By Partha Chakraborty-
How the world changed in an instant.
Till about 6 PM Eastern on Saturday, we were wondering who would answer the 3 AM call at the White House. By 6:30 PM, we have a reasonable idea of how the United States of America would look when they rise to their feet minutes after an assassin’s bullet pierces the ear, with clenched teeth and raised fist minutes after a brush with death, defiance of destiny writ large on the face as blood streaks down.
As providence would have it, the Stars and Stripes flutter gloriously behind. How beautiful.
Details are still being worked out, but here is a high-level summary. Around 6:04 PM Eastern, former President Donald J. Trump, started addressing an election rally at Butler, PA. At about 6:11 shots rang out and Mr. Trump realized he was bleeding from his right ear. Within seconds The US Secret Service was all over him giving cover, and almost immediately neutralized the shooter – Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, PA. Mr. Trump was evacuated to a hospital in NJ where he is recovering. Corey Comperatore, a retired fire chief from the area, was killed in the volley of gunfire, two more are critically injured. Crooks is said to have used an AR-15 registered in the name of his father, “rudimentary” explosive devices were found in his car.
Even if security services were hailed initially for their response, questions are raised as to how it unfolded. Crooks fired from about 400 feet away, perched atop a rooftop just outside the protective perimeter, and was previously identified as suspicious near the entrance. He was spotted on the roof with a long gun, but was not ‘contacted’ till he managed to get his shots. Not understood yet why sharpshooters were not on the rooftop where he was since it afforded clear line of sight. FBI claims that Crooks acted alone; he was considered “incredibly intelligent”, had no criminal record or military service, only voted in the 2022 midterm, and was a registered Republican who donated to a liberal voter turnout group. Nothing – nothing at all – sets him apart as of now; efforts to understand “why” are still early.
America had seen four sitting presidents assassinated. However, before Trump, Teddy Roosevelt was the only US president attempting a comeback when faced with an attempt on his life, and survived. On October 14, 1912 in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was saved by his metal eyeglasses case, and a folded long speech, fifty pages folded to a hundred pages thick stack of paper. He stopped the crowd from killing the shooter, apologized to the audience that he may not be able to deliver the full speech, and then gave a 90-minute rabble-rouser reading from the same folded, and bloodied pages. “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot,” he started, “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!”
I am drawn to two other speeches by Roosevelt, both pertinent as to how I would like to see the country.
On April 23, 1909, he gave a speech before “25,000 persons,” that was later known as “The Man in the Arena”. He inveighed against the “cynics”, saying, a “cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not … of superiority but of weakness”. He continues with a celebration of “the doer of deeds”, the (wo)man “who is actually in the arena”, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions”; and who at the worst, even if (s)he fails while daring greatly, will be assured their “place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”.
“The Man in the Arena” speech echoes sentiments he voiced ten years ago, in Chicago on April 10, 1899. Known as “The Strenuous Life”, he opens thusly – “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” Grown as a sickly kid, doctors advised him “desk job” upon graduation from Harvard, he disregarded all of that, practiced tennis, rowing, polo, horseback riding, and boxing till he was left blinded in left eye after a bout, and thereafter he practiced jiu-jitsu and “skinny dipping in the Potomac River during winter”. In his mind, the Strenuous Life led to a more engaged global presence for the country, exhorting, “let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness”.
Growing up in India, that is the image of America that caught on to my young psyche. That this engaged land of the brave and the indomitable is the home of the free and the faithful. That this country celebrates the “Strenuous Life”, which in today’s terms I interpret as taking risks and always unlearning and relearning. America, as Teddy Roosevelt put it, is not a place for “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”. This is not a country of the armchair critic, nor the casual champagne cynic, but celebrates the Doer and the Dreamer. It is quite alright to make a mistake, or two or three, so long as you are well within the chalk of ethical living. Above everything else, the image I carried as a youngster is that this is the safe place for the Aspirant – work hard, keep your head down and chin up, and never stop trying.
Dream, work hard, fail, rinse and repeat till you succeed. “You can fail, but can never fail to dream,” is the mantra I took to heart. This is what made US of A the “Shining City on the Hill”.
I have argued, ad-infinitum, that the ever-so-devious “Arts Quad Mafia” has done a masterful job cloaking the Shining City on the Hill behind allegations that have no foundational or real data-based support. I do, and I always will, look down upon them with fear, loathing, contempt, and a wagging finger of accusation. They would never know a “Strenuous Life” if one hit them in the head, nor would they ever appreciate a (wo)man “in the Arena”. These are the entitled creatures whose self-appointed parasitic high-altar roles require nothing but contempt for the rest of us.
I know better. As an entrepreneur, I love and live The American Promise and Exceptionalism the hard way, every single day. I find company, and fellowship, amongst people whose only shared trait may be that they taught themselves to get back up, no matter what, and always look past the last blow that got them to the mat. That is the America we dream of. This is what the best of the country looks like, no matter the person, going back to the days of the Framers, despite the Original Sin.
I hope that the next president embodies the Aspirational core of the country, who unabashedly celebrates the “Strenuous Life,” of the (wo)man “in the Arena”. The country, and the world, will be poorer otherwise.