Trump’s Escape From Disaster by Inches Reveals Tiny Margin with Seismic Impact

NEW YORK (AP) — Abrupt, chaotic and sudden, the bullet whistled toward the stage where former President Donald Trump stood behind a podium to speak. In its wake: the potential for a horrible, tragic chapter in American history.

But the Republican presidential candidate had a slim chance – inches, maybe less – Saturday’s assassination attempt. The projectile of the shooter On a nearby rooftop, Trump suffered only a bloodied right ear, initially shaken but otherwise unharmed as he fell and Secret Service swarmed him, his campaign continuing as The Republican National Convention has begun.

A tiny margin of survival, with a potentially seismic impact. And an unforgettable example of what 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, circumstances going one way and not another, well-timed interventions or missteps that allow disruption.

Sometimes the story can be summed up in a few inches.

Near misses and the turning point in history

It is a truth that often becomes obscured when we examine dates, places, people and events with the benefit of hindsight and widespread media coverage. The past takes on a patina of inevitability, as if it could only have happened that way.

But “what just happened to us is a humbling lesson about how random this is,” says Susan Schulten, a history professor at the University of Denver. “And nothing is predestined.”

Regardless, there will of course be repercussions and consequences from the attempted assassination of Trump that occurred last Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania, in which one participant was killed and two others were injured, and where law enforcement shot and killed the shooter. But what will happen, in this election year and in the years to come, will play out differently than in an America where events had been different.

History is full of examples of chance, happenstance or luck playing a role in how events 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 in 1962, when a submarine from the then Soviet Union nearly fired a nuclear torpedo at American forces, believing it was under attack. But a circumstantial delay in carrying out the order allowed another officer to recognize that it was not.

There are many other moments when the “what if” discussions can be endless, from the assassinations of figures like Abraham Lincoln and John and Robert Kennedy to other assassination attempts like the attack on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two months after he became president.

There are also events like the September 11, 2001 attacks, Rank points out, where ordinary people “missed their subway connection or arrived late or early and narrowly escaped death in that catastrophe, while others were not so 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 invoke some kind of universal meaning or divine plan.

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

And in the United States, where part of the national mythology is based on the idea that we are masters of our own destiny – that we can make it happen through our own efforts – the idea of ​​chance can seem particularly disconcerting, Rank says.

“In America, we’re deeply rooted in the idea of ​​rugged individualism, self-reliance, and meritocracy. You do things yourself, you have control, you have power,” he says. “And to some extent, we do have control. We make decisions. But another aspect of life is that … there are things that happen to you that you have no control over.”

“It’s a little unsettling,” he said. “But that’s how life works. That’s how the world works.”