Those Cheering Mark Hamill’s Post of a Dead Trump Will Regret Eroding Tradition of Respecting the Presidency

A “Star Wars” actor, Mark Hamill, is drawing condemnation and snickers for posting an image of President Trump dead in his grave. For all the handwringing about the president upsetting norms, his opponents ignore the one about respecting the office if not the occupant — a precedent that will hold when a chief executive they like is elected.“If Only,” Mr. Hamill wrote Wednesday on Bluesky over an AI-generated image of Mr. Trump half buried under a tombstone. “He should live long enough to witness his inevitable devastating loss in the midterms, be held accountable for his unprecedented corruption, impeached, convicted & humiliated for his countless crimes.”The White House @RapidResponse47 on X called Mr. Hamill “one sick individual” and added that “these Radical Left lunatics just can’t help themselves. This kind of rhetoric is exactly what has inspired three assassination attempts in two years against our president.”The thing is, more Americans than ever don’t see someone they voted against as “our president.” TV outlets may not list a chief executive’s party, but it’s a relic from the days they were seen as leaders of all the people. Dragging a president down to our level is, in its way, good for democracy. Yet wishing them dead is bad for the republic.On Thursday, Mr. Hamill deleted the post. “Actually,” he wrote, he was “wishing” Mr. Trump “the opposite of dead, but apologize if you found the image inappropriate.” It was a Jedi Mind Trick, which his “Star Wars” character, Luke Skywalker, might perform. All is forgiven, it seems, but it won’t be forgotten.It hasn’t been suggested that President Obama, who appeared with Mr. Hamill to promote his presidential library last week, distance himself from the actor. “We can disagree,” Mr. Obama once said, “without being disagreeable,” the old normal that was enforced during his tenure.When a rodeo clown, Tuffy Gessling, wore a mask of Mr. Obama at the 2013 Missouri State Fair, he was banned for life. He told KCTV that he did it “to be funny” and got death threats instead. In 1994, Senator Jesse Helms suggested that if President Clinton visited military bases in North Carolina he wear “a flak jacket.”Helms apologized for his “mistake,” which the Clinton White House called “unwise and inappropriate.” The 2006 film, “Death of a President,” depicting President George W. Bush’s assassination, flopped at the box office. A columnist for the Guardian, Charlie Brooker, was condemned when, in 2004, he yearned for the men who shot previous presidents.“John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr.,” Mr. Brooker asked, “where are you now that we need you?” In response to the backlash, the Guardian said the remark was an “ironic joke, not … a call to action.” The reason it’s best to steer clear of violent rhetoric is that one cannot count on unbalanced minds to get the nuance.The “Taxi Driver” star, Jodie Foster, evoked such devotion in Hinckley that he attempted to kill President Reagan to impress her. Mr. Hamill, who voices the Joker in Batman animated cartoons, might have greater insight into such madness.It may be too much to ask critics like Mr. Hamill to restrain themselves. It’s not possible, though, to claim the moral high ground while playing in the gutter. The poison being injected into the body politic will linger for the next Democratic president and they’ll share the blame.The Oval Office is bigger than Mr. Trump, and while “he started it” is a fine justification for the schoolyard, President Nixon offered a more mature path. “Always remember,” he said in his White House farewell, “others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them back — and then you destroy yourself.”

Those Cheering Mark Hamill’s Post of a Dead Trump Will Regret Eroding Tradition of Respecting the Presidency

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