One Nation Under Fire: Trump Resurgent

He's been washed in the blood of the Gun.

"And Ray Charles was shot down," the song says, "but he got up to do his best."

Van Morrison was living in the United States during a time of violence and assassinations when he wrote that line. It came to mind as I watched Trump pivot in in an instant from working the crowd to working the moment—a moment not only in his life, but in the life of the country.

It may seem heretical to compare Trump to a beloved figure like Ray Charles—or, for that matter, to link him to the 1960s-era deaths of so many liberal heroes. But the iconography of America is its cultural DNA. On Sunday, some beam of mundane radiation—in this case, apparently another bullied kid turned shooter—disrupted the country’s cultural code, altering our evolution in ways we have yet to understand.

Trump has a showman's instincts and a salesman's credo: always be closing. Love him or not, the image he projected was instantly iconic: the raised fist, the streak of blood, the proud fist as an assertion of American individualism triumphant against a background of gray-suited and indistinguishable human shields.

And, of course, the flag. Long may she wave.

Nor should we overlook the most powerful American icon of all: the gun. As historian Richard Slotkin told Bill Moyers, many Americans see “... the gun as a symbol of productive violence in our history.  It has magical properties for a lot of people.”

Trump symbolically overcame our country’s most powerful totem, and he was smart enough to do it within seconds of being shot. He baptized himself in the blood of the Gun.

Democrats have underestimated him for a very long time. Do they finally realize what they’re up against?

One Nation Under the Gun

Gun control has been a leading Democratic issue for decades. But working Americans have been figuratively “under the gun” for decades. They’re under the gun to get a job, and then to get by on less than living wages. They’re under the gun to make ends meet while hoping their family doesn’t face a costly medical emergency. They’re under the gun every time the car starts making a noise that could be something expensive. They’re under the gun to keep their parents, their spouses, their siblings, and their children safe from the lethal epidemic of opioids.

Gun violence is terrible. But the structural violence of economic inequality also kills us, every day, in numbers that dwarf our nation’s lethal shootings. That’s a message voters haven’t heard from Democrats, who instead seem to radiate contempt for Trump’s supporters. But the MAGA movement isn't a collectivity of evil people. It isn’t even an ideology. For millions of its members, it’s a drug. Like fentanyl, it relieves the constant terror of precarity.

“Fight!” said the slightly bloodstained Trump. That won’t solve any problems or bring us closer together. But, for his supporters, it must have been a hell of a rush.

We Americans live by the gun and die by the gun. And once in a while we’re reborn by it, by offering a sacrament in blood to an unholy god.

Political Violence

In response, President Biden told the country that “the idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of.” The Lincoln Project—a Republican-run cash extraction scam for liberals—chimed in on X to say, “Political violence has no place in American life.” Commentators across the country agreed.

What, are you kidding? This nation runs on political violence. It was created by the political violence of the Revolutionary War. It was preserved through the political violence of the Civil War. (That war’s stated objective —freedom and equality for Black Americans—was then thwarted by political violence.)

Every war this country has fought in the last 75 years was motivated by political violence, for motives that range from anti-communism to great power rivalry.

The state suppression of Black Lives Matter demonstrators under Trump was political violence. So was the forceful breakup of Occupy Wall Street encampments under Obama and the brutal treatment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators under Biden.

Rhetoric like this treats us like children.

Another Nation Under the Gun

Meanwhile, the headlines roll in from Gaza and across Palestine:

• Emergency workers uncover dozens of bodies in a Gaza City district after Israeli assault

• UN chief urges funds for Palestinians, saying Israel is forcing Gazans ‘to move like human pinballs’

• Israeli strike kills 4 aid workers in Gaza ‘safe zone,’ UK-based group says

• A boy in Gaza was killed by an Israeli airstrike. His father held him and wouldn’t let go

• Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities

• Famine is getting worse in the north of Gaza. 

Between Biden’s cognition and Trump’s failed assassination, who’s even talking about Palestine now?

Under Fire

Fire. In this Biblical nation, that may be the most Biblical word of them all. It represents fury, justice, cleansing.

For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire.
Isaiah 66:15

Each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
1 Corinthians 3:13

For the Lord your God is a consuming fire.
Deuteronomy 4:24

We live in Biblical times. The wildfires burn, the heat domes form, the hurricanes and tornadoes approach. For most of us, that’s evidence of a climate emergency. For others, however, it’s a promise fulfilled.

The Fire Next Time

J.D. Vance will add more to the ticket that many observers suspect. He doesn’t bring the geographic or demographic diversity we’ve come to expect from VP choices, but his brand of economic populism will resonate with many voters.

We aren’t one nation under God, despite what the Pledge of Allegiance says. We’re one nation under fire, divided and divisible, with anarchy and numbness for all. For Trump’s opponents, the hour has arrived. Whether they understand it and act accordingly is up to them.

The next line in that Van Morrison song goes like this: "A crowd of people gathered 'round, and to the question answered 'yes'.” Barring dramatic action from the Democrats, that could be a political prophecy.

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And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
—James 3:6