The reverberations from the attack on the White House Correspondents Association Annual Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday, April 25 are massive, as it was a total shock to the 2,500 attendees and all of the Donald Trump government figures that were in danger from the crazed attack by Cole Tomas Allen, and it will take a long time to be fully processed.
While the gunman did not get through the perimeter at the hotel, the thought that such an attack could be mounted at all, is stunning.
The gunman had a whole set of grievances regarding what Donald Trump and his administration have been perpetrating in the 15 months since Trump came back to leadership of the federal government. And he specifically referred to Trump as a pedophile and rapist, relating to the Epstein files.
It is clear that the level of political violence is a menace to the long range stability of the government and American society.
It is highly concerning that it has come to the point that all members of Congress now require private security for their own safety, and their staffs are under constant threat as well.
This confrontational, “in your face” antagonism among members of both the Republican and Democratic parties, endangers all Americans, and has led to bloodshed and physical attacks that remind us of the pre Civil War period in the 1850s, as has been documented by various historical scholarly studies.
And the ability of unstable people to acquire guns in a society in which gun rights are seen as more important than general public safety is an alarm bell that makes one fear the future.