It is perhaps why the assassination attempts on Donald Trump prompt some to wish, however fleetingly, that it had succeeded. That felt like a natural reaction.
The loathsome, narcissistic and erratic president has damaged his country and the world. He has enabled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what many regard as the Gaza genocide. He has launched attacks on Iran, widely condemned as illegal, killing many innocent citizens, all the while fostering bigotry.
Yet, one must banish any notion that political violence is a solution. The case against assassination in a democracy is absolute: killing a democratically elected leader tears at the very fabric of the state.
As history shows, ‘‘righteous’’ killers often unleash unpredictable forces. The most famous example remains the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which triggered the chain of events leading to World War 1.
Consider the potential aftermath should an attempt on Mr Trump succeed. Would the tendencies toward autocracy accelerate? Vice-President JD Vance might advance similar agendas with greater calculated efficiency and less chaos — and could prove more formidable.
Democracies possess built-in mechanisms for removing leaders — elections and, in the US context, impeachment — frustrating and imperfect as they may be. These processes must be allowed to run their course.
Wishing that an attempt on Mr Trump’s life might succeed is understandable on an emotional level. Acting on it or seriously advocating for it cannot be justified.
Moral philosophy wrestles with the ‘‘Hitler dilemma’’. In his case, the claims for assassination — or tyrannicide — are potent. When a ruler lacks legitimate authority, causes widespread catastrophic harm and offers no legal remedy for removal, the argument changes.
Great philosophers, Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas and Locke among them, have wrestled with this question.
Because Hitler was extreme, we must resist the reflex to draw glib comparisons between him and today’s politicians, while remaining alert to the dangers of autocratic drift and the conditions that enabled his rise.
His circumstances were near-unique: total power, closed alternatives and atrocities on an unprecedented scale. There was also a reasonable prospect that killing him might improve matters. The July 1944 plotters who came so close were heroes, not criminals.
Despite his multitudinous sins, Mr Trump exists in a different class and context. In the United States, the legal and political avenues for opposition are far from exhausted; critics are not being systematically murdered, and the ballot box remains the primary instrument of power.
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One woman places a flower each year on a relative’s profile. Donald Gordon McNab, a Timaru accountant, was an RAF Halifax bomber pilot whose plane was shot down over the Netherlands in 1943.
The plane limped on before plunging into the Carlton Hotel. Anne Frank, of diary fame, recorded the incident later the same day.
‘‘The Carlton Hotel has been destroyed,’’ she wrote. A plane ‘‘loaded with firebombs landed right on top of the German Officers’ Club’’.
This year, the woman happened to delay her gesture until last Monday, April 27. Later that day, out of curiosity, she checked the date of Sergeant McNab’s death — also April 27.
He was aged 32 and not long married.
