Federal officials this week charged Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old man from California, with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner last weekend. On Saturday, Secret Service agents evacuated Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other officials from the Hilton Hotel in Northwest D.C. after Allen had charged past security before being tackled by officers. One secret service agent was shot, but survived due to his bulletproof vest. Prior to the attack, Allen wrote a manifesto where he suggested that he wanted to assassinate Trump and other government officials. While this attack is undeniably appalling, it is not entirely shocking, given the rise of political violence in the United States in the last few years, from the shooting at Trump’s 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, to the attack of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their California home in 2022, to Charlie Kirk’s assassination last September. 

While the United States has a long history of political violence, the past few years reflect a uniquely polarized environment where civil discourse has failed in favor of attempts at physical harm. And as this political environment has changed, so too have the public’s attitudes regarding political violence, including mine. While we all watched in horror in 2021 as rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as these events have increased in frequency, I’ve found mine and my peers’ reactions have decreased in intensity. My conversations with friends and family reflect a public desensitized to political violence, where the attempted assassination of a controversial president is met with more memes than condolences. This attitude has gone beyond the general public to our elected officials, with D.C. Councilmember Robert White posting following Saturday’s attack that the correspondents’ dinner needed a “curfew” — an apparent jab at the emergency juvenile curfew policy in D.C. aimed at curbing teen violence. Using attacks against political figures as an opportunity to make jokes or make a political point have become all too common. The rise of political violence and our attitudes toward it should be a sign for all of us to not look away, but rather to confront the direction our country is heading in. It doesn’t matter how polarized our politics or country becomes: violence should not be the answer to solve our differences, and we should not accept it as part of our political landscape. 

Almost two years ago, I wrote a piece in The Hatchet about the attempted assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where I explained how watching political violence in the United States surge concerned me, as my family came to the United States from Mexico in the search of the “American Dream” — or the hope that we could live in a country with an expectation of safety. The United States is meant to be a place where people can freely express their views without the fear of retaliation, one of the ideas my family subscribed to. I grew up listening to Mexican news channels where they would describe the latest move of organized crime, trying to influence elections through violence. Or I would hear about assassinations of political candidates before they were even voted into office or threats candidates received and pulled from the campaign. 

Those two summers ago, I was worried about the direction that the country seemed to be taking, one where political violence was becoming increasingly normalized, much of how Mexico’s political landscape can be. The idea of the United States being a place where political differences and views can safely coexist is deteriorating as political violence escalates. 

I remember how concerned I was a few years ago — especially after the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But as the years have passed, I find that the vivid concern I once held has subsided. Instead, whenever I come across a headline or video about political violence, I either don’t think too much about it or soon find myself making jokes about the situation, as I have seen several of my friends do. I have also seen an increase in this attitude on social media, which perpetuates this attitude of having inflammatory reactions, which can mean making jokes or making light of the situation. I am also guilty of this. I don’t really find myself thinking too much about the political violence in our country; it’s something that just happens.

But this shouldn’t be the case — we should not be getting accustomed to these events and accepting them so easily. When we start brushing off the violence we see against political figures, we ourselves are helping to normalize it. This violence is leading the country down a path where healthy and productive dialogue will no longer be the basis of politics. It has become more normal for me to hear people making jokes about an act of political violence, regardless of their political affiliation. People who often don’t like or agree with Trump’s politics will make jokes or comments about how he “should be taken out” following assassination attempts. But this kind of mentality dehumanizes the people around us, and when we start dehumanizing them, it makes us more amenable to accepting violence and unable to work out our differences in a civilized and humane manner.

I understand that during a time when we are surrounded by a never-ending stream of news, it can become draining to keep up or feel concerned over the many things occurring in the news. I also understand that it is difficult to feel sympathy for politicians who stand against what you believe, but we need to see each other as people first. We are heading in a direction where sympathy and empathy are on a decline. But those traits are the basis for understanding each other, communicating and simply functioning in a society — without them our government and communities will fall apart. 

I have seen in the past how unaffected my family would be when political violence would occur in Mexico. Hearing about violence against a political figure was an expected part of the daily news cycle. That day should never come for the United States. This kind of attitude makes us complacent and makes change harder. The more we accept this violence now, the more it will escalate and the harder it will be to come back from it. My family, like so many others, moved to this country for the hope of a better life, but the rise in political violence we see today goes against the values and freedoms America is touted for. As an American, that concerns me, and it should concern you. 

Andrea Mendoza-Melchor, a senior majoring in journalism and mass communication and creative writing, is the opinions editor.