To speculate that the world might be better if Trump had not survived is to sink to his level

To wish anyone dead is an inhumane thought, but the question must have popped into some minds: Would it have been better for America, for the planet, for humanity, if the assassin’s work had been completed?

Donald Trump is rushed offstage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump is capable of touching the darkest recesses of some minds.

On one level there is shock, as there would be for any violent attempt on the life of a public figure.

On another there is fear of what it might prompt. Will gun violence become a feature of the most polarising US election in generations?

Is the bright, shining city on the hill, the one-time beacon for the free world, beginning to crumble? Is this another staging post in the decline of the liberal democracy model that claimed the allegiance of the Western world for the last 70 years? These questions are freighted with fear.

Then there is the reaction, bulging with suspicion. Was it staged? Did somebody associated with Trump or his movement set up this shooting in order to inflame opinion and further polarise the United States?

He and others around him have shown an ambivalent attitude to violence in the public realm before, although never in the context of murder or assassination. Would it be beyond him to try to pull it off as an election stunt? This falls into the realm of conspiracy theory but at a time when such theories are multitude — many propagated by Trump himself — it is inevitable that some will seek recourse there.

Trump has shown an ambivalent attitude to violence in the public realm. Picture: Gene J Puskar/AP

The reaction that dare not speak its name, but which is undeniable, is that of deflation. Following the initial shock, the question must have popped into some minds: Would it have been better for America, for the planet, for humanity, if the assassin’s work had been completed?

To wish somebody, anybody, dead is a cruel and inhumane thought. Yet there are times when you will hear such thoughts articulated. This is usually in the case of an individual who has perpetrated cruel or savage crimes against other human beings.

It is not uncommon in such instances for the casual theory to be articulated that the world would be better off if the individual had been shot dead by police, or had even taken his own life.

Such thoughts are rarely if ever aired by public figures, as it touches on a dark corner of one’s psyche, a corner that we often pretend does not exist. But ask yourself: Would lives have been saved if an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in July 1944 had been successful? If so would many among the public have wished him dead at the time?

Take another cruel dictator, Vladimir Putin. What if there was an attempt on his life in this, the week after a missile was shot into the biggest children’s hospital in Ukraine?

Donald Trump shakes hands with Vladimir Putin in 2018.  Picture: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

 Would you wish such an attempt successful on the basis that other children might live if he were to die and his war with him? These are horribly complex moral dilemmas.

Trump is a belligerent, wannabe dictator, a man whom one court has deemed a sex offender and another a crook. He preys on the most vulnerable, in pursuit of power, and according to some who have worked for him, exhibits all the traits of a dangerous narcissist.

After he lost the 2020 election, some of his conduct arguably amounted to inciting violence. Trump’s attitude to political violence was evident following an attack on the San Francisco home of the Democratic party’s Nancy Pelosi in 2022 by a conspiracy theorist who planned to kidnap the then speaker of the House of Representatives.

The assailant entered the property over a wall and Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband Paul was assaulted with a hammer, his skull fractured. Talking at a rally a few weeks later, Trump told the crowd: “We are standing up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco.

How’s her husband doing by the way, anybody know? She is against a wall on our border, despite having a wall around her house which obviously didn’t do a very good job.

Is it any wonder then, that some would be of the belief that the world today would be better, people in general safer, democracy less fragile, if Trump had not survived the assassination attempt?

Donald Trump thrives on hate, on dehumanising his opponents — enemies as he would have it — and on polarising society. Picture: Rebecca Droke/AFP 

Such a thought, while understandable on a visceral level, is inhumane, but more importantly lowers one down to Trump’s level.

He thrives on hate, on dehumanising his opponents — enemies as he would have it — and on polarising society.

He appears incapable of empathy, but his death would have resulted in a direct hit on democracy, even in its current flawed, frazzled condition.

He should be wished well in his recovery — and hopefully beaten soundly in his political project.