With the shocking assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, the United States joined a growing list of Western democracies falling victim to the scourge of political violence.  

Just over two years ago, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated by a lone gunman during a campaign speech in Nara City, Japan. In early June of this year, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was violently attacked while strolling across a square in the Old Town section of Copenhagen. Lastly, and offering the most-direct parallel to what just took place in Pennsylvania, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and seriously wounded on May 15 at a town square meeting in the Central European nation. 

The situation in Slovakia leading up to the attempt on Fico’s life was eerily similar to the toxic political environment that has been pervasive in America for nearly a decade. In Slovakia, Fico, a populist with Viktor Orban-like autocratic tendencies, recently returned to power after several years as a member of the opposition. During that time in political purgatory, he missed no opportunity to demonize his political opponents, going so far in 2022 as to call the country’s popular, pro-Western president, Zuzana Čaputová, an “American agent.” 

Upon his return to power in the fall of last year, Fico and his coalition partners pushed through legislation severely limiting the independence of the country’s judiciary and media, exactly the institutions best placed to serve as checks and balances on potential extremist policies. In short, Fico freely stole pages from the standard playbook used by a veritable who’s who of autocrats – Putin, Xi, Orban and Erdogan. Concurrently, the Slovak leader lambasted his political opponents as corrupt, Western lackeys, while portraying his government as the sole defender of his country’s Christian, heterosexual, ethnically homogenous values. 

The country’s yawning political divide reached its nadir two months ago when an elderly, left-leaning writer pumped five bullets into the midsection of the Slovak leader. Although Fico is recovering, his early statements post-attack, blaming his political opponents and the nation’s liberal media for the attempt on his life, have fallen well short of “reaching across the aisle” to heal the country’s deep, partisan fissures. 

While each country is different, the building blocks of societal divide – significant portions of the citizenry susceptible to simplistic populism, extremist, opportunistic politicians; biased, inflammatory media; the prominence of dangerous, fact-averse, internet-based conspiracy theories; and the shameless demonizing of political opponents – are unquestionably common to both Slovakia and the United States.

The result is an us-versus-them culture that rewards provocative grandstanding at the expense of common-sense compromise. In short, we back ourselves into tribal corners, viewing those across the ring not as legitimate opponents but as mortal enemies to be vanquished. To quote U2 from “Peace on Earth,” their passionate ballad about the troubles in Northern Ireland, “And you become a monster, so the monster will not break you.” 

A healthy democracy is often messy, frequently quibbling and at times frustratingly inefficient. What it should not be, however, is a method of governance that resolves its inevitable standoffs through the barrel of a gun.  

Meanwhile, the only clear winners from this ongoing “Little Shop of Horrors” are our strategic adversaries across the globe. While the political chasms widen in the United States and other Western democracies, Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the Great of Russia, President Xi of China, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei sit back in their autocrat armchairs and revel in our self-inflicted misery.

Robert Beck of Peterborough served for 30 years overseas with the United States government in embassies in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He now teaches foreign policy classes at Keene State College’s Cheshire Academy for Lifelong Learning.