Keen readers who populate this space are aware that we have been tracking the unusual developments in American politics, recognising that the world’s most powerful democracy has been wading deeper and deeper into uncharted waters.

Yet, and we must admit, we could not have imagined matters would have reached the state where an attempt was made on the life of a leading candidate and former president, Mr Donald Trump, as took place on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Like the rest of the free world, we breathed a sigh of relief that Mr Trump escaped death when the gunman’s bullet seemed to graze his right ear, because our humanity demands it and the world can do without this senseless political violence.

After the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, we had hoped that would be the last and that Americans — our model of democracy — would have found a way to resolve political differences without resorting to violence.

Direct assaults against presidents, presidents-elect, and candidates, counting Mr Trump in, have occurred on at least 15 separate blood-smeared occasions in US history, with five resulting in death, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Four presidents were assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln in 1865; James Garfield in 1881; William McKinley in 1901; and John F Kennedy, perhaps the most famous, in 1963.

Three presidents survived assassination attempts: Ronald Reagan in 1981; Gerald Ford, who survived two attempts on his life in less than three weeks in 1975; and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

Two other famous assassinations involved Robert F Kennedy, a US presidential candidate; and black civil rights leader Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, both in 1968.

As like all previous attempts on the lives of leaders, the incident at Mr Trump’s campaign rally has given birth to countless conspiracy theories as to the motive, inevitably pointing to current President Joe Biden, or to Mr Trump himself as staging the attempt on his own life, for political purposes.

A frenzy of unfounded rumours, spiced by evidence-free speculation, hate, and abuse, was given wings as never before by social media, which did not exist up to the time of the most recent shooting before Pennsylvania — at Mr Reagan.

President Biden has promised an independent investigation, which is the only hope of the truth ever coming to light, and which we await before commenting on the motive of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, who is said to be a registered Republican but has also contributed US$15 to a liberal progressive group.

If there was one good thing that came out of a horrific situation, it is that, for the first time, possibly since the 2020 elections, President Biden and former President Trump were both singing from the same hymn book, calling for unity.

In the lead-up, the political atmosphere could not have been more divisive, in which Americans were openly mouthing fears about having to flee the country, depending on who won the election.

In the meantime, we believe we enjoy the moral authority to warn Americans that political violence leaves scars that may never heal and can only lead to the destruction of democracy.

Jamaica still bleeds decades after the internecine party bloodshedding of the 1970-80s.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.