"As I watched the TV footage of former president Donald Trump being grazed by a bullet but avoiding death by millimeters, I remembered how I felt when I was shot."

"There’s survivor’s guilt, bewilderment, fearlessness, gratitude and the gnawing question of, 'Why was I spared?'... Before my life was almost snuffed out, I would have described myself as risk averse. I was cautious, conservative and played only by the rules. Afterward, I lived my life differently, with a real sense that there wasn’t time to wring my hands or to weigh the pros or cons of a certain action.... "

Writes Jackie Speier, a former member of the House of Representatives, "How getting shot changed me/Before, I was risk averse. After, I lived my life differently" (WaPo).

Speier was shot, nearly 46 years ago, alongside Rep. Leo Ryan, who was assassinated while attempting to investigate what was going on with Jim Jones in "Jonestown" in Guyana. Speier took 5 bullets "and lay on an anthill for 22 hours before being rescued."

Speier's words reminded me of something I happened to quote earlier this morning, Theodore Roosevelt's idea of "the man in the arena":

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are. The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who “but for the vile guns would have been a valiant soldier.”

The occasion for quoting that came in the comments to yesterday's post, "Last week, I took a bullet for democracy." I had watched Trump's rally — his first rally since the assassination attempt — and I was struck by his very fast, crisply articulated speech and his hesitancy to walk out of the arena, and it seemed that "the brush with death had heightened his sense that he needs to compress his energy and do more and more... as if the rally was life itself, and he didn't want to leave."

In the comments, one reader challenged me:

Holy shit Althouse. Did you listen to that 1 hour and 42 minute spewing of stream of consciousness ranting and actually think that the string of lies and just pure fantasy he spouted was somehow coherent?

Fast and crisply enunciated, I'll give you that. But did you listen to the fucking content?... I couldn't even keep up with all the outright lies, distortions, and absolute batshit crazy things he said....

Asked did I listen, I said:

Did you listen?

You remind me of the parent who thinks their kid's music is just noise.

No one can speak extemporaneously like Trump. It's an amazing performance and his fans love it. It fills the arena. And what I was seeing is that he himself loves to be the man in the arena.

My reader was "the critic," "the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better," one of those "who deride or slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day."