The 2016 Republican National Convention is pathetic. It is an example of a political party in disarray and (hopefully) in its death throws. This makes the Republican Party and its base of reactionary, scared, and racist white voters even more dangerous. Schadenfreude can be enjoyable; it can also blind a person to the perils before them.
Yes, how can a sane and reasonable person not laugh as the Republican Party's National Convention's featured speakers include a underwear model, mixed martial arts sports promoter, Rudy Giuliani as Morton Downey Jr. combined with Gollum from Lord of the Rings, washed up 1980s sitcom TV stars, and an avocado baroness.
And how can a person with any capacity for critical thinking not be disgusted by how the so-called "liberal media's"is legitimating this spectacle (sorry, Donald Trump Jr. did not give an "amazing" speech; Melania Trump's plagiarizing is nothing compared to the authoritarian, racist, and violent values being channeled by the Republican Party).
But even by these standards, I was given pause by how God and Lucifer have been summoned by the speakers and attendees at the Republican coronation of Donald Trump to describe Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. These are the rantings of apocalyptic Christian fundamentalists who have more in common with ISIS than they do with the cosmopolitan and secular values embodied by the United States Constitution. These are also violent threats, because if one grants that their political foes are part of a grand struggle between good and evil then they must be vanquished.
And again, the so-called "smart people" who are doing play by play for the so-called "liberal media" laugh, and by doing so, enable and legitimate this madness.
The ascension of the American Il Duce Donald Trump to power over one of the United States' two institutional political parties is not a punchline or a joke. This is serious business that stopped being funny many months ago.
How did this happen? Who is most responsible? Any more general thoughts about the entertainment value provided by the 2016 Republican National Convention?
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