Fight, Flight, or Freeze

“Turn on the television. They just shot Donald trump,”

My father, calling me half hysterical from the kitchen, could not see my face but, miles away, only assumed it carried his same sense of shock. What he failed to take into account was that it was Midsummer’s weekend at UVA and I had been piled, shoulder to shoulder, onto the patio of Coupe’s DeVille’s. Beneath a sweat-draining sun, my only television hung behind a crowded bar—blissfully playing the MLB All-Star Game.

My father, who would not consider himself a Trumpster, had simply been looking for something to fill the void of an empty kitchen, settling on rally coverage while he spread tuna fish onto a piece of white bread. 

Hoping for quips, white noise and regurgitated nicknames, he did not expect eight bullets fired into a crowd, blood, chaos or unabashed fear.

Alive during three peaks in American violence—Kennedy, Reagan, 9/11—my father’s first response was to tell everyone closest to him, beginning with me. Hanging up and looking around the bar, I turned to silence. Each of the surrounding faces were consumed by the inflated price of a rum and coke, the worries of a fake ID peeling too much in its summer-long, walleted hibernation. It felt like I, alone, held a little piece of truth. 

For the college student and everyone that has the pleasure of being “young,” the world is small and selfish. The shooting of a former president is treated with far more excitement and awe than mournful gravity. As I was pinballed around the patio, little blooms of enlightenment appeared around me—kids holding up their phones to friends, saying “Oh my god they shot Donald Trump,” punctuated by a slew of wild-eyed expletives. 

“They only got his ear,” one kid said after scrolling Twitter for a few moments then turning back to the beer growing lonely at his table. “Nobody can kill my boy! Get f*#cked Joe Biden!” For him the matter was settled.

Another girl, tired after a long day, huffed out a sigh of half dismay and half nervous glee, only asking: “They missed?”

The first reaction, being the most natural, can reveal a lot about a person.

For most, an attempted assassination lies so far in the realm of impossibility that even the usual scoff from an ignorantly invincible teenager would not lose credibility. Regardless of the fact that he had been briefed on emergency response—had been sent to the New York Military Academy at 13 and prided himself as a streetwise New Yorker—Trump could never have expected a sudden bullet, screaming toward him out of the afternoon sun. 

His reaction in Butler, Pennsylvania began with the rumblings of fear. Panic rose as he cupped his ear and ducked to the ground, clinging to the floor. Even blanketed by a swarm of Secret Service, his voice wobbled into the microphone: “Let me get my shoes, let me get my shoes.”

Gripping their service weapons and darting apprehensive glances in every direction, officers tried to push him off the stage and funnel him into his armored car. Then the words, “wait, wait, wait, wait,” leave Trump’s mouth: an unexpected reaction to the threat of a second, potentially fatal bullet wound. At that moment, his face—collar popped, hair disheveled, blood rushing down toward his neck and mouth—surfaced above the officers, along with a fist, clenched and pumped into the air as a fearless target. 

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” he screamed to the crowd who, in turn, screamed back. Pump the fist, show the face, stand tall. Practiced or not, strength (or the appearance of strength) is the natural instinct of Donald Trump. Despite the danger, he addressed his supporters twice more before being pushed into the car.

The crowd, his crowd, adopted his instinct. Beginning with a fall to the floor, a steady freeze or a quick-draw cellphone pointed in the direction of chaos, the crowd’s initial reaction was mixed and fearful. After Trump’s bloody scowl, pumped fist and intention to ‘fight,’ they broke into a primal chant of “USA, USA” amongst the curdling screams. Middle fingers of defiance, all thrown in the direction of the shooter and his gun. 

Reactions occur naturally; there is little we can do to stop them. Instinct surfaces out of an animal piece in the human heart, giving direct insight into one’s personality and decision making. America too is an animal—a mongrel beast prodded into a choice of fight, flight or freeze. 

So how did the country react? It seems the larger, national response followed historical precedent. Once the shock subsided, a climate of partisan radicalism and vigorous finger pointing began to fire up the conspiracy mill. Murmurs of Biden-backed government hits emerged from the Right as they accused the Mainstream Media of “minimizing” an “assassination attempt.” On the Left, Trump was the mastermind—plotting his “Reichstag Fire,” or “staging” a shooting with paid actors and even “BB guns.” Concoctions of blame began to seep out of the internet and reach the mainstream. 

Here is your culture of misinformation—the community’s distrust of “fake news” and “Truth Social.” A culture where the facts balloon then burst, where hatred and violence spring from the bushes. 

This is the same culture that fuels the Thomas Matthew Crooks of the world—a kid just one year older than me. It breeds the countless Mass Shooters and January 6th insurrectionists, the Minneapolis rioters and Neo-Nazi Charlottesville thugs. Here is a culture war that slips civility into violence and churns out an apathetic world where three have been shot, one killed, at a rally in Pennsylvania. Two inches to the left, and the RNC would not have its fist pumping, “invincible” outlaw. Two inches to the left and the nation may have slipped into a pit it could never have crawled out of. 

A civilization of hatred breeds twisted violence. Knowing this, will America follow its instinct?

The opinions expressed within this piece represent the views of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jefferson Independent.