Getting shot doesn’t make one a hero; it makes one a victim. Let’s make that clear. Heroes get shot trying to save others from becoming victims. But what happened to Mr. Trump should never happen in America. Not to political candidates, school children, or anyone else.

To try and turn Mr. Trump into some superhero is the height of delusion. Unless your standard for superheroes is someone slightly wounded while giving a speech and able to be up and about the next day.

Let’s remember Mr. Trump’s record of comments on actual heroes. Here’s what Mr. Trump had to say about the late Senator John McCain who spent years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton undergoing horrific torture.

“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

By that standard, the men who endured the Bataan Death March were no heroes. The men who were shot down over Germany and endured imprisonment in the German Stalags were no heroes. The men who suffered in North Korean POW camps were no heroes. The 591 American POWs repatriated from North Vietnam in 1973 were no heroes.

If they are not heroes, certainly Mr. Trump is no hero.

It is not some sign from the heavens of manifest destiny. It does not change one iota of Mr. Trump’s proposed policies or demonstrated disdain for the rule of law or the process of democracy.

Joe Broadmeadow

The incident in Pennsylvania does not show greatness or courage in Mr. Trump. At best it shows good fortune. It also demonstrates that in this country no one is immune from violence. If someone surrounded by heavily armed cops and secret service agents can be a victim, where does that leave most Americans?

What is ironic is that a man who openly encouraged violence on January 6, 2021, said Nazi White Supremacists were good people, and mocked the circumstances around the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, is now a victim of this endemic violence.

But to think something fundamental has changed within Mr. Trump is naive and dangerous.

This changed nothing, yet his supporters in the Republican Party—cowards with self-inflicted amnesia—will tout this incident as evidence of the man’s invincibility.

We’ve yet to see medical reports about what actually hit Mr. Trump. But I can tell you this, the effective range of a .223 round (if that is what the would-be assassin fired) is 400 to 600 yards. If the full force of that round had struck Mr. Trump, it would have been a different story.

I am glad to see he recovered enough to go to the RNC—no one deserves to be a victim of violence—but this is no cause célèbre. It is not some sign from the heavens of manifest destiny. It does not change one iota of Mr. Trump’s proposed policies or demonstrated disdain for the rule of law or the process of democracy.

It seems odd someone who demands to see medical reports of the sitting President of the United States and presents himself as fit for the office to replace Mr. Biden would decline to release the records related to the assassination attempt.

Why? Is there more myth than reality here?

Yet his sycophants are in the middle of an orgasmic ecstasy of hero worship. Memes with the “bearded white guy in a robe that everybody thinks is Jesus” deflecting the bullet flood social media. (If Jesus was there, why’d he let Mr. Trump get hit in the first place? A better question is why did he let any innocent people die?)

Senator J.D. Vance, now filling the VP slot on the Trump ticket, said this on social media:

“…this is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

No call for calmness. No plea for unity. No condemnation of the level of violence directed at political and elected officials. A conclusion without any evidence that this was the responsibility of President Biden.

Maybe just maybe there is a slight chance that Mr. Trump will seize this moment in history and seek to calm the waters when he speaks at the Republican Convention.

Maybe he will ask his supporters and all Americans to reclaim the civility of the past he so loudly claims reflected when America was great.

Perhaps he will seek to stimulate an open and frank discussion of dealing with the epidemic of gun violence that balances the guarantees of the Second Amendment with the protection of innocent lives.

Maybe Mr. Trump will show a side of himself that has never been seen before and show tolerance toward those who might disagree with him.

Perhaps, but I see no sign he will.

And the bottom line is, without an astonishing epiphany from his brush with mortality, nothing has changed in his approach to the functions of government and the Constitution. Things he views as impediments to the Presidency, not the results of over two hundred years of American Democracy.

Remember the Aesop Fable of the Farmer and the snake?

The story concerns a farmer who finds a viper freezing in the snow. Taking pity on it, he picks it up and places it within his coat. The viper, revived by the warmth, bites his rescuer, who dies realizing that it is his own fault. A snake doesn’t change its nature because we take pity on it. It is and always will be true to its nature. Thinking otherwise is not the snake’s fault, it it ours.

I listened to the acceptance speech by Senator Vance. Nothing in it gave me any hope for a more nuanced and ecumenical approach to the issues facing the nation. Vance’s well-established positions as an isolationist, opposition to women controlling their own bodies, rejection of aid to Ukraine remain fixed.

And, of course, he fully buys into the false narrative of election fraud in 2020 by saying he would have not certified the election had he been Vice President. That alone should give us all pause. Trump’s VP selection fully supports subverting the will of the people in an election based on a false claim that numerous courts have found to be baseless.

Then again, if he had become more open to compromise he’d never have been chosen in the first place. He will be the way Mr. Trump can support all the same policies without having to say it himself. He can explain away Vance’s positions by saying he wanted a VP with strong opinions although he may not completely agree with them.

It will be a smoke screen. A way to put out a message to the faithful what the real goals of a Trump administration will be.

I will listen to Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech. I will listen for even the slightest hint of a willingness to build a coalition in government between the parties. But I will be surprised if I hear any. I firmly believe nothing has changed.

An assassination attempt on a Presidential candidate is a symptom of much deeper problems. Surviving the attempt is not a “sign from god” of some predestination for greatness. It should be a clarion call that this country faces serious problems of our own making.

What happened in Pennsylvania changes nothing about the man or his policies, and we need to remember that. And I hope, the next time there is a school shooting and more innocent kids die, the outrage throughout the country matches the outrage today.

And most importantly we do something about it, not deify someone for being fortunate enough to survive.

P.S. Needless to say, I was not surprised by former President Trump’s speech. While he opened the speech with a shallow plea for unity and civility, the other 90 some minutes were nothing but the same hyperbolic misrepresentation of his record, a misstatement of facts about pretty much everything, and a not so subtle hint setting the stage for a challenge to the results should he lose.

It is this last one which causes great anxiety. Instead of lowering the level of intense separation between those who support him and those who do not, he lit the fuse to inciting a violent reaction if he is not re-elected. In this matter, as I feared all along, many Americans are taking pity on a freezing viper and bringing him within striking distance of their heart and freedom.