A Veteran’s Take on the Trump Assassination Attempt

Wes O'Donnell
8 min readJul 14, 2024

If the US wasn’t a powder keg primed to explode, it certainly is now.

Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

Like many nations on Earth, the United States of America was born by violence.

Pristine examples of America’s puritanical heritage can be found everywhere — exemplified most obviously in media, where depictions of gratuitous violence on network TV are fine — but God help you if you show a woman’s breast.

Watching John Wick kill nearly 500 characters on screen across three movies is entertaining — even adrenaline-pumping — but intimate sex scenes on film make Americans squirm uncomfortably in their seats.

Like the dad finding his teenage son’s stash of Penthouse magazines and berating him so thoroughly that the boy will forever view the female form as something to be feared instead of celebrated.

Modern America is like living with all the bloodlust of Ancient Rome in the Coliseum but with none of the orgies.

This is why I find it incredibly disingenuous, even trite, to hear a politician say “Violence has no place in American politics.”

What did you think was going to happen in a nation born by violence (in the Revolution), raised by violence (against our own people), got a master’s degree in violence (in the 20th Century), and now is so…

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Wes O'Donnell

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians