LIFESTYLE

Trump’s escape from disaster by mere inches reveals a tiny margin with seismic impact

Jul 15, 2024, 9:10 PM

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Servic...

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

NEW YORK (AP) — Jarring, chaotic and sudden, the bullet whizzed toward the stage where former President Donald Trump stood behind a podium speaking. In its wake: the potential for a horrifying and tragic chapter in American history.

But the Republican presidential candidate had a narrow escape — mere inches, possibly less — in Saturday’s assassination attempt. The projectile from the shooter on a nearby rooftop left Trump with just a bloodied right ear, initially shaken but otherwise unharmed as he dropped down and Secret Service swarmed, his campaign continuing as the Republican National Convention got underway.

A tiny margin for survival, with a potentially seismic impact. And an unforgettable example of something many were talking about Monday — a hard truth about the events that shape us, our daily lives, and our society:

Sometimes, it’s all about chance, about circumstances falling in one direction and not another, about interventions in the nick of time or missteps that allow for disruption.

Sometimes history can come down to inches.

Near misses and the hinge of history

It’s a truth that often gets obscured as we look over dates, places, people and events with the perspective of hindsight and blanket media coverage. The past gets covered with a patina of inevitability — as if it could have only occurred the way it did.

But “what just happened to us is a kind of humbling lesson about how contingent all of this is,” says Susan Schulten, a history professor at the University of Denver. “And nothing’s foreordained.”

No matter what, of course, there will be fallout and an impact from the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, where an attendee was killed and two others wounded, and law enforcement killed the shooter. But what it will be, in this election year and in the years to come, will unfold differently than it would have in an America where events had gone differently.

History is filled with examples of chance, randomness or luck playing a part in how things turn out, says Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis and author of “The Random Factor: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World around Us.”

In his book, he recounts an incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when a submarine from what was then the Soviet Union came close to firing a nuclear-tipped torpedo at U.S. forces out of a belief it was being attacked. But a circumstantial delay in getting the order carried out allowed enough time for another officer to recognize that wasn’t the case.

There are plenty of other moments where there can be endless “what-if” discussions, from assassinations of figures like Abraham Lincoln and John and Robert Kennedy to other attempted killings such as the attack on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two months after he assumed the presidency.

It’s also events like the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, Rank points out, when there were ordinary people who “missed their subway connection or were late or were early and just missed being killed in that disaster, whereas other folks were not as lucky.”

Trying to find meaning

Often, people respond to events like these by trying to make sense of them through a belief in coherence — to summon some kind of universal meaning, or divine plan.

That’s because people want a sense of control, says Daryl Van Tongeren, a professor of psychology at Hope College in Michigan. It’s too unnerving, he says, to admit that life is random and chance-filled. “It’s safer for us to think that we can just control everything that happens.”

And in the United States of America, where part of the national mythology is the idea that we are masters of our own destinies — that we can pull ourselves up by our own efforts — the idea of randomness can land as particularly unnerving, Rank says.

“In the United States, we’re really steeped in the idea of rugged individualism and self-reliance and meritocracy and you do it on your own, and you’re in control, and you have agency,” he says. “And to some extent, we are in control. We do make decisions. But another aspect of life is that … there are things that happen to you that you have no control over.

“That’s kind of unsettling,” he says. “But that’s the way life plays out. That’s the world.”

Lifestyle

FILE - A pharmacist holds a COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy in New York, on Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Phot...

Associated Press

Don’t wait for a holiday surge. Now is a good time to get your flu and COVID-19 vaccines

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you missed the early fall push for flu and COVID-19 vaccines, it’s not too late. Health officials say it’s important to get vaccinated ahead of the holidays, when respiratory bugs tend to spread with travel and indoor celebrations. Those viruses haven’t caused much trouble so far this fall. But COVID-19 tends […]

1 hour ago

A Norway Spruce that will serve as this year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is placed on a fla...

Associated Press

A green giant: This year’s 74-foot Rockefeller Christmas tree is en route from Massachusetts

WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — A giant Norway spruce that will serve as this year’s Rockefeller Christmas tree was en route to New York City on Thursday from its tiny Massachusetts hometown. The 74-foot-high (23-meter-high) conifer was cut down Thursday morning in West Stockbridge and hoisted onto a flatbed truck by crane. It will travel […]

3 hours ago

FILE - An Oct. 31, 2016 photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitati...

Associated Press

True crime’s popularity brings real change for defendants and society. It’s not all good

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — In 1989, Americans were riveted by the shotgun murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion by their own children. Lyle and Erik Menendez were sentenced to life in prison and lost all subsequent appeals. But today, more than three decades later, they unexpectedly have a chance of […]

5 days ago

Families gather by the tomb of their dearly departed, as they celebrate the Day of the Dead, at the...

Associated Press

As Mexicans celebrate Day of the Dead, they grapple with what it means to hold on to tradition

MEXICO CITY (AP) — It’s midnight on the fringes of Mexico City, and the San Gregorio Pantheon is not just alive, it’s booming. The roar of mariachis echoes over families adorning the graves of lost loved ones with rows of candles, orange cempasúchil flowers and their favorite treats ranging from pan de muerto to bottles […]

5 days ago

In this image take with a drone, a Norway spruce, this year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, ...

Associated Press

Crowds flock to tiny Massachusetts town to send off New York’s Rockefeller Christmas tree

WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree comes with a strong New England accent, and locals could not be more excited. The Norway spruce that will travel to New York City hails from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was scheduled to be cut down Thursday and make the roughly 140-mile (225-kilometer) journey […]

6 days ago

A dog's paw print (left of arrow) is seen in one of the chimney bricks at the Bray School on Wednes...

Associated Press

Inside a 1760 schoolhouse for Black children is a complicated history of slavery and resilience

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — A Virginia museum has nearly finished restoring the nation’s oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children, where hundreds of mostly enslaved students learned to read through a curriculum that justified slavery. The museum, Colonial Williamsburg, also has identified more than 80 children who lined its pinewood benches in the 1760s. They include […]

6 days ago

Trump’s escape from disaster by mere inches reveals a tiny margin with seismic impact