[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

We all knew this was coming.

Saturday’s assassination attempt on the once and future president Donald Trump, while shocking, came as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the last eight years. For all that time, the Left has been indefatigable in the demonization of their hated opponent as A Threat to Democracy™ of Hitlerian proportions. The hysterical fear-mongering about the “fascist” Trump from mainstream media talking heads like John McWhorter (who recently suggested it would be a good thing if someone were to assassinate the former President), from race hustlers like Al Sharpton, and from Trump-deranged Democrat leaders like Maxine Waters has been relentless.

Just last month, the left-wing New Republic depicted Trump on its cover with a Hitler mustache and hairstyle. The article’s tag line – “Why waste time debating the extent of Trump’s fascism when we ought to be fighting it instead?” – reflects that the Left has abandoned debate and dialogue, and is urging a sort of “by any means necessary” direct action to stop the Trump juggernaut.

Well, last Saturday all the inciting rhetoric nearly paid off for the Left, as an assassin’s bullet came within millimeters of killing Trump on live television at a Pennsylvania rally. Instead, the President, bloodied but unbowed, popped back up and waved a triumphant fist in the air, calling for his supporters to “Fight!” It was a moment of iconic, historic significance, captured for posterity by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Evan Vucci (who will no doubt pick up another Pulitzer for this photo).

But what does this moment mean for America now? This was a watershed moment that clarifies exactly what is at stake and where the opposing sides stand. How will we – or can we – go forward after this? Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said the attempt on Trump’s life “can turn into a moment of healing and unity” for the country if Americans “realize what is at stake.”

That is a hopeful sentiment but tragically, this won’t be a moment of healing and unity. This is not the America of Ronald Reagan’s time, which largely came together in the wake of the attempt on his life in 1981. As I wrote recently, we now occupy an America irrevocably divided between MAGA patriots who love this country and a political opposition that wants us literally dead and gone. Saturday’s assassination attempt is simply further confirmation that we are already engaged in a hot civil war.

Hours after the shooting, I spoke with a good friend, a political conservative, who still lives in the Southern California I left eight months ago. She told me that after the assassination attempt she went to Catholic mass, where she was greeted by a casual acquaintance who asked how she was. My friend told him she was shaken by the Trump shooting. Instead of commiserating about the shocking incident, he simply looked at her and said, “Trump is the Antichrist.”

This is the America we have now, divided between Americans who found the near-murder of a presidential candidate profoundly disturbing and Americans who are disappointed the shooter didn’t blow Donald Trump’s head open. A nation polarized so radically cannot sustain itself. “Like matter and anti-matter,” I have previously written, “progressivism and the kind of liberal democracy conservatives stand for cannot exist in the same space. As the tag line from the movie Highlander says, There can be only one.”

To cite just one of many other similar examples, Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson had to fire a staffer, Jacqueline Marsaw, on Sunday for a Facebook post in which she lamented, “I don’t condone violence but please get you some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time ooops that wasn’t me talking.” Thompson, you will recall, was the Congressman who had spearheaded a failed bill to deny Trump Secret Service protection.

Speaking of which: for believers, it is hard not to see the hand of God at work in the failure of the assassination. The shooter was positioned barely 150 yards away with a clear line of sight to the former President onstage. As one Israeli Special Operations veteran later told Fox News, at that distance, the shot was “a putt” anyone could make, and had Trump not turned his head to just the slight degree he did at the sound of the gunshot, “it would have been lights out.”

God apparently did what the DEI-sapped Secret Service team couldn’t, which is protect this flawed sinner from death at the hands of an assassin (who was subsequently “neutralized” but not before killing a father in the stands who heroically shielded his daughter from harm, and critically wounding two other Trump supporters. The Secret Service itself now is coming under fire for suspicious negligence – but that’s a topic for another day). Trump himself wrote in a statement released on Sunday, “Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

Then, in language that reads like something straight from the pen of George Washington, he added,

We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness. Our love goes out to the other victims and their families. We pray for the recovery of those who were wounded, and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed. In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win. I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin.

Whatever reservations some conservatives like myself (and I’m not referring to the morally repugnant Never Trumpers) may have expressed about Trump’s effectiveness as a President, there is no question that he does truly love our country and is willing to fight and die to make it great again. He is the man of the moment, and in this moment of violent division and political rancor, his call for unity will fall on deaf Progressive ears; but his call to stay strong and defiant against evil – just like his post-shooting call to “Fight!” – serves as stirring inspiration to those Americans like myself who believe our Great Nation is engaged not just in a political conflict but in spiritual warfare.

This is how America can and will go forward in the state of our disunion: with her most faithful Sons and Daughters “remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win.” God bless America.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior