RNC leaves message of fear
The message of the Republican convention, repeated in a thousand ways over four days, was simple: Be afraid; be very afraid.
Here’s the executive summary of four days of fulmination:
Our country is falling apart. The Black Lives Matter movement is destroying the social order, leading to the killing of police. Obama has made us more racially divided than ever. The Middle East is worse than it has ever been. Our allies are freeloaders, and nations all over the world are ripping us off in international trade.
Our good jobs have been moved to other countries. Islamic extremists and illegal immigrants are pouring across our borders, bringing drugs, and coming to kill us. Our military is depleted and our weapons are obsolete. The IRS is beating down the doors of innocent taxpayers. We are mired in debt. Our universities are indoctrinating people to become Democrats or worse
And yet … the United States of America is the greatest country God ever created. If we elect Donald J. Trump, we will start winning again. “We’re gonna win so big, believe me, we’re gonna win so big.” Law and order will be restored. America will be safe again, America will work again, America will be first again, America will be one again. We will have safety, prosperity, peace, jobs and pay raises for all.
Oh, and energy independence — we’ll have that, too. Harold Hamm, the nation’s fracker in chief, noted that “our most strategic weapon is crude oil,” but that Obama has been “crucifying the oil and gas industries.” Trump, on the other hand, will support fracking. Perhaps even better, “Trump digs coal.”
Hillary is “doom”
The alternative — electing Hillary Clinton — is doom. She is single-handedly responsible for every bad thing that has happened in the Middle East since 2009. She is the avatar of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.” She is responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, for the kidnapping of 200 girls by Boko Haram, and for the “stupid wars” we are engaged in. She is more concerned with the rights of illegal immigrants and criminals than the rights of our citizens. In fact, she is a criminal who should be locked up.
Whew.
Most news commentators described the Republican convention as “low-energy” until the last day. They focused on the many empty seats in the arena, Ted Cruz’s refusal to be a “servile puppy dog” and the flap about Melania plagiarizing Michelle Obama.
But to actually spend four days listening to the speeches and watching the crowd’s response was to witness a high fever of fanaticism. When the crowd, inflamed to hating Hillary, waved their signs and chanted “Lock her up!” at every opportunity, it transformed from crowd to mob.
Rejecting reality
When Trump said “America First” would be our “brand-new slogan,” he rejected that slogan’s history of anti-Semitism, and history itself. When he called for “Americanism, not globalism,” he rejected reality itself. When he insisted “other nations must treat us with the respect we deserve,” he had already laid out a version of America that was undeserving of the world’s respect.
When Trump insisted that our allies have to pay us to protect them, he was proposing to replace a system of alliances based on shared values with a protection racket. When Trump refused to commit to coming to the aid of NATO allies and threatened to pull out of treaties and trade deals, he was promoting a dangerous level of American unpredictability.
And when Trump entered the arena and paused in profile in a dramatic mist, he embodied a narcissistic form of nationalism that was apparently a balm to the egos of his followers, many of whom seem to feel left behind by automation, technology, diversity and a global economy.
The deep well of alienation and fear that Trump has tapped reveals to all of us just how dangerous this country’s growing economic inequality is, and how easily our halting progress toward full racial and gender equality can be derailed.
Fear is not a foundation
But fear is not a foundation for an agenda for our future. Facts are. The truths of our 21st-century world — its complexity, its challenges, and its possibilities for progress — were not discussed in the Quicken Loans Arena.
So here’s our hope for the Democratic convention: Make America think again.
This story was originally published July 24, 2016 at 1:44 AM with the headline "RNC leaves message of fear."