One thought that lingered in my head during vacation was that I’ve been alive during segments of two millennia, two centuries, and eight decades. Surely I’ve learned something
I grew up sharing a bedroom with my Irish grandmother who assured me that I had nothing to fear except Republicans and harmonicas. She either upskilled or dared me to maneuver those politically awakening 1960s.
In 1965, Malcolm X was shot because of his interesting take on mandatory segregation that resonated with northern and western Blacks who were tired of waiting for equality, justice and freedom. But Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam, then unjoined them. That made three men so mad they shot him 21 times.
John F. Kennedy, President of the United States and of Camelot, got himself shot by a former U.S. Marine who felt so unpopular and overlooked he bought a mail order Italian infantry rifle with a scope, and used it at lunchtime in Dallas to emphasize his emotional frenzy.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed with a .22 caliber revolver in 1968 by a Palestinian man who’d been mad at him for 20 years. All because RFK publicly pledged unfailing support and assistance to Israel as it sought its independence from British rule at the expense of Palestine.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot by a white supremacist firing a Remington Game-master 30-06 rifle, a deer rifle.
There are ample conspiracy theories on each of these deaths, and each accused shooter said someone bigger and worse was the instigator. “It wasn’t my idea,” they said, a common, possible and unlikely account.
Che Guevara, a writer and physician, was so appalled by hunger, poverty and disease in South America that he became a revolutionary and did his level best to depose chiefs of state who were put into office by the United States with bankrolling from the United Fruit Company. He was executed in 1967 by the Bolivian Army.
None of these men said Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death, but each led his life as though he believed it. These men knew the risks of saying out loud what they said out loud but did it anyway.
Then last Saturday while I was cooking dinner and listening to Jeopardy, there was a station interruption announcing that fireworks or gunshots were heard at a Trump rally. Within minutes, there was video showing the former president feeling the right side of his head as though he’d been stung or bitten. Then he either squatted or took a knee, lost his shoes and got them back on, and walked assisted but on his own two feet to a waiting car that rushed him to a hospital.
I stood there staring at the TV with tongs and a hot pad in my hands and thought that after all the years I’ve been alive, all the history I’ve experienced, all my stomach quakes caused by unexpected and ridiculous assassinations, it’s Donald Trump who has a guardian angel. Bless his heart.
Grandma’s picture looked right back at me.