A friend recently asked me if I thought former President Donald Trump staged his recent assassination attempt at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”
My buddy believes every attack, physical, legal, or political, on the Republican presidential candidate is bound by divine intervention to backfire and boost his election bid. To goad me, he threw out the line that Trump has “benefited greatly” from the assassination attempt, which claimed the life of a rally-goer and injured two others.
He knew that for years I’ve denounced conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and that neither of us would likely be swayed to take the other’s side.
We eventually moved on to other topics. But I couldn’t shake the sense that a version of this conversation was happening among friends and families across the country—and that they had also left feeling as though the “other side” lives in another reality.
If the young gunman had succeeded in killing Trump, he might have ratcheted up this level of polarization even further. What happened instead was that leaders on the left and the right began calling for unity.
“We’re neighbors or friends, coworkers, citizens,” President Joe Biden said in a speech the day after the assassination attempt. “We must stand together.” TV talking heads, radio talk-show hosts and guests, podcasters, and influencers urged Americans to come and stick together.
During his speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump initially offered a new, unity-oriented message, saying, “We rise together or we fall apart.” But he soon veered into divisiveness, calling Nancy Pelosi “crazy,” describing Biden as worse than the “ten worst presidents,” and accusing Democrats of “cheating on elections.”
Not to be undone, the Democrats’ presumed presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, lambasted the Republican candidate during her first campaign rally. After noting that as a prosecutor, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she declared, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
Trump’s assassination attempt took me back to 1995, when, in an eerily similar turn of events, a young gunman set out to kill Israel’s prime minister at a rally. That assassin accomplished his goal, fatally shooting Yitzhak Rabin. I remember how, in the weeks after the tragedy, Israelis shelved their polarization, which had also pitted friends and family members against each other.
They had the chance to cement a new approach. Not for everyone to agree on everything—that would be equally disturbing—but to disagree respectfully and productively.
That moment passed them by. Israelis reverted to their polarized politics. They continue to pay the price to this day. Unable to truly listen to each other and reach practical compromises, they’ve hit a wall on several existential issues, such as blocking anti-democratic judicial reform and enabling the creation of a Palestinian state.
We stand at a similar fork in the road: We can come closer or split further apart.
As an educator and nonfiction storyteller who aims to advance civic discourse, I believe our opportunity lies with our next generation.
The Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State, which I direct, offers programs that enable K-12 educators to help their students develop civic discourse, critical thinking, active listening, and fact finding skills. Children and adolescents learn to identify credible sources, gather and examine data, triangulate their findings, discuss difficult topics with each other respectfully and productively, and embrace eclectic perspectives.
In such an environment, the students’ differences rarely, if ever, lead to polarization. Instead, they enrich their lives.
If we provide these learning opportunities to our next generation, I believe they will come and stick together.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.