I wish I could share Peter Spiegel’s (admittedly guarded) optimism following the horrifying assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, during which a bystander was killed and two others seriously injured (“Are we entering another age of political violence?”, Insight, July 15).
No one alive remembers, and perhaps the smallest handful of the eldest now alive had living relatives who remembered, the years preceding the American civil war. But this feels more like those febrile years than like the dawn of a new “gilded age”.
In any case, “gilded” is apposite — a thin layer of gold over base metal or other material. The century that followed the war was characterised by Jim Crow — the 1960s were not so much a decade of orgiastic violence against Black Americans as the capstone of a century of violence.
The consequences of reconstruction and Jim Crow ripple through America to this day.
Finally, it is whiplash-inducing to read implications that both sides are equally extreme and thus equally wrong. We don’t know what Thomas Matthew Crooks’ beliefs or motivations were — but only one side stormed Congress, a mere three years ago, in an effort to overturn the results of a democratic election.
The attempt to assassinate Trump was an outrage and has rightly been condemned. We abhor all political violence. That does not make him right or any less a threat to democracy.
In the circumstances I fear there are scant grounds to hope for the reassertion of voices of reason.
John Jarvis
London E7, UK
