Like most Americans, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said she was shocked to learn of a would-be assassin's attempt to kill Donald Trump at a campaign rally.

The three-time White House third-party hopeful and far-left activist was in Milwaukee holding a counter-convention of sorts Saturday in protest against the upcoming Republican National Convention when an aide pulled her aside to tell her what transpired at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In addition to the revulsion she felt over such an attack on a fellow presidential candidate, Stein, a career physician, spoke in an interview with AFP about a broader structural crisis plaguing the nation.

What is the wider context of the Trump attack?

"What happened to Trump today, I think is a symptom of a very troubled system right now -- I mean a troubled political system within a very troubled society," she said.

"It's so sad and so tragic. In a way it's sort of the tip of the iceberg, in that we have an extremely troubled society. And it's extremely important to recognize none of us is immune from the consequences of that."

Where does the blame lie?

"The rumblings I'm hearing in some places right now are, this is the violence he's perpetrated on others," Stein said, referring to Trump.

"I've heard very sad, regrettable rumblings of that sort. This is not the time to be recriminating against a victim of violence. But this is sort of emblematic of our problem here as a society. We're in warring camps right now, and we need to be empathizing as human beings."

Stein, 74, was meeting Saturday with members of a Milwaukee community that has been "extremely impacted by violence."

"They live with these questions of violence and how does one overcome it. And I have to say I'm so impressed by their sense of empathy and community," Stein said.

Are you fearful of campaigning?

"People often ask me why do I run in this very dangerous environment when there's so much hostility to candidates who stand up and say things, whether you're inside the system or outside the system," Stein said. 

"And my response to that has always been: The things I'm really afraid of? We're going to be blown out of the water here by climate change, and it could happen in the blink of an eye."

Food supply problems, "outrageous inflation," structural disintegration, a "breakdown" of social cohesion, and war are what keep her up at night.

"That's what I feel in danger from, particularly from the potential for the many conflicts that we're involved in to go nuclear. I could see us going nuclear in Ukraine," she explained.

"Things are moving up that escalation ladder in a way that is absolutely terrifying. 

Are you more scared of that than a gunman?

"Absolutely," Stein stressed. "And if we allow fear of an assassin's bullet to prevent us from mobilizing as a society against these very clear and present dangers to our survival as a society, we're in deep trouble."