FREAK OUT FRIDAY – AUGUST 28, 2020

The contrast between the Republican National Convention and last week’s Democratic National Convention could not have been more stark.  The DNC focused on hope.  On a view for the future in which Amerians would come together and remind ourselves that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

The RNC, on the other hand…

In his 1933 inauguration speech, Franklin Roosevelt notably said that, as a country, we had nothing to fear but fear itself.  In a country where the economy is tanking, the death toll from the Coronavirus is likely going to be a quarter million before the end of the year, private militias dispatched by the White House are patrolling urban centers where unrest is rife and tossing random people into unmarked vans, police are undeterred in shooting and murdering people as riots rage, as everything is going to hëll in a handbasket, the RNC realized that they had nothing to run on but fear itself. 

After all, Trump’s accomplishments have almost uniformly been negative.  Whether he fired the US pandemic team in 2018, spent months downplaying or ignoring Covid, did away with rules protecting the environment, stole money from the military in order to pay for the unnecessary wall that he swore Mexico would cover, he has done almost nothing to help the country. He has damaged our standing with foreign countries, catered to the whims of dictators like Kim Jong un and Vladimir Putin, mired us in a trade war with China for which American citizens are paying, and gave the medal of honor—the highest award the government can bestow—to Rush Limbaugh as part of a publicity stunt during the State of the Union speech.  He dismissed black-populated nations as šhìŧhølë countries.  He literally has nothing that he can truly boast of, “truly” being the key word here.

So instead he has to run on fear.  Which is of course exactly what the RNC did.  Fear of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  Fear of the Democrats.  The Democrats are out to destroy the country Why?  What advantage is there to us destroying the nation where we live?  I’m reminded of the exchange in “Guardians of the Galaxy”  between Rocket and Quill when Rocket demands, in terms of saving the galaxy, “Why would you want to save it?” to which Quill replies, “Because I’m one of the idiots who lives in it!”  That’s the simple truth that the RNC completely lost sight of.  It’s not like we’re out to torch the place because we’re all moving to Argentina and so we won’t be affected.  We want things to improve because we will feel safer and do better financially along with everyone else.

But Trump can’t embrace that simple truth.  Because he’s not the president of the United States, he’s only the president of the minority of people who are his base.  And so the RNC, emulating the lack of truthfulness by which their cult leader operates, spent the week spewing nothing but lies. They acted as if the Coronavirus is in our rear view mirror, even as it continues to throttle the country.  They pretended that Trump, whose reactions ranged from saying it would vanish in April to that we should inject bleach into ourselves, has handled it well.  They claimed that Biden wants to defend the police (he doesn’t.).  They claimed that he’s defending Medicare and Social Security (his proposed payroll tax cuts would deplete them in two years.).   Trump stated that plasma therapies will save thousands of lives (scientists say otherwise).  He continued to condemn Bided as a socialist, even though (a) Biden isn’t and (b) he has no idea what socialism is.  He put forward the lie that Democrats endorse late-term abortions (no we don’t.).  He stated, “If the left gains power, they will demolish the suburbs, confiscate your guns, and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other constitutional freedoms.”  He says these things even though the left HAS gained power in the past and done exactly none of those things.  The whole “demolishing the suburbs” thing is new.  Is he aware that We live in the suburbs?  Why would we want to demolish our own homes?  “Obama is going to take away your guns” was a popular GOP meme twelve years ago, and apparently the fact that he never did isn’t deterring the lie from being refused.  And the man who wants to stop protestors from using their First Amendment rights doesn’t get to claim that the Democrats are interested in doing away with constitutional freedoms. 

And he said all this standing in front of the White House as he and his people blithely ignored the Hatch Act (as they did all week) before a crowd of people sitting too close together and not wearing masks.  So, y’know, that sent a nice Covid message:  break the law and spread the virus in one outing.  Who says he can’t multitask?

Trump’s entire presidency has been rife with lies.  Yes, it’s standard that not all politicians are always honest, but his 20,000-plus lies underscores the fact that he doesn’t just distort the truth to serve his own ends; he ignores the truth, doesn’t care about it, sees no point in it.  He doesn’t care about facts, he doesn’t care about serving his country, he doesn’t care about anything except for winning.  Winning is all that matters, and if you have to lie, throw people under the bus, do what’s wrong, all in the interest of winning, then that’s what’s important. He had this drilled into his skull by his father and he never grew past it.  We are trapped in his indefinite state of retarded growth, and we need to get him out of here in November.  Because we may not have a country left if we have to endure four more years.  

Why do we care if we’re out to destroy it?  Because we’re among the idiots who live in it.

PAD