It was in­evitable that vi­o­lence re­lat­ed to one of the ma­jor con­tenders as­pir­ing to be Pres­i­dent of the most mil­i­tar­i­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly pow­er­ful coun­try in the globe, the USA, would break out.  It has been the most in­tense­ly charged and po­ten­tial­ly most con­se­quen­tial US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign in mod­ern times. 

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, a fig­ure of self-gen­er­at­ed con­tention and con­tro­ver­sy, who rev­els in the spot­light, his fist pump to his sup­port­ers de­pict­ing his strength, and in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty, even as his usu­al­ly man­i­cured hair­style is dis­turbed, has adorned the front page of news­pa­pers across the US and the world af­ter what is be­ing re­ferred as an as­sas­si­na­tion on his life. 

He could not have re­quired a more dra­mat­ic up­lift to his cam­paign, which is al­ready trav­el­ling ahead of Pres­i­dent Joseph Biden.

His im­age, now for­ti­fied to his sup­port­ers as a vir­tu­ous leader, wronged by his op­po­nents, and pil­lo­ried by the me­dia has re­ceived this boon; the gods of po­lit­i­cal cam­paign­ing have smiled on him. His sup­port­ers and the Re­pub­li­can par­ty must feel as­sured that af­ter this in­ci­dent, their can­di­date will open an even greater dis­tance over in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Biden.

Vi­o­lence in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and so­ci­ety over the last decade has brought the coun­try to this mo­ment. As­sas­si­na­tion at­tempts, in­clud­ing suc­cess­ful ones go­ing back 159 years to the most no­table of Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, Abe Lin­coln and to the pop­u­lar John F Kennedy in 1963, with Ronald Rea­gan se­ri­ous­ly wound­ed in a 1983 at­tempt on his life, have been part of the Amer­i­can po­lit­i­cal lore.

In the present, the build-up to this year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, with four months to a new “D Day”, the ex­perts, the colum­nists, the me­dia re­porters and pun­dits are fil­ing sto­ries and opin­ions dai­ly in­di­cat­ing the con­test is whether or not the US will sur­vive as a democ­ra­cy if Trump were to be elect­ed; or if de­feat­ed, whether an 81-year-old Pres­i­dent Biden, who has been fluff­ing his lines, fac­ing se­ri­ous mem­o­ry loss and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing ver­bal chal­lenges, can sur­vive a four-year term. And if not, will an elect­ed vice-pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris be ac­cept­ed as Pres­i­dent?

Be­yond the Amer­i­cans pon­der­ing the out­come of the elec­tion, there are deep geo-po­lit­i­cal and in­deed civ­i­liza­tion­al con­se­quences aris­ing out of this elec­tion for the world so­ci­ety of the 21st cen­tu­ry. Ques­tions re­volve around whether there will be an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of con­flict be­tween the USA and Rus­sia; will the USA will be able to re­tain its eco­nom­ic su­prema­cy against the push of Chi­na; the con­se­quences of an as­sured in­ter­nal con­flict in the US whichev­er can­di­date is de­clared win­ner, with the re­al and pre­dict­ed pos­si­bil­i­ty of di­rect­ed vi­o­lence if Trump’s par­ty, the Re­pub­li­cans, were to be de­feat­ed? For Trump and the Re­pub­li­cans, a de­clared vic­to­ry for their par­ty will be the on­ly in­di­ca­tion of a fair­ly con­test­ed elec­tion. 

For the con­flicts in the Mid­dle East, in Rus­sia-Ukraine, in Syr­ia and else­where in which the US has a mil­i­tary and po­lit­i­cal in­put, the stakes are high. A vic­to­ry for Trump will place the Rus­sia-Chi­na, North Ko­rea al­liance in some­thing of a com­mand­ing po­si­tion; how­ev­er, the ac­tions of these quixot­ic and de­ter­mined lead­ers of these coun­tries are well-nigh im­pos­si­ble to pre­dict.

The big ques­tion is whether or not a live­able world en­vi­ron­ment will pre­vail in its wake, what­ev­er the out­come.