As an interpreter of American life, I’ve learned that there are watershed moments from the past that hang suspended in time and pregnant with possibility.

One such moment occurred in Munich, November 1923. Another happened near the town of Rastenburg in East Prussia in July 1994. And the most recent went down on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. In each of these incidents, the deaths of the intended targets could have altered the course of history.

Munich, 1923.

The air was electric with anticipation and tension. A large crowd had gathered in the city’s center under a dull overcast with flurries of snow. The crowd’s cheers echoed off the buildings, with some of them draped in flags bearing swastika signs.

Throngs of spectators watched the synchronized marching of their charismatic leader, Adolph Hitler, and 2,000 of his devoted Storm Troopers. As the men advanced through the streets, they broke out in song, their breathing forming a mist in the cold air. The plotters hoped to overthrow the German government and launch a national revolution in what came to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and the Nazi Party aimed to establish a new government where citizenship would be based on race.

This failed assassination has radicalized and emboldened his supporters.

Hitler and the Nazis were met by a police cordon. A shot rang out. There was a short moment of silence before a volley of bullets sparked a shootout between the conspirators and the police.

One of Hitler’s armed bodyguards leapt in front of him and was gravely wounded.  Another was shot in the leg as he yanked Hitler to the ground so hard that his shoulder was dislocated. When the echoes faded and the smoke cleared, 16 Nazis and four police officers lay dead on the cobblestone streets. Hitler escaped but was later arrested, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to five years in prison, where he dictated his radical treatise Mein Kampf to fellow inmates.  After serving only nine months, he was released and transformed into a symbol of nationalist resistance.

Had he been shot during the failed putsch, Hitler’s political career could have permanently ended.  Instead, the world was left with the bitter taste of a missed opportunity.

Rastenburg, 1944.

On the stifling hot afternoon of July 20, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg arrived at Hitler’s heavily guarded secret headquarters nestled in the forest.  He carried a big black suitcase with a bomb inside underneath his good arm.  He had lost an eye, his right hand, and two fingers from his left hand at a battle in Tunisia.  Stauffenberg’s mission was to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime.  And if he failed, his act would at least demonstrate to the world that not all Germans supported fascism.

Stauffenberg planted the briefcase near Hitler during a conference room briefing and then excused himself.  As Hitler and his staff pored over maps, the explosion rocked the building.

But fate took a cruel turn.

Before the explosion, an unknowing officer moved the briefcase, placing it on the other side of the thick oak table leg from Hitler.  As a result, Hitler was shielded from the blast which killed four people.  He escaped with minor injuries and his trousers torn and singed.  This failed assassination, known as Operation Valkyrie, resulted in swift executions of the conspirators and ensured that the war continued for almost another year, claiming millions of lives.

We were suspended in uncertainty, caught between desperation and hope, asking: What if?

If Hitler had been successfully assassinated before coming to power, before the seeds of totalitarianism took root and flourished, at least six million Jewish people and millions of others around the world would not have been killed.  Germany might not have descended into fascism.  You might say this is all speculative, of course – there’s no certainty that one death would have stemmed this tide.  You would be right to say that while Hitler was a key figure in those events, there were broader social, economic, and political factors that contributed to the rise of the Third Reich.

We can’t really say with any certainty how history would have unfolded without Hitler.  But given the utter destruction, suffering, and loss of millions of lives, is it wrong for people then and now to wish he had been stopped earlier?

Is it wrong to hold regret for an assassination that never was?

Is it wrong to wish that a scope had been more calibrated, for a bullet to have found its target, for a fate to have been less capricious?

Is it immoral to yearn for the death of another human being?  Of course it is, in most cases.  But when we look back upon the past and see the acrid smoke of crematoriums and mountains of bodies, can you blame people for weighing the value of a single life against the salvation of millions?

Butler, 2024.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, held one of his typical campaign rallies in this small farming town dotted with Christian signs along the roads.

Five shots rang out.

Trump grabbed his ear and ducked behind the podium.  A scrum of Secret Service agents quickly formed a shield around him.  When he stood up, his face was bloodied.  He pumped his fist and mouthed, “FIGHT!  FIGHT!” as his supporters cheered and chanted, “U-S-A!  U-S-A!”  Some supporters turned to the cameras and cussed and flashed erect middle fingers.

On the heels of this failed assassination, predictably the media coverage focused on politicians and pundits falsely proclaiming that there’s “no place for political violence in America” even though this country was born in political violence and has sustained and exported it for centuries.  Violence is America’s main currency and Donald Trump has served as the spark for the official rebirth of white supremacy.  Articles like The Spectator’s “Today We’re All Maga” by Kate Andrews present a dangerous narrative that fails to tell the truth about the toxic nature of our current political landscape.

Andrews writes, “There is only one appropriate response to such horrors. Today, we are all MAGA…Trump’s biggest fans and biggest critics should not hesitate to come together on this issue.”

People shouldn’t be disturbed that Black Americans may not be showing empathy toward Trump.

Alongside resounding calls for unity without accountability while any legitimate criticism of Trump is being dismissed as partisan. Andrews also suggests that when it comes to Trump, we should stop calling a spade a spade even though his behavior has fundamentally been at odds with democratic norms.

“There is going to be a lot of pressure now for Democrats to tone down their rhetoric about Trump as a ‘dictator’ and ‘despot’: the kind of words people use around the world to justify political uprisings,” Andrews writes.

Andrews fails to acknowledge that Trump is a violent convicted criminal who incited an insurrection and he’s a rapist facing more criminal indictments.  He has implemented policies that have harmed Black and Brown communities.

Why are so many white people who dislike Trump suddenly becoming so patriotic and MAGA right now? That’s a rhetorical question.

“Is he dead?”

On Saturday when news broke about Trump being shot in the head, I interacted with many Black folks via phone and social media.  Upon hearing the news, which hadn’t been confirmed by reputable sources, most of them asked, “Is he dead?” When the updates emerged that the former president was fine, the jokes and memes ensued alongside claims that the whole thing was a theatrical stunt to help Trump gain sympathy and secure his bid for the presidency.

People shouldn’t be disturbed that Black Americans may not be showing empathy toward Trump.

Black people haven’t forgotten that this son of a tyrant who got arrested at a Klan rally, called for the deaths of wrongly accused teenagers in 1989 and refused to apologize even after their exonerations.

We haven’t forgotten how he promoted the false claim that former president Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. We haven’t forgotten how he called African nations “shithole countries” and how he defended white nationalists, saying there were “very fine people on both sides” at the deadly white nationalist-led rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We haven’t forgotten how he told American congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries and unleashed vitriol against NFL players for kneeling in protest against state-sanctioned police and vigilante killings of Black adults and children.

We haven’t forgotten how this slumlord who refused to rent to Black tenants called Black Lives Matter protestors “thugs,” attempted to restrict diversity trainings in federal agencies and criticized the removal of Confederate monuments.

His “law and order” policies disproportionately target Black communities. So too did his attempts to restrict voting access. And even though he has publicly stated that he knows nothing about Project 2025, which was developed by the Heritage Foundation, Black folks know that the policy recommendations in that plan align with Trump’s nationalist agenda which includes reshaping federal agencies, restricting reproductive rights, reimplementing Jim Crow education and a more authoritarian style of government.

Has Donald Trump ever shown empathy toward Black communities that he and his party and allied extremists have harmed with their rhetoric and actions? Did he show empathy for the racially motivated killings of Black people while he was in office: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Elijah McClain, Stephon Clark, Antwon Rose, or Terrence Crutcher? The answer is a resounding no!

Black people are not reveling in violence. We are wishing for the death of evil. We are longing for the prevention of evil. For a moment on Saturday, we held our collective breath. We were suspended in uncertainty, caught between desperation and hope, asking: What if?

Is it immoral for us to be tantalized by the siren songs of alternate histories where the world isn’t scarred by hatred, totalitarianism, genocide, lynching, segregation and world war?

I’ve learned that history does not deal in what could have happened. Instead, we must face the cold hard reality of what transpired and deal with the echoes of the chilling consequences that follow.

Black Americans should know that it is perfectly human for us to not grieve or feel angry over what happened in Butler. If Donald Trump had not turned his head, his death would have ignited the civil war that his supporters have been itching for since the 1960s. The race of the assassin wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if the perp was a foreigner, a Muslim, an immigrant, mentally ill or a white male Republican.

We know that because Donald Trump took a bullet for America and survived, and this failed assassination has radicalized and emboldened his supporters to complete the unfinished business of the first Civil War. Our communities remain vulnerable and unsafe, and we must remain vigiliant. However, living in an America in the aftermath of an assassinated racist martyr would be even worse.

Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and the author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America.

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