May have won your hearts
The RNC was a cavalcade of deceit and desperation
“You don’t fight fascism because you are going to win, you fight fascism because it is fascism.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
I followed the Republican National Convention last week just closely enough to witness politicians and pundits repeat the lies on which they rely. (Re-lie? Hmm.) They include claims of rampant violent crime, when statistics show crime rates greatly reduced since President Biden’s election, and an out-of-control border “invasion,” when, again, the number of illegal border crossings has dropped dramatically this year (no thanks to the congressional members who followed former president and convicted felon Donald Trump’s order to keep the issue alive).
And they include the still-flaring Big Lie of a stolen 2020 election, a point of deceit that the Republican presidential candidate, a known flim-flam man, will never stop promoting and his marks will never stop buying.
But the most notable moment to me was the top-of-his-lungs Tuesday speech from West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, who said: “The bottom line for why we’re here, the bottom line to every single thing going on in this great country today, is one thing: We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.”
Which suggests to me that, despite the party line they’ve been touting on Sunday talk shows for months — “We don’t have to worry about accepting the outcome because Trump’s going to win” — they actually fear Trump will lose, and with good reason.
This is certainly what former UN ambassador Nikki Haley expected in February when she warned, “If Donald Trump is the nominee for the Republican Party, we will not win.”
As did New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu last August: "With Donald Trump at the head of the party we lose. We lost in 2020, we should have had the red wave in 2022 but he's a loser, his candidates are losers."
No matter what the polls say, no matter the current disarray of the Democratic Party, it’s still likely that sleepy man Trump, whose lengthy, rambling acceptance speech Thursday was about one-third nonsense, one-third non sequitur and one-third repeated grievance about how hard his life is (with another shout-out to his hero, cannibal Hannibal Lecter), will lose. Again. It’s still surreal that the Grand Old Party is running a gross pig of a man convicted of fraud and sexual assault as its party leader. I still expect MAGA as a group to wake up one morning and think, what the hell are we doing?
So they’re now seeding the ground with their claims of voter fraud, prepping their base to consider the outcome illegitimate, which helps Republicans politically, but does a great deal of harm to the country.
A Trump victory would be disastrous for the nation and the world. But we also need to be prepared for Trump’s loss.
We need to be prepared for the legal maneuvers that Trump’s sycophants in the U.S. House will attempt to overturn the outcome, just like they did in 2020.
We need to be prepared for the violence that will be unleashed by his most strident supporters, convinced, just as they were in 2020, that they’re being cheated.
I definitely want Trump to lose — not only because I don’t want to live under a white Christian nationalist dictatorship, but also because I want to see whether Trump would receive justice for the crimes of which he’s been accused. If he wins, we’ll never know.
And because another loss would reveal, like nothing else, the true face of this new generation of the Republican Party. America deserves to see that true face.
In 2022, Sen. Ted Cruz predicted that when Roe was overturned, “We’re gonna see the left lose their minds. We’re gonna see, sadly, organized riots. I fear we’re going to see organized violence. We’re deliberately going to see violence used as a tool of political terrorism by the left.”
None of that happened, of course. It was just projection and an attempt to “both sides” the Republican-fed mob violence of Jan. 6, 2021.
So many of their predictions — like that President Biden would be doped up for the debate — fall flat, yet people still listen to them.
Republicans are afraid of things they imagine Democrats will do — Democrats are afraid of things Republicans actually do.
Twelve New York jurors found Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, guilty of 16 corruption charges last week, yet no prominent Democrats claimed that the judge was “very unfair.” None complained about a “witch hunt,” or a “two-tiered system of justice.” Instead, Menendez’s Democratic colleagues called on him to resign.
It’s almost like they believe in law and order.
“They took a shot at my hero,” noted thespian Kevin Sorbo said at the convention — excuse me, it was Grammy nominee Kid Rock — no, pardon me, it was conservative intellectual powerhouse Hulk Hogan. So many top-tier conservative celebrities, it’s easy to confuse them. “They tried to kill the next president of the United States,” he continued.
Talk about not shooting straight. All we know about the shooter is that he was a registered Republican and took his daddy’s rifle to accomplish the task he’d assigned himself. But Hogan and other Republican operatives are blaming the attempt on the amorphous “they” who are responsible for everything Republicans don’t like or won’t take responsibility for.
This is a party, a movement, built on ignorance and deceit, built on a false narrative and a funhouse-mirror description of a world that does not exist. They live in this fantasy, in which Trump is muscular and fit and women fall at his feet begging to be ravaged; in which dark skin denotes incompetence and criminal design; in which women are happiest in the kitchen making sandwiches and babies.
And they might win.
But they might lose.
I realize I’ve not said anything yet about the copious claims of divine intervention to prevent Trump’s death when the registered Republican shot at him. “In a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side, I felt that,” Trump said during his speech.
I’ll just let the great Pat Bagley handle this one:
I don’t know how the election is going to turn out. Nobody knows. On some days the outlook seems dire, but I’m determined not to give in to despair.
If they win, that won’t destroy the conscience or the hearts of the caring people around us. Life will be tougher, but we’ll survive. We’ll find ways to thrive.
If they lose, I’ll invite you to join us, people of conscience and good will, as we dance in the street.
…..
Overflow:
I’ve been told the RNC was a low-energy event:
https://www.salon.com/2024/07/18/anti-party-in-a-ghost-town-soulless-holds-an-un-convention/
“We have to outvote their cheating to ensure a win. We cannot be complacent or take anything for granted,” Milinda Morris, a delegate from Texas, told reporter Igor Bobic of HuffPost. “If this election gets stolen, Trump won’t have to call for a meeting. The Americans will be showing up on the doorsteps of Washington, D.C. themselves. This is where we draw a line in the sand. They will not do this to us again, and if they do, we’re going to have to do something about it.”
We’ve been warned.
.
It’s been a rough few days for supporters of President Biden as members of his own party call publicly for him to step aside and let a younger candidate run. Polls vary, with some saying Biden would definitely lose to Trump and others saying he’s likely to win. Arguments pro and con have worthy points.
It’s disturbing to me that Republicans support a man adjudged to be a rapist and a fraud, they support him no matter what, while President Biden has one bad night and some of his staunchest supporters urge him to throw in the towel.
I would vote for Biden if he were in a coma. He’d still be the better president.
But what I don’t sense in any of these discussions is manipulation or insincerity. All parties involved want a Democrat to win in November, they just disagree on who’s best suited to meet that task.
They’d better get their shit worked out quickly.
.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum says that Biden can win if we let him:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/07/donald-trump-republican-party-nomineee/679109/
Journalist Jonathan V. Last says that another Democrat could beat Trump:
I’d vote for a melted popsicle before voting for Trump.
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Interesting snippets and more lies from the convention:
Both Haley and Sununu have fallen in line since first predicting that Trump would lose. It’s a bit disappointing that neither stuck to their guns. So to speak.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/20/haley-trump-2024-message-00142233
The GOP lies, lies, lies about immigrants:
Trump lies, lies, lies about everything:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-146823550
MAGA Republicans are going to lie, lie, lie if they lose:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-gop-convention_n_66984148e4b053ef7d6c6992?5cv
A reminder that Trump plans to burn the country down if he wins:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/07/22/inside-the-trump-plan-for-2025
But it’s not all doom and gloom. We’re going to get ice cream!
Join Kevin Watson and me at 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10, for a trip to the iconic Ben’s Ice Cream in Eagle Springs, NC. Details here:
Road trip!
Press 53 publisher Kevin Watson and I are organizing a caravan to Ben's Ice Cream in Eagle Springs, N.C., which I wrote about in my book, "Stardust and Scar Tissue." Delicious ice cream, great summertime trek on the backroads! We'll meet at 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10, in the parking lot behind Bank of America in Parkway Plaza on Silas Creek Parkway to orga…
If you can’t get ice cream with us, you can still buy a copy of my book, available from my friends at Bookmarks, the Book Ferret, the Central Library or directly from the publisher, Press 53. I’ll bring one to your house if you let me pet your dog.
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Thanks for being here today, friends. Here’s a song to send you on your way, dedicated to the Republican presidential nominee:
Democracy now!🇺🇲
If only Andre the Giant was still around