I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Presidential candidate scrrreeeaamm like that in a convention speech. That wasn’t yelling, that wasn’t bombast, that was screaming.
The overarching theme seemed to be twofold: (1) Everything is, and everything that’s happened over the last 20 years that did not involve Donald Trump has been, a total disaster; and (2) there’s no problem that Donald Trump can’t solve, completely, and fast, by brutalizing someone, somewhere.
Meaning, someone else, somewhere else.
When he said he wanted to “bring back Law & Order,” I thought Wow, I wonder if Sam Waterston is available? Actually, I thought, criminal justice — “the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders” — is largely a state and local matter. How can a president prevent things like muggings, burglaries, and homicides?
Speaking of which, the first thing Trump said after promising that “at our convention, there will be no lies … the truth, and nothing else,” was that “[d]ecades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this Administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement.”
Uh...huh? Forget whether this massive national crime wave is real; how has “this Administration” “roll[ed] back” “criminal enforcement”? Again, a president couldn’t do that even if he wanted to.
Trump said he will only allow immigrants to enter the country if they “love our people.” Perhaps he’s got a line on a supplier of those mind-reading seeds from Gilligan's Island.
It was certainly the most authoritarian convention speech I’ve ever heard. Starting January 20, bad things are just not going to happen anymore, and bad people will just go away and/or stop being bad. Because one man will make that happen. Completely. And fast.
There was a lot of bullshit in the speech. That was to be expected. Trump is as full of it as any other politician, if not more. So, whatevs.
Two particular moments really stood out for me.
One: “I will do everything in my power to protect our ell-gee… bee-tee… Q... citizens, from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”
...but not from anything else. Apparently there’s nothing else our LGBTQ citizens might need to be protected from.
This statement struck a chord with me not so much because of that, but because its careful, narrow qualification dovetails with something I’ve believed about the purported “pro-life” party that’s always congratulating itself for its stated goal of “protecting human life,” or “innocent life,” or “American lives” or whatever. Which is, they’re interested in “protecting” innocent/human/American lives from two things, and two things only: abortion — conspicuously absent from the Donald’s speech — and the thing they call Radical Islamic Terrorism™. That’s it, nothing else. Not from disease or disability or lack of health care, not from poverty or hunger or privation, not from pollution or industrial waste, not from contaminated food or unclean water, not from defective products or unsafe workplaces, not from abuse or exploitation, and certainly not from any other form or source of violence.
Two: “YES YOU WILL!”
Like everyone else, when I heard that I thought, what a startling contrast between “YES YOU WILL!” and “YES WE CAN!” The latter is a message of camaraderie and hope; the former… well, the kindest I can be is to call it a message of faith and conviction.
But the use of the pronoun “YOU” I think has a double meaning. If “Yes You Will” is an expression of “faith,” it’s one of faith in a single individual — the “you” being the second-person singular, not plural — to do it on his own without outside help, or by implication, outside interference. It’s faith in the autocrat.
It’s also, weirdly, an absolution of personal responsibility; it’s a way of saying, You, the autocrat, will fix everything; we (or I ) don’t have to do anything. One of my other theories about conservatives/Republican voters, something I think distinguishes them from liberals/Democrats, is that they’re generally fine with government trying to solve problems but don’t want to have to spend any money or change their behavior in order to make it happen.
“Yes We Can” is an acknowledgment that we all need to contribute if we want what we want to come to pass; “Yes You Will” is a way of saying, “You deal with it; it’s not my problem. You’ll take care of everything. And if you don’t, it’s on you, not me.” Turn around, walk away, go about your life, let the dictator dictate, and take no responsibility for the results.
One more observation: I saw a lot of crowd shots where a lot of people were sitting on their hands; i.e., not applauding, not cheering. Not sure what that was about, but it was noticeable, and seemed unusual for a presidential candidate’s national convention speech.