UNITED STATES—Where are we America? I know I am not the only person shaken with the news that rippled across this country Saturday evening when former President Donald Trump was nearly killed during an assassination attempt on his life during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

When I first heard the news, my response was, “This is a joke right.” I was nowhere near a TV or computer at the time to investigate. However, it surely became a reality that it did happen, and I stopped and told myself, “Jeez this is scary.” We have reached a point in our life where people are so politically riled up they are willing to try to kill a politician because they don’t like them.

Look, politics can be nasty, brutal and ugly at times, but trying to kill someone? Is that where we are? And if we are, it is time America to cut the crap. This is ridiculous. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but political violence in any capacity is not acceptable, it just isn’t. Thank God, President Trump was not killed, but the reality is that an attendee at that political rally was killed, a firefighter and father, while two others were critically injured.

Hell, I thought the FBI was trained to ensure such matters didn’t happen. I knew they scoped the region where Trump was speaking, but I also thought they reviewed areas from an extensive distance to ensure that there are no threats to a sitting president or former president. Not the case, because a 20-year-old male climbed a building, unloaded a rifle and fired several shots, piercing a part of Trump’s ear, and just imagine if Trump had moved more in one direction or another, things could be vastly different.

This is a time where all Americans regardless of political affiliation, red, blue, green, or none of the above, find a way to tamper down the heat America. The political rhetoric being spewed from both parties and the misinformation out there is dangerous. We need to be better. You don’t have to like someone, but telling lies and riling others up in an attempt to get others to think or feel the same way that you do is dangerous.

I mean people are willing to get into a fight with others because they disagree with their political views or how they think. Trump’s assassination attempt is scary as hell, because we still have months before the November 2024 Presidential Election and I don’t even want to imagine what could unfold. The finger pointing that some people are doing, politicians and the general public, need to pause right now and STOP IT! That is dangerous, beyond dangerous, but as someone said to me over the weekend, “I don’t think anything will unite us as a country right now.”

I wanted to dismiss that claim, but in my gut I felt the same way. There is just so much hate in this country that you wish you could force everyone to just get along for the sake of America, almost like what transpired with 9/11. However, I’m not wishing for another attack on our country to unite us a country. We should just want to be united as a whole.

There was January 6, 2021, that really shocked a ton of Americans, but political violence has been unfolding for years. You have the violence of the Black Lives Matter movement that decimated plenty of cities across the United States, there were multiple shootings against politicians Steve Scalise and Gabby Giffords. There was the kidnap attempt on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi was attacked at their home, I can go back and chat about all the Presidents in the United States who were assassinated like Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, not to mention others who had attempts on their life and political candidates running for President of the United States who were killed. I don’t want to say there is a trend, but it has continued to happen.

Something has to indeed change. How about we try to learn more about both sides of the political spectrum, hell, how about we stop picking political sides. Just be Americans who determine change by going to the polls and voting, not spreading hate, misinformation, dangerous political rhetoric, hatred and worse of all violence. You can talk politics with someone without being nasty, getting riled up or worse of all, resorting to violence.

Written By Jason Jones