#I hope Trump dies in a fire

[spaceumbredoggos]

Reblog if you’d summon Bill Cipher to cause something to happen to Trump. I’m not even kidding. If you care about queer people at all, you’d reblog. Donald Trump is a monster and deserves to be owned by Valentino from Hazbin Hotel. Fuck MAGA. Fuck capitalism. Weirdmaggeddon would probably be our saving grace as long as we all bow down to our lord and master Bill Cipher. But please, we need to get rid of Trump.

[flipflopgamer01]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61886299

Found this absolute gem on AO3.

I hope it works

[boyhooters]

I think it is so interesting that, time and time again, worsening economic conditions result in a radicalized left youth. Growing up in dire conditions inspires them to do better.

I'm not saying it's good we have to live like this, I'm saying those who have put such oppressive systems in place NEVER fucking learn their lessons.

[thrashkink-coven]

Okay here’s the hard part.

I think a lot about that guy, so called Jesus, and his philosophy of radical forgiveness and empathy. For a long time I thought that was just a line abusers use to force their victims to forgive them (AND IT IS)

But! I also think about Lucifer and the things he taught me regarding the concept of hell. If I was the ruler of hell and I had to manage all these terrible people, what would I do? Torture them? Give them endless suffering so they feel guilty? Do to them what they did to others so they can understand how bad it feels?

Latinos who voted for Trump, oh you disappoint me, but no, I don’t want you to be deported. Women who voted for Trump, *sigh*, no, I don’t want to see you get an ectopic pregnancy or carry your dead baby. No I do not want all those conservative gays to lose their right to marriage. And no, I don’t even want all of those fucked up fascist nazi racists to die.

It would be SO satisfying to see them get what they deserve, right?

God, I’m so sick of being apart of a species that loves to conquer. We bleed, they win, they bleed, we win. I’m sick of patching wounds. All I see is hellfire.

My friend Taylor Mcnallie is facing fraudulent charges because of an altercation that happened while she was protesting in Calgary. The bitch of a cop who assaulted her not only received no punishment, she got a fucking promotion. I remember during one of Taylor’s speeches someone said something like “I hope she gets arrested and goes to jail,” and Taylor said, “I don’t hope she goes to jail. Jail shouldn’t exist. I just want her to get fired and apologize. That’s all I want.”

Pacifism, true pacifism, like the kind that guy preached about, doesn’t mean laying down and accepting every terrible thing assholes do to you with a smile. It means taking away their ability to harm without harming them yourself. Eliminating the evil without becoming evil. Punching nazis does not make you a nazi, but praying for the death and destruction of people, human beings, because you hate them as much as they hate you? *sigh*

The hardest part about this whole radical empathy thing, is the fact that I cannot even wish harm upon those who want me dead. Isn’t that funny? That literal neo nazi, yeah, I hope he has shelter. Fuck I hope that rapist still eats tonight. I hope he feels shame until the day he dies, but I don’t hope he gets raped in prison. I don’t even want him in prison to be honest, I want him to be cared for, and I want his ability to do harm stripped away.

“Even if he hurts a child?”

God damn it, yes. I can’t add more suffering into the world, even if it is inflicted upon the people I’d love to hate most. I want to take away his power to do evil, I want everyone to know what kind of person he is and the terrible things he does so they can keep themselves safe… and then I want him to be safe.

I want all those terfs to have clean drinking water. I know they hate my guts, ugh, it is what it is. But praying that they experience the pain they’ve caused me, hoping that they die or suffer only makes me more like them.

WHICH SUCKS. This way of thinking is NOT satisfying AT ALL!!! Being vindictive and petty is FUN and it FEELS GOOD!!! That’s why it’s so fucking easy, and that’s why we keep eating each other over and over again.

Having said all of this, we should definitely bring back the guillotine lmao. I’m not saying that we should be super nice to people who are trying to kill us, do fight back. If the people need to kill their oppressors to be free then, hey, I’m not going to tell them they’re wrong for that. This isn’t a “we should all hug and sing kumbaya together! Kindness is always the way!!!” take. If the only way to bring death to the empire is to bring death to its owners, then so be it. Do so in the way that produces the least amount of degradation to your soul.

But wishing natural disasters on Texas, hoping that that racist woman’s parents get deported, out of spite and hatred… what are they doing to you? What are you doing to yourself?

Humanity is disgusting, truly truly abhorrent. I want to be able to look at us and embrace us with acceptance of that. Every single fucking terrible person on this earth deserves liberty, life, and freedom. Even when you spit in my face and hurt the people I love, damn it, I won’t hurt you. I see you as a rabid animal that needs to be sedated and slowly acclimated to compassion. And I will keep trying, even if you never learn. I can’t give up on humanity.

This is the most important and the hardest part. I’m not telling you to forgive, forgiveness is for you. If it doesn’t serve you, don’t forgive. But don’t let people without humanity kill the humanity that exists within you. Don’t let hatred fester in your soul. You’re allowed to be mad, hell, you should be furious. Let that fury keep you warm, but do not become a monster too.

To all you stupid fucking fascist pieces of shit, I hope you get exactly what you deserve. And what you deserve is not death, pain or suffering. It’s self reflection and growth, guilt and humility. As much as I would enjoy seeing you hurt, I refuse to become like you. And damn it I love you, I love every human being on this planet. I love you so much that I cannot become you. I love you so fucking much that I will continue to fight for your rights even when you’re trying to take mine away. and I hate that I love you like this, but I can’t stop.

So I will stop you.

- James Baldwin

[verycleverboy]

A spicy headline for an alarming state of affairs. Via the Intelligencer section of New York Magazine:

The world’s richest man may now have access to the confidential personal information of every taxpayer in the United States. According to a New York Times report, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday granted Elon Musk and his minions at the faux-agency DOGE full access to the Treasury’s massive federal payment system. As with the rest of Musk’s wide-reaching project within the U.S. government under Donald Trump, it’s not at all clear what he plans to do with this unprecedented access. Also on Friday, the top civil servant at the Treasury Department, David Lebryk, was apparently ousted after he refused to give Department of Government Efficiency officials access to the system — or rather, per the Times, he “was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit.” Lebryk had worked at Treasury for three decades, and had been the Trump-named acting Treasury secretary until Bessent was confirmed by the Senate on Monday.

(full article)

Slate Magazine's Mark Joseph Stern sees a lot of Elon's post-takeover Twitter playbook in what the "first buddy" has done so far under the new regime, and he's not the only one.

Even if you don't remember how broken Twitter became immediately after he seized control of the company and started unplugging servers with a pocket knife, you're probably more than a little nervous right now about the entire system being placed in the hands of an unelected private citizen with no federal oversight who was effectively handed a blank check and instructions to go fucking nuts. And if you are nervous, that's because Elon hovering around the government is already having drastic consequences far beyond who gets paid for what, as Stern points out:

He’s taking total control, moving fast and breaking everything, and just assuming somebody else can clean up the damage later. But the federal government is not a private company. It cannot be run or gutted like a private company without horrific consequences down the line. Let me give you a perfect example of why I think Musk’s approach is so dangerous. As everybody knows, there was a plane crash in D.C. on Wednesday. A helicopter collided with a passenger plane and almost 70 people died. When this collision occurred, the Federal Aviation Administration was leaderless. Why? Musk had Trump fire the former FAA leader as soon as he got into office, because the former leader had investigated and fined one of Musk’s companies, Starlink. This was a sheer vengeance firing. This was not about competence or even truly about political affiliation. Elon Musk was just mad at this guy for investigating his company and wanted him gone on Day 1. Because of that, the FAA was leaderless during the biggest aviation disaster in this country since 2001. The agency had to scramble to figure out how it was going to respond to this without anyone at the top. And by the way, the day after the crash, FAA employees—including air traffic controllers, who are already badly short-staffed—got an email encouraging them to resign and find work in the private sector. This is not a game. Federal workers are not just pawns you can move around the board and reassign and purge without massive collateral damage to the entire country and its citizens. The FAA is just one example of many.

(full transcript)

And now he has full access to the Treasury payment system. Just in time for tax season, too. Hope your plans for that refund are flexible, just in case.

[qqueenofhades]

Looks like Mitch it stepping down from leadership in November. Of course he'll be serving out the rest of his term until January because Satan himself would have to shuffle this absolute sack of bones and slime off this mortal coil before he gives up ALL his power. Wonder which unholy minion of Dump will take over for him...

Oh man, Mitch must be like, actively dissolving into a puddle of toxic black slime if he's remotely willing to step down/remove himself from power in the slightest degree before he literally dies at a press conference. Which, for the record, I think he should do. It would be hilarious and literally the least of what this country deserves in repayment for all the evil he's been responsible for wreaking on it.

We should also not forget, however, that Mitch is likewise well aware that his brand of hyper-competent, surface-level respectable evil is toast, and he's obligingly getting out of the way for the full-on frothing-mouth looney MAGAs to take over. We can at least hope that his replacement will be so busy sucking up to Trump and saying insane things that they'll have no ability to actually use the system and work behind the scenes to do evil things, as good ol' Addison Mitchell McConnell III has been so good at doing for his entire tenure. Die in a fire after flipping Trump both middle fingers, fuckwad. You're already on your way out, you've got nothing to lose. But will you? No.

[falloutboylyricss]

Fall Out Boy and Names

note: this post includes only specific names of people or groups of people (such as band names), both real and fictional

Evening Out With Your Girlfriend

"I can be your John Cusack" - Honorable Mention

"Obscured by the stand-up arcade and the sound of the Descendants" - Switchblades and Infidelity

"And listen to the Misfits 'Where Eagles Dare' to swallow whole" - Growing Up

"And we're all in the back singing 'Roxanne'" - The World's Not Waiting (For Five Tired Boys In A Broken Down Van)

"A simple contradiction could shake my whole foundation, Parker Lewis can't lose" - Parker Lewis Can't Lose (But I'm Gonna Give It My Best Shot)

Take This to Your Grave

Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today (title only)

"Pete and I attacked the laws of Astoria with promise and precision" - Saturday

"Me and Pete in the wake of Saturday" - Saturday

"Hey, Chris, you were our only friend" - Saturday

From Under The Cork Tree

7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen) (title only)

I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me (title only)

Infinity On High

none

Folie à Deux

She's My Winona (title only)

What A Catch, Donnie (title only)

"Miss Flack said, 'I still want you back'" - What A Catch, Donnie

Tiffany Blews (title only)

Save Rock And Roll

"We're all fighting growing old in the hopes of a few minutes more to get, get on St. Peter's list" - Rat A Tat

PAX AM Days

none

American Beauty/American Psycho

"She wants to dance like Uma Thurman" - Uma Thurman

"I got those jet pack blues, just like Judy" - Jet Pack Blues

"Do you remember when we drove, we drove, drove through the night and we danced, we danced to Rancid" - Favorite Record

"I can't remember just how to forget, forget the way that we danced, we danced to Danzig" - Favorite Record

MANIA

"I'm 'bout to go Tonya Harding on the whole world's knee" - Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea

Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) (title only)

"And if death is the last appointment, then we're all just sitting in the waiting room (Mr. Stump?)" - Church

"I think that God is gonna have to kill me twice, kill me twice like my name was Nikki Sixx" - Young And Menace

So Much (For) Stardust

"We were a hammer to the Statue of David" - Love From The Other Side

"I can't stop, can't stop 'til we catch all your ears, though, somewhere between Mike Tyson and Van Gogh" - Flu Game

"It breaks your heart, but four of the Ramones are dead" - The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)

Misc.

"Yeah, streets are full of seasons, saw what they did to Jesus" - Dear Future Self (Hands Up)

"'Cause everyone loves Bob Dylan, I just want you to love me like that, yeah / Would you bury me next to Johnny Cash? I'm obsessed" - Bob Dylan

"Captain Planet, Arab Spring, L.A. riots, Rodney King" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Oklahoma City bomb, Kurt Cobain, Pokémon / Tiger Woods, MySpace, Monsanto, GMOs / Harry Potter, Twilight, Michael Jackson dies" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Kim Jong Un, Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Obama, Spielberg, explosion, Lebanon / Unabomber, Bobbitt, John, bombing, Boston Marathon" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Trump gets impeached twice, polar bears got no ice / Fyre Fest, Black Parade, Michael Phelps, Y2K / Boris Johnson, Brexit, Kanye West and Taylor Swift" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Sandy Hook, Columbine, Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice / ISIS, LeBron James, Shinzo Abe blown away / Meghan Markle, George Floyd, Burj Khalifa, Metroid / Fermi paradox, Venus and Serena / Michael Jordan, 23, Youtube killed MTV / SpongeBob, Golden State Killer got caught / Michael Jordan, 45, Woodstock '99 / Keaton Batman, Bush v. Gore, I can't take it anymore" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"Elon Musk, Kaepernick, Texas failed electric grid / Jeff Bezos, climate change, white rhino goes extinct / Great Pacific garbage patch, Tom DeLonge and aliens" - We Didn't Start The Fire

"SSRIs, Prince and The Queen die" - We Didn't Start The Fire

[cbk1000]

Also, to be clear on this, because anon isn't going to be the only pearl-clutcher in the wake of this: people are not mad the shooter missed because they disagree with Trump's policies. This isn't, 'I don't like this guy's opinion on the economy; hope he dies.' They’re mad because Donald Trump is a piece of shit human being. He is a rapist. He is a conman. He stole national secrets and very likely sold them, but at the very least showed them to people he wasn't supposed to. He tried to overturn an election he lost because he's a mincing pissbaby. He has the capacity to do tremendous harm (and has) and is being given the opportunity to do it again.

I wish the shooter hadn't missed because he is a hateful, misogynistic, racist piece of shit who, if reelected, will be a vengeful little toddler who devotes what time he has between diaper changes to punishing whoever he perceives to be an enemy, and further stacking the court that overturned Roe v. Wade and robbed millions of women of their bodily autonomy.

He wouldn't piss on one of his own supporters if they were on fire if there wasn't something in it for him. I'm not going to cry because some asshole with poor aim took a little chunk out of his ear.

[f1ghtsoftly]

All The Women’s News You Missed Last Week

12/30/24-1/6/25

An Indian woman’s family rushes to pay “blood money” to avoid the death penalty in Yemen after she killed her business partner in self-defense, a female journalist quits the Washington Post after she was censored for drawing cartoons critical of Post owner Jeff Bezos and Ellie Smeal is honored for her work defending women’s rights. Once again reproductive rights are in the spotlight in the US as anxiety mounts about the new conservative government and more this week…

Want this in your inbox instead? Subscribe here

Reproductive Rights: 

Newborns are being left in dumpsters in Texas, but Republicans don't seem to care��

Trump and His New Republican Congress Will Make *All* U.S. Taxpayers Fund Unregulated Crisis Pregnancy Clinics 

Despite Republican Bans and Clinic Violence, Independent Abortion Providers Fight to Keep Their Doors Open 

Women in the News: 

After bruising election loss, what next for Kamala Harris? 

How a home-made snack empowered Indian women 

'I resent you': Wife's remark a wake up call for husband over Japan's surname issue  

Washington Post cartoonist quits after Bezos satire is rejected 

The remarkable life of Andrée Blouin - Africa's overlooked independence heroine 

World's oldest person Tomiko Itooka dies aged 116 

Rebel Wilson marries Ramona Agruma in Sydney ceremony 

Rosita Missoni, co-founder of Italian label, dies aged 93 

Brazil ex-official returns toilet she had removed from office 

Three dead in suspected Christmas cake poisoning 

Ellie Smeal Honored with Presidential Citizens Medal for Defining the Women’s Rights Movement 

Male Violence: 

‘I Was Gaslit’: Kate Beckinsale Speaks Up About How Hollywood Treats Women While Supporting Blake Lively 

Lively and Baldoni both file new lawsuits in harassment row 

Police identify woman set on fire in deadly New York City attack 

Child sexual abuse inquiry chair urges government to act 

Last hope for Indian nurse on death row in Yemen: pardon from victim's family 

British woman and fiance found dead in Vietnam villa 

Murder inquiry launched into death of woman in her 30s 

Man arrested over death of woman in County Roscommon 

Arts and Culture: 

Kehlani shares how taking risks earned Grammy noms while balancing mental health during activism

Amazon to release Melania Trump documentary 

Bringing a tyrannical Ethiopian queen and her twins to life 

Meet Amy Allen, the songwriter behind the music stuck in your head

Opinion: 

‘Sex strikes’ aren’t the feminist win they appear to be. Here’s how to get really radical 

As always, this is global and domestic news from a US perspective covering feminist issues and women in the news more generally. As of right now, I do not cover Women’s Sports. Published each Monday afternoon.

[freakoutgirl]

i truly hope trump dies in a fire-y explosion. biden too.

[idioticeliza]

Guys its not even 24 hours into this god forsaken year

Why we already having attacks man. People do not deserve to be hurt and die. Rest in peace to the souls who have died in these attacks today.

(And Trump is yapping his orange ah off which is annoying in itself.)

Context if you don’t know already (this is my knowledge of it it could be wrong, anyone and everyone can correct me in the comments/tags if needed!!):

New Orleans Terriost Attack: 10 deaths and 45 injuries of a (subjected Texas) man ramming into a crowd of people and then opening fire into the crowd.

Cybertruck explosion: A CyberTruck exploded in front of the trump (uhh hotel? Tower? I could google it rn but I seriously don’t wanna) and 1 person (from my knowledge) died.

Again I hope everyone who has died today rest well, and that everyone injured heals safe and healthy.

[wytchwyse]

Today is a dark day for marginalized people here in the states. We all had to watch  our “family”,  “friends”, coworkers, and Neighbors  vote Against us. I am heartbroken, and violently angry at the outcome of the election. I am terrified of what is to come in the next Four years. The next election I pray something will shift and the American people will collectively come to see that conservatism is not the way forward. I think we underestimated the ignorance of our fellow Americans, and their need to cling to old, outdated, and false beliefs. 

Now is a good time to mourn what could have been, cry, yell, get angry if you have to, feel all your feelings and give them room to exist.  But we all need to hold fast, lean on each other, care for one another. I like to remind myself of the ancestors and all their struggles. I feel them holding us up, if they could do what they did, survive what they survived, and prevail over the adversities they had to overcome then so can we. not only can we survive and prevail we MUST. it is how we honor our fallen, our Martyrs. This is how we honor those who have fought this fight before us.  

This is not the end of us (marginalized people) this is the death surge of a dying way of life. This is how greed, bigotry, Self-centeredness, Conservatism Etc dies. They die kicking and screaming. So we will not go gentle into that good night, we are survivors. I am scared, but I will not run and hide, and neither should you. We will have our day, so stand up, live, fight, give what you have to give however that looks for you. But i ask you to be Courageous.  

To those of you ‘who voted for Trump, who didn't vote, or who voted 3rd party. Remember this “they come for me in the morning they will come for you at night” you will all be  held accountable for what happens next. The pain, the hurt, the poverty.and i hope that someone will show you kindness because it will not be me. I will leave all of you behind to rot in the past. And you will all be forgotten. Because if what is remembered lives, then what is forgotten is dead. 

I can only pray that you will be first to feel the flames of the fire you started. 

“You must never give in to despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road and you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.” — Uncle Iroh

[mattslolita]

i hope trump dies in a pit of fire 🥰

sigh real twin

[aroaceloverofgarlicbread]

Thank God I don’t live in the US, seems like Trump is gonna win. It’s obviously still gonna affect the rest of the world but not as much at least.

Hope he dies painfully in a fire somewhere ☺️

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Marans and Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

CHICAGO ― Former President Barack Obama delivered a lofty speech in support of Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, hailing her as a visionary leader with the experience and values to help the country “move past some of the tired old debates that keep stifling progress.” Harnessing Democrats’ sense of excitement about Harris, Obama presented the Democratic presidential nominee as a natural heir to his optimistic first presidential bid. After explaining how the country needs a president committed to empowering workers in “this new economy,” Obama said, “Kamala will be that president.” Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Yes she can!” ― a play on the Obama presidential campaign slogan, “Yes we can.” Obama heard it and repeated it. “Yes she can!” he said. “Yes she can.”

The crowd was electric from the moment Obama walked on stage ― in part because he was preceded by former First Lady Michelle Obama, who arguably gave the most rousing speech of the night. The one-two punch of the Obamas ― both Chicagoans ― fit with the spirit of a convention that has sought to conjure the effervescence of Obama’s early candidacy, but subtly break with the pandemic, inflation and anxiety over President Joe Biden’s age. Michelle, who has never run for public office, remains one of the Democratic Party’s most gifted speakers. Her focus on “hope,” a core theme of her husband’s two campaigns and presidency, set the stage for his subsequent speech. He opened with an affectionate joke about her speaking abilities. “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling fired up!” he said. “I’m feeling ready to go ― even if I’m the only person stupid enough to speak right after Michelle Obama.”

[...] The 44th president got a particular rise out of the crowd with his veiled suggestion that Trump’s fixation on crowd sizes might reflect an insecurity about the size of his male organ. “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and this weird obsession with crowd sizes,” he said, prompting laughs as he pretended to measure something with his hands. Obama characterized the contest between Trump and Harris as a fight over the future direction of the country ― whether Americans would submit to Trump’s zero-sum, fear-based vision, or a politics of shared national sacrifice between people of different backgrounds. As an example of Democrats’ more uplifting and compassionate approach, he talked about how Michelle’s recently deceased mother Marian Robinson, who died in May, had reminded him of his own grandmother, a white woman from a small town in Kansas. “On the surface, the two of them didn’t have a lot in common,” Obama said. “And yet, they shared a basic outlook on life ― they were strong, smart, resourceful women, full of common sense, who, regardless of the barriers that they encountered … they still went about their business without fuss or complaint and provided an unshakable foundation of love for their children and their grandchildren.”

[...] The former president made a point to honor Biden, too, whose role in the convention has been bittersweet as his political career comes to an end. He said picking Biden as his running mate in 2008 turned out to be one of his best decisions as president. “Joe and I come from different backgrounds. But we became brothers,” Obama said. “And as we worked together for eight years, what I came to admire most about Joe wasn’t just his smarts and experience, but his empathy and his decency.” He celebrated Biden’s legacy as president before delicately addressing the elephant in the room: that Biden dropped his bid for reelection amid Democratic panic that he couldn’t defeat Trump in November, and cleared the path for Harris to step up. “And at a time when the other party had turned into a cult of personality, we needed a leader who was steady, and brought people together, and was selfless enough to do the rarest thing there is in politics: putting his own ambition aside for the sake of the country,” Obama said. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”

Tuesday night at the DNC stage, former President Barack Obama tore the roof off of the United Center with his speech praising Kamala Harris and needling Donald Trump (especially about his obsession with crowd sizes). Obama also gave great praise for Joe Biden, the man who he put on the ticket in 2008.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Barack Obama has a blast shredding Trump at the DNC

The Guardian: ‘America is ready for a better story’: Barack Obama lauds Kamala Harris in rousing speech

Vox: What Barack Obama’s DNC speech was actually about

[mariacallous]

The attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump shocked the nation.

While speaking to a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Saturday, July 13, a 20-year-old man fired at Trump. A bullet appears to have swiped Trump’s ear, drawing blood, before the former president ducked beneath the podium, surrounded by Secret Service agents. He insisted on standing up as his security detail gave him cover, pumping his fist into the air and yelling to the crowd: “Fight!” A firefighter and rallygoer named Corey Comperatore, who dove on his family to protect them from the gunfire, did not survive.

The horrendous incident rightly earned strong condemnation from across the political spectrum. “There’s no place in America for this kind of violence,” said U.S. President Joe Biden. “It’s sick—it’s sick.”

The violence instantly became a moment for politicians and pundits to call for calm and pull back from the toxic polarization that has left Americans bitterly divided. “Violence is infecting and inflecting American political life,” an editorial in the New York Times lamented. “It’s not who we are as a nation,” Biden said in his remarks the following day.

But is it? Much of the reaction downplays just how pervasive violence has been in U.S. history. Although the ideology of American exceptionalism pushes Americans to think of their country as fundamentally different than other nations that have been wracked with these kinds of events, the truth is that the United States has a long and sordid history of people who try to solve political differences using bullets rather than ballots.

Violence is one of the reasons that the U.S. electoral system has always been extraordinarily fragile. It has taken heroic efforts to maintain the republic that Benjamin Franklin, one of the country’s founding fathers, famously warned would be necessary to care for and protect.

The common perspective that violence is somehow un-American misses a key point. The normalization of violent rhetoric in recent years is so dangerous not because it constitutes a fundamentally new turn in U.S. democracy, but because it taps into a deeply rooted history that Americans ignore at their own risk. The reality is that assassinations and assassination attempts targeting high-level officials have been taking place for decades.

The United States has sadly had many political leaders, presidents, and prominent candidates killed. The price that President Abraham Lincoln paid for trying to preserve the union and bring an end to slavery was John Wilkes Booth murdering him on April 14, 1865, in Washington, D.C. In July 1881, Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield, who died in September. The nation had barely caught its breath before an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz killed President William McKinley in 1901. And Americans would mourn collectively after Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in November 1963.

The count of these four slain leaders does not include the many serious assassination attempts that failed, such as when President Franklin Roosevelt was nearly killed in February 1933 by an unemployed tradesman named Giuseppe Zangara. President Gerald Ford survived two attempts to kill him within weeks in 1975. President Ronald Reagan’s life was almost brought to an end by John Hinkley Jr. in March 1981. Like Trump, Reagan managed to manage the crisis to his benefit. Reagan and his team downplayed the severity of the wound. He and his team shared jokes to emphasize perseverance, such as his telling the surgeons: “I hope you are all Republicans.”

Candidates for the presidency have also been targets. On Oct. 14, 1912, former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, running as a third-party candidate, was fired at by John Schrank during a campaign rally. An eyeglass case made of metal and the thick text of the copy of his speech in his pocket saved his life even though a bullet penetrated his chest. Roosevelt refused to go to the hospital and instead went on to give his talk. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” Roosevelt said, “But it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”

Most baby boomers remember when Sen. Robert Kennedy, after winning the June 1968 California primary, was slain by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Four years later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who became infamous for his staunch opposition to racial integration, was partially paralyzed a bullet during his run for the presidency in 1972.

Violence has also afflicted Capitol Hill. The Yale University historian Joanne Freeman writes that violence in the pre-Civil War Congress was as American as apple pie. Freeman took the classic story of the pro-slavery South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks beating Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane and revealed that it was not an anomaly. By the 1850s, members of the House and Senate were coming to work armed and loaded, and they frequently engaged in physical conflict on the floors of the chambers as tensions over slavery mounted. Freeman documented more than 70 acts of violence between congressmen in the tense period between 1830 and 1860.

Civilians have also deployed violence against legislators. A man named Carl Weiss took the life of Louisiana Sen. Huey Long, a potential candidate for the presidency, in 1935. On January 8, 2011, Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was badly wounded after being fired upon in Tucson; one of her staffers and five others were killed. In 2017, a 66-year-old man named James Hodgkinson gravely wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise during a practice for the annual congressional baseball game. Even family members can become victims, as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, experienced in his home when a conspiracy theorist David DePape bludgeoned him in October 2022.

At the national level, violence has not been confined to politicians. The United States has also lost the leaders of many movements along the way. The streets of the cities were on fire after civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot down in Memphis in April 1968; three years earlier, Malcolm X had been killed as well.

The United States has also seen immense electoral violence at the local level. The Jim Crow South was a political system where institutionalized violence was essential to the disenfranchisement of Black Americans. In states such as Mississippi, Black residents understood that they faced immense risk when they traveled to the courthouse in an attempt to register to vote. Another civil rights leader, the charismatic and inspiring NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers, was struck down outside his home on June 12, 1963. T.R. Howard, a surgeon and civil rights leader, said in his eulogy for Evers: “For 100 years, we have turned one cheek and then another. And they have continued to hit us on both cheeks, and I’m just getting tired now of hurting in silence.”

This year is also the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer in Mississippi, where three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—were murdered by the KKK and allied police officials because they were partaking in the voting rights mobilization that inspired young people around the world. And much of the country, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, was horrified a year later on March 7, 1965, now called “Bloody Sunday,” when police and white mobs brutally attacked nonviolent civil rights activists who were marching from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights legislation. Photographers captured the horrific images when troops fractured the skull of John Lewis, a leader from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and future member of Congress.

On Nov. 27, 1978, Dan White, a former member of the board of supervisors of San Francisco, shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, who had become a heroic figure within the gay community. And since the tumultuous 2020 election that culminated with the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, 40 percent of state legislators polled by the Brennan Center for Justice have reported receiving threats.

The United States has many wonderful characteristics, but violence is one of them as well. As the historian Richard Slotkin has written in his classic works on the subject, violent mythology has always been deeply embedded in American culture. More recently, the historian Steven Hahn has traced the powerful impact of illiberalism, which has included electoral violence, since the founding of the country.

None of this unsettling history should discount the dangers stemming from the very real uptick in violence and violent threats that government officials have faced in recent years, which have reached elected officials, judges, and even poll workers. The current atmosphere is indeed one of heightened danger. Just because conditions have been bad in the past does not provide comfort in current times.

Yet history should send a strong warning about the dangers of politicians and others who use violent rhetoric. Indeed, this warning was often made to Trump, both when he was president and after, about his willingness to incite crowds. These calls to action tap into a treacherous component of U.S. culture that is often right beneath the surface.

The attempt to kill Trump should be a chilling reminder of how easy it is for some Americans to trigger a lethal tradition. Americans have seen the ugliness too many times before to act like this doesn’t usually happen here. It does.