The Republican National Convention Was Like Watching C-SPAN on DMT
It is insufficient to describe the last four days of events known as the Republican National Convention as an avalanche of bullshit. This was an entire break with the world of observable reality outside, a matrix designed by and for those with Fox News brain poisoning where the COVID-19 pandemic is over, where the recording of all economic data stopped in early March—but also, the president is single-handedly bringing jobs back—and yes, where Donald Trump is a loving family man. The president is a man of God, unlike his opponent, the PseudoCatholic Trojan Horse for Socialism and Anarchy, Joe Biden. Just ask the nun in full habit they got to stand behind a TRUMP 2020???? podium and denounce him. Only Donald Trump can lead us down the path of Jesus Christ. By the time an opera singer was performing a medley of "Ave Maria," "America the Beautiful," "Hallelujah," and "God Bless America," it was like watching C-SPAN on DMT. If only Hunter Thompson were around to see it.
The nation's cities have descended into fire and crime and anarchy, you see, so you should re-elect the guy who's currently in charge. That was a big theme of Night Four: Crime! Chaos! Democrat(!) Cities! (The "-ic" has now been permanently dropped from "Democratic," a Rush Limbaugh hate-tic that has metastasized into full-on Republican Party dogma.) Meanwhile, in reality, violent crime is not spiking, and has been in decline for decades. Another thing that has been dropped is the pretense among conservatives that they care at all about racial injustice in policing, as well as the acknowledgement that the vast majority of protesters have done so peacefully. Everyone in the street is a Marxist Anarchist Rioter now, or at least, that's pretty much all these folks talk about, just as Trump himself only ever talks about immigrants who commit violent crimes. You don't have to say outright that these people are all criminals if you only ever talk about the ones who are. Meanwhile, the president still has not acknowledged the alleged double-murder of two protesters in Kenosha by a gunman who seems to be a big fan of his.
There was the inevitable parade of Trumpian spawn, who thankfully did not—as they have elsewhere—directly make the argument themselves that Hunter Biden was a nepotism case. (That was left to Pam Bondi, who may just know a thing or two about graft.) Like the Trump-as-Dad-From-Seventh Heaven trope some were peddling throughout, the vision of Donald Trump, Jr. calling someone else an entitled brat who trades off their father's name might be too much to bear. All of the children, after all, either work for daddy's company or work in daddy's administration—not that, if yesterday's events and the rest of the last four years are anything to go on, there's much of a barrier between the two. (That does exclude Tiffany, who until this week had managed to avoid jumping in the mire with the rest.) We have all lived long enough to see the United States as a Podunk banana republic, where El Jefe gets in the job and brings his relatives into the regime to ensure Loyalty, which always wins out over competence.
The UFC Guy did assure us Thursday that the president "works hard" and can "understand problems," thereby raising the bar for the American presidency once more. Dana White demonstrated the kind of shameless mendacity that points to a bright future in American politics, touting the president's brave and decisive pandemic response—which happened to include allowing UFC to resume operations quite early on—and falling back on the President Businessman stuff, which had a resurgence this week. We now know for sure that the president's wealth is heavily owed to an oversized inheritance funneled through suspect—and in at least one dimension, illegal—tax schemes. He proceeded to sink it into a number of projects that comprehensively failed, stiffing hundreds of contractors who did work for him along the way. He even Titanic-ed multiple casinos, hurtling towards bankruptcy himself until he engineered a Houdini escape by bringing his failing firm public, getting himself out of trouble and leaving investors with the bill. This, at least, was legal, according to the American system of justice. It's just Business Stuff, folks. You wouldn't understand.
It was almost an honor to witness this culmination of The Great American Scam, the nation's greatest-ever conman going for One Last Job. Except he really mailed it in when it came time to actually deliver his acceptance speech, which capped off a week's worth of abuse of the White House for campaigning—an act which, for his advisers at least, is simply a violation of the law. On the South Lawn, the president delivered surely the worst speech in the illustrious history of the presidential manse, a meandering and aimless low-energy polemic full of eighth-grade history and purple prose that he delivered with all the conviction and enthusiasm of an eighth-grader delivering a book report. It was also, as is tradition, chock-full of insane lies.
He leaned desperately against the podium, sweating wildly, his makeup beginning to run under the fierce stage lights, his figure morphing steadily into a Ralph Steadman work. He often did not seem to have any idea what he was reading. He frequently mispronounced and even slurred his words. (If Joe Biden had brought this kind of game a week ago, the national news media would have simply gone into conniptions.) And Jesus Christ almighty, it was long. Even the audience of slap-happy apparatchiks could barely muster a cheer by the end. This, after an early portion where they hooted and hollered, unmasked—and, reportedly, untested on arrival—because the pandemic, you see, simply isn't real.
That really was the theme of the week. COVID-19 is no longer a problem. Time to move on, even if more Americans died while this convention was happening than perished in the terrorist attacks on September 11. But the 180,000 who are gone, and their families who are still here, scarcely merited a mention throughout this celebration of American Greatness, a four-day fiesta in honor of a nation with a little over four percent of the world's population and just under 22 percent of its COVID deaths. Melania Trump, to her credit, did speak of them. But mostly, those people simply did not exist in this world, and neither did the millions and millions of people who are now unemployed, and running out of already reduced benefits, and losing hope. The president built the greatest economy in history, you see, even if it was just one segment of a long curve that predated his tenure, and even if the curve plummeted downwards a couple months back. The Stonks are up, baby! Here are some fireworks.
And boy, were there fireworks. It was like the Hong Kong handover, and you got the sense we all might be handing something over as well. The thousands of colorful explosions over the Washington Monument were a soaring crescendo to all the lawbreaking of this week, a dramatic declaration that we can do what we want and there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing to do, except use the one opportunity remaining to get these people out. It is not just Norms or Democracy that suffer when the American regime has broken loose of the guardrails and rejected—with some success—the entire concept they are accountable to the public they purportedly serve. People die. Many thousands, in fact, as one protest group sought to illustrate on the street outside the White House as the kaleidoscopic explosions peppered the sky behind them. Inside the fence, there might have been a whole 'nother world at work. But the rest of us are stuck out here, the only thing better than being trapped in there.
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