It’s happened again. Another quiet, sunny weekend. Another lone suspect with a gun. Another apparent attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. And a country that is heading into uncharted territory with 50 days to go before the presidential election.

On Sunday, Secret Service agents opened fire after spotting a man with a gun at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida while the Republican candidate was playing. The suspect fled in an SUV and was later apprehended by local police.

The FBI discovered two backpacks, an AK-47-style firearm with a scope, and a GoPro camera in the bushes, suggesting a plan to assassinate Trump on his own golf course and film it for the world to see.

The incident was the latest shocking moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval and fears of violence and civil unrest. It came nine weeks after Trump was shot during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his ear, killing a supporter. The former president’s bloody, defiant response, urging his supporters to “Fight!” prompted headline writers to ask: Did Donald Trump just win the election?

But a week later, Joe Biden dropped out of the race and was quickly replaced by Kamala Harris. The assassination attempt disappeared from a frenzied news cycle, mentioned only in passing during Tuesday’s debate. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump adviser, lamented at the recent Moms for Liberty conference: “We’re seven weeks away and it’s like it never happened. It’s seared into memory more effectively than George Orwell could have ever imagined.”

It is true that what happened that day in Pennsylvania should be remembered, not for partisan reasons, nor as evidence that Trump is protected by God, but for what it brought to the surface: a country with a long history of political violence bracing for what has been called “a powder keg election.”

Danger and instability have become a feature, not a bug, of American political life. A white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a civil rights activist. A mob of angry Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A hammer attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, in their home. Countless threats of violence against members of Congress and judges.

A new documentary film, The Last Republican, features sinister voicemails left for Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic who sat on the Jan. 6 House committee. One says: “You little dick sucker. Are you Liz Cheney’s faggot? You two dick sucking little bitches. We’re gonna get you. We’re coming to your house, son. Ha ha ha ha!”

As the election approaches, the temperature is only rising. False allegations that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, have led to bomb threats and school closures. As at Trump’s rally nine weeks ago, innocent people are the collateral damage of reckless propaganda.

The normalization of violence crosses party lines. In 2017, a man with anti-Republican views opened fire during a practice session for the annual congressional baseball game, wounding five people, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Support for violence is growing in return for Trump (10% of US adults) than for violence in favor from Trump (6.9%), according to a survey conducted in late June by the University of Chicago.

But only one of the two major parties is actively fanning the flames. Trump has encouraged violent tactics against protesters at his rallies. He mocked Pelosi over the gavel attack. He has called for shoplifters to be shot and disloyal generals to be executed for treason. He has warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and has claimed that undocumented immigrants in the US are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

It’s enough to fill any concerned citizen with foreboding about the upcoming election—and what will happen next in a country with more guns than people. Trump, a convicted felon with more cases hanging over his head, is in a desperate fight to stay out of prison. He has never conceded his 2020 defeat and refuses to commit to the 2024 outcome, promising “lengthy prison sentences” for anyone involved in “unconscionable conduct.”

As Republicans focus on “election integrity” efforts, poll workers could face unbearable levels of violence and intimidation. Polls suggest the election will be dangerously close, leaving plenty of room for doubt to grow, likely fueled by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

As the Axios website recently noted: “A perfect storm has been brewing for years — fueled by extreme polarization, election denial, political violence, historic persecutions and rampant disinformation. Come November, it will be chaos.”

A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May found that more than two in three Americans are concerned about extremist violence after the election. Last month, Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official, told reporters at Bloomberg in Chicago that the U.S. could see “multiple January 6-like incidents” at state capitols if Harris wins a narrow Electoral College victory.

Biden and Harris rightly condemned both assassination attempts and said they were glad Trump was safe. Even his fiercest critics should not condone such actions. But it is also inevitable that Trump, like a one-man Chernobyl, has polluted the political atmosphere and created a permission structure for violence.

His response to Sunday’s predicament? Emails and text messages declaring, “I will not stop fighting for you. I will never surrender!”—and asking his supporters for money.