So the circus — the Republican National Convention — has left town. Luckily, the predictions of violence in the streets came to naught, and all we saw downtown was clowns, dancers, acrobats and giant bubble-blowers (thanks, Dr. U.R. Awesome!).
No, the lingering stench came from the now-official Republican candidate’s acceptance speech Thursday night, a speech that should have struck fear in the heart of every patriotic American, but not for the reasons he was trying to stir up fear. Because that was what he was doing: using fear to elicit compliance.
It has been widely commented on that the speech, which at 75 minutes was by far the longest acceptance speech ever made by a presidential candidate (even eclipsing the windy Bill Clinton), struck an insistent note of gloom and doom. American is a weakling, a dark and dangerous place without defenses, he told his listeners. And that’s due to people unlike yourselves — brown and black people, “The Other.” At a time when we need to pull together, his words were like a sharp-edged cleaver, ripping us apart and suggesting we need to build not just walls but moats filled with alligators and not just between the U.S. and Mexico but everywhere.
What we need to “keep us safe,” he said, was basically a police state to keep “those people” in line. He was stoking anger, fear and bigotry to soften up listeners for repression.
Possibly the scariest line in the speech was “I alone can fix it.” It’s immaterial what he was talking about. It requires megalomania beyond belief to say that out of a population of more than 320 million, only one man is so powerful, so endowed with knowledge and wisdom, that he is the answer to all our problems. Anyone who didn’t see the will to dictatorship blazing from his angry eyes and set jaw wasn’t looking very hard. To dismiss the collective wisdom, knowledge, education and experience of all other Americans and demanding they put their faith in one single man who “alone can fix it” is asking his adherents to completely give up the “freedom” and “liberty” they strew around like buzzwords. This is not a man leading a party of “freedom” and “liberty” because absolute safety — or the illusion of it, because there’s no such thing — requires their negation.
“I alone can fix it,” especially coming from a person with a transparent lack of knowledge about how our government works, what democracy is and what’s in the Constitution, should have every good American fleeing from such a candidate.
Besides the candidate’s America-hating gloom & doom (How can his followers accuse Black Lives Matter of “hating America” when they are the ones sporting hats reading “Make American Great Again”? ), there’s another really scary thing about his campaign and the theme of the entire convention that advances the same sense of a march toward totalitarianism. That is the whole “lock her up!” narrative.
That it was pre-planned and carefully staged is obvious. Every vendor on the street was pushing T-shirt, buttons and stickers with the slogan “Hillary for prison” and even pictures of the Democratic candidate behind bars.
There’s a yuuuuge problem with this. Hillary Clinton is not suspected of so much as an unpaid parking ticket. No, there’s no “there” there with “Benghaaaaaazi” or the flogged-to-death emails. Both were ceaselessly investigate by her most determined political enemies, who came up with nothing.
It’s certain that the Republican “leaders” who conceived this narrative know this. So they are advocating to throw an innocent woman in jail — no charges, no trial, no conviction, no sentencing — because she is their political opponent. Think about that — close your eyes and really think, no matter where on the political spectrum you are. This is the sort of thing that occurs in small, anti-democratic countries descending into chaos, civil war and dictatorship. It’s not the sort of thing anyone in a civilized, developed nation promotes.
But it aligns with the “vision,” if you want to call it that, outlined in that acceptance speech, where “law and order,” a curiously antique phrase, means order without the rule of law, repression of those you suspect merely because they’re different from you and the jailing of those who disagree with you. The candidate has also threatened to shut down media he perceives as unfriendly to him, perhaps even shut down the Internet because people can say things he doesn’t like, punish sitting Republican congressmen and senators insufficiently deferential to him, and use the machinery of government to enrich himself and seek revenge against those he believes have wronged him.
That’s a very clear picture. He hasn’t been secret about any of this. He hasn’t used code words. It’s out in the open for all to see. It’s time we ALL opened our eyes and did so.
One Response to “COMMENTARY: GOP Scare Tactics by Anastasia Pantsios”
Dick Peery
“What we need to “keep us safe,” he said, was basically a police state to keep “those people” in line.”
Trump is late. The police state was already in place outside the arena. No matter how much we congratulate ourselves on the good times downtown, there ought to be remorse over how it happened. Yes, the absence of incidents allowed police from across the country to be as friendly and relaxed as students on spring break. But if the only way to feel safe in the heart of the city is to have a quartet of cops every 10 or 20 yards along Euclid Avenue, we’re in deeper trouble than anyone wants to admit.