notably Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers.

Just recently, two Minesota Democratic lawmakers and their families were targeted: one was killed, and several judges have been attacked as well.

Now we’re having what can only be called an epidemic of school shootings, and we’ve always had a problem with violent domestic abuse, which is why experienced police officers always worry about being summoned for domestic abuse calls.

So all the rhetoric about our being a better people than that is exaggerated. The facts are clear. We haven’t got that good a record when it comes to violence.

One of the key questions is whether, as a nation, we’ll be willing to admit that we have a fairly high level of violence. Or will we continue to deny the facts and cling to the illusion that we’re peace-loving, while we continue to attack and shoot those who don’t agree with us, while also trying to use the law to force one set of religious beliefs or another on those who disagree with whoever is in power, despite a Constitution that explicitly forbids laws imposing religious beliefs.

Yesterday, an eloquent but hard right political influencer – Charlie Kirk – was assassinated, and almost immediately everyone, particularly Republicans, began to talk about the need to stop political violence.

That’s all well and good, but it’s also hypocritical and worse.

Assassination has no rightful place in a democracy, but neither does sending troops and ICE agents into Home Depots, churches, and schools and arresting and carting off people based on their color, speech, or dress, all too often sweeping up people who are American citizens in the furor of activity to deport as many people as quickly as possible, while trying to “flood the zone,” i.e., to overload the courts and local government to the point where they can’t stop illegal and quasi-legal deportations.

That sort of behavior by the federal government is also political violence, no matter how Republicans rationalize and cover it with the quasi-legal veneer of Executive Orders. Even undocumented individuals who have committed no crimes, other than being here, deserve the protection of the law.

Violence begets violence. It always has.

The way to stop violence isn’t to commit violent acts, but to follow the law – and the Constitution – in enforcing the law.

Right now, in the frenzy to deport, Trump and his allies are stirring up more unrest, fear, and violent reactions. Equally important, too many of these measures aren’t getting rid of immigrant violent criminals. That takes patient, deliberate, long, hard effort. It also takes spending money on preventive measures proven to work.

The fifty-thousand-dollar bonuses for joining ICE are turning immigration enforcement into often-violent bounty-hunting, with the greatest appeal to would-be thugs and toughs.

More empty rhetoric and more forceful measures applied indiscriminately won’t stop or even reduce social, criminal, and political violence, except momentarily where the force is being applied, and if all that force is applied continuously, it will cost far more than funding local law enforcement and community support structures efficiently.

But then, Trump’s never been interested in building strong and effective local government; he’s only interested in building a national power base to become a de facto dictator, and over time that can only increase the violence.

I listened to Robert F. Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, but could only bear to listen a short time, largely because what I heard revealed that the majority of the Senators and RFK appeared either to suffer from near-complete innumeracy, or were so locked into policy positions that they appeared to suffer terminal innumeracy.

The discussion over national life-expectancy data was more than a little revealing. The life-expectancy for Americans is lower than all other western industrial countries, yet the U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per capita.

There are several reasons for these figures. First, one of the factors lowering average lifespans of a population is high infant mortality, i.e., the death of a child before his or her first birthday. Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. infant mortality rate is fifty-fifth, and is at least twice as high as all other first-world nations. Add to that that the U.S. maternal death rate is close to five times that of all other major industrial countries and is continuing to rise.

The second factor lowering average lifespans is the percentage of the population lacking basic health care. In the U.S., roughly 25 million Americans lack health care insurance and over 100 million do not have a regular health care provider. Yet of those uninsured Americans, 74% have a full-time worker, and another 11% are working part-time. While 62% of uninsured American adults have health care debts, as might be expected, 44% of Americans with health insurance also reported health care debts.

When roughly a third of the U.S. population does not have a regular health care provider and almost half the population cannot afford even routine health care without going into debt, one might think these factors just possibly might contribute to a lower life expectancy for Americans, but for some reason, so far as I could tell, the only factor that was touched on was the high cost of medical care for those who can afford it, when the reason for lagging life expectancy lies in those who cannot afford or obtain adequate medical care.

In addition, there’s been no significant increase in the number of MDs graduating from U.S. medical schools over the past five years, despite an estimated population increase of nearly five percent.

So why don’t Senators and Representatives know these numbers… or is it that they don’t care?

Donald Trump, in various ways, has indicated that he believes the American people want – and need – a dictator, and that he’s the right man for the job.

For all of his many and terrible faults, Trump’s greatest political skill is identifying and weaponizing the problems that most concern people – and then finding the worst possible way to address each problem, usually in a fashion that appears superficially acceptable to a great many people, especially his base, but which will lead to far greater difficulties in the future.

As for being dictator… the real and very basic problem he’s attempting to address is the fact that American government in so many areas is no longer working very well, and even where and when it is, too many politicians decry the situation because whatever is being done doesn’t fit their preconceptions of the way issues and problems should be addressed.

As a result, all too often, problem after problem either doesn’t get addressed or is addressed in a way that offends a significant percentage of the population.

And people are tired of problems not being addressed and solved.

Trump didn’t create this situation. The idealogues of both political parties did by inserting extreme religious and social ideologies into the political dialogue and campaigns, and the rank and file in those parties allowed them to do so.

The result is that people are becoming more and more disillusioned with what they perceive as a barely functioning democracy and are more and more willing to accept a dictator whom they see as willing to act.

And Trump and his ever-growing legions of sycophants glory in his filling that position.

Protests against his high-handed and increasingly marginally legal (and sometimes illegal) actions won’t stop him. The only thing that will is better government getting things done, rather than getting in the way of getting things done.

And very few of Trump’s opponents seem to understand that…or perhaps they just can’t abandon ideology in favor of moderate, practical compromise. Equally unfortunately, neither can his supporters.

I have a moderately well-behaved dachshund. By moderately well-behaved, I mean that he only barks when another dog invades his territory, i.e., our property, or when he feels threatened. This isn’t a problem for me because when he’s outside, he’s always on leash.

We take a walk almost every morning, and he’s the third dog I’ve walked over the years here. Sometimes we encounter other dogs. Because Cedar City has leash laws and most people here are law-abiding, the other dogs are always on leash as well. I’ve encountered unleashed dogs less than ten times in over thirty years, and most either wanted to play or were merely curious.

The other day, however, we ran across an inexperienced dog walker with a golden doodle and another dog, which I’m fairly certain was an Italian greyhound or something similar. Knowing that Buddy Mozart is wary of strange dogs, I attempted to create a little more space.

The other dog-walker declared his dogs were friendly and proceeded to steer them directly toward us. Buddy Mozart does not like to be crowded, and he barked and backed off. I reined him in and away from the other dogs, at which point the Italian greyhound snapped his inadequate leash and pranced toward Buddy Mozart, obviously just obsequiously oblivious to the fact that Buddy Mozart had no interest at all in being friendly.

Buddy Mozart made no move toward the greyhound, but barked and growled, trying to convey that he wanted no part of the greyhound’s overtures, while the other dog-walker proceeded to have great difficulty controlling his now-leashless dog.

No person or dog got hurt. No dog bit or snapped, and Buddy Mozart and I moved away and proceeded to finish our otherwise uneventful walk.

As we did, I got to thinking about the brief encounter. The clearly clueless Italian greyhound and the man walking him reminded me of a certain type of excessively friendly person who invades your space and doesn’t understand that you’re just not up for it… and he obviously also didn’t understand dachshunds.