by Karen Rubin, News & Photo Features
Hatred pumped up by lies. That is what characterized the Republican National Convention. Not policy pronouncements that would solve the problems facing this country or the world. Platitudes. Slogans. Lies, beginning with Melania’s plagiarism (denied for days).
There was notable disinterest in the first two days of the Trump Republican Convention. The first night, Make America Safe offered no actual solutions around that theme, just one tirade after another against Hillary Clinton. Oh yes, we learned how Donald Trump holds high values and is trustworthy from his third wife Melania, who plagiarized those lines directly from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech to the Democratic National Convention. Barack Obama, Donald Trump. It’s all the same, apparently.
Oh yes, we learned what an adoring father Donald Trump was – writing notes on report cards – from Tiffany Trump, his daughter by second wife Marla, who grew up with her mother in California, so it is curious what father-daughter experiences she was referring to.
But the delegates did come together, like a frightening lynch mob, during the mock trial conducted by the guy auditioning for Trump’s Attorney General: Chris Christie, the guy who abused the power of his office, who obstructed justice and destroyed evidence and really did put lives at risk with Bridgegate. Five of his administration – including David Samson, Christie’s BPF (best political friend) and henchman, who Christie gave the plum appointment of heading the multi-billion dollar Port Authority of NY & NJ – have already been convicted. But Christie worked the mob to a frenzy. This must have been what the Salem Witch Trials were like.
By the end, the mob were screaming “Lock her Up” and one Trump aide, New Hampshire State Senator Al Baldasaro was actually being investigated by Secret Service, after he called for Hillary Clinton’s execution for “treason.”
You know who actually committed treason? David Petreaus, the former CIA Chief, who that same crowd would have cheered to have as a candidate for President.
The other irony was George W. Bush’s Attorney General Michael Mukasey accusing Clinton of violating the Constitution. This was the guy who was complicit as Bush shredded the Constitution over habeus corpus (remember that?), torture, lying to Congress and the American people to launch a preemptive invasion into a country that never attacked the US.
Indeed, it is a campaign built on hatred, on demonizing, vilifying, fear-mongering – and even just watching on TV was chilling: like watching a frenzied Nazi rally.
The further irony is how they keep using the frustration and anger that voters feel because of the dysfunction, inaction by the Republicans who have done everything to obstruct the very policies Obama has proposed to raise wages, create jobs (American Jobs Act), invest in infrastructure, to say that Trump is the guy because he will bring people together! How does that happen when his entire campaign is fueled by hatred, division, bigotry, racism, scapegoating.
It comes down to Trump’s new slogan, “I am the Law and Order candidate.” Except these people don’t respect the federal government (that is when a Democrat, a Black-American is in the Oval Office). Trump’s call to lift restrictions on guns (and his lie that Clinton wants to repeal the 2nd Amendment), is all about these people wanting to be arm themselves against the government – manifested in the slaying of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. That is the realization of what they have advocated, only it becomes heinous when it is a black revolutionary, rather than a white man like Bundy, threatening to kill federal agents who come to arrest him for failing to pay $1 million in fees to the American people.
Not to mention that Trump doesn’t propose anything to actually make homes, communities, or the country safer. The RNC speakers threw out hollow phrases – about increasing wages, helping “everyone” succeed, improving education. How? How? How?
And yet, even as Trump’s VP pick Mike Pence was saying, “Vote for Trump because he will support our allies,” Trump was telling the New York Times he would not defend Balkan states, members of NATO, if Russia chose to “Crimea” them, and would tear up (uh, “renegotiate”) treaties.
The upside/downside Alice-in-Wonderland world (as so well visualized by Rudolph Giuliani, continues in every subject that was thrown out, like complete BS: Gingrich saying that Trump would invest in infrastructure, even as Republican platform promises to defund mass transit in favor of highways, cancel clean energy in favor of coal.
The lies and attacks It is all the tactic that the Republicans like that evil Machiavellian Karl Rove used so successfully of attacking opponents for the sins/crimes they have committed.
That’s Trump’s entire campaign strategy, why he is so ready to attack Bill Clinton for his adultery when Trump is a serial adulterer (didn’t bother the Preacher at the opening convocation who pronounced Trump ordained by Jesus, a true messenger of Jesus). Why Trump, who has built his business around fraud , bullying, cheating and taking advantage of others,needs to build on this fabrication of Hillary as “crooked”, a “liar”.
Their tactic is to set up a false narrative, one that strikes deeply, emotionally, and then strike it down. For example, this from a fund-raising letter from Eric Trump. “The Obama-Clinton liberals want us to sit back and accept the idea that America is no longer the leader of the free world. They want us to fall in line behind the United Nations. They want us to stop thinking of America as the “land of the free, home of the brave.” They want us to apologize for America.”
Complete and utter balderdash.
Trump has already proved himself to be as ignorant, idiotic, incurious and “from the gut” as George W (‘I’m the Decider”) Bush and as autocratic, paranoid and ruthless as Richard “Dirty Tricks” Nixon (“If the President does it, then it’s not illegal.)
Which means that Trump will be rallying the state elections officials to do whatever they can to suppress, impede, depress voting in Democratic neighborhoods – whether that means sending thugs to challenge voters’ credentials, too few machines or voting hours to accommodate people, or other deceptive tactics.
See next: A Compendium of RNC Lies
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