Obamas, and Walzes, and Harris, oh my! — a convention filled with scary potential…
Most of us have those folks in our circle who have joined that cult. You know, the personality cult formerly known as the Republican Party. It has been said many times both aloud and in hushed conversations around family dinner tables, what is it? What attracts them to the flame? Why are they so persistent in their blind aversion to the truth? It is becoming clearer now as the DNC is rolling and Dems seem to be on the ascent while the other side seems to be flailing. The worm has turned. Now, they are afraid.
Ask them if they watched the DNC on night 2. The night featuring Democratic speaker elites must have reminded them of a scary Halloween night movie fest. They don’t watch, or if they do it is with half-closed eyes. Like frightened children peeking through doors opened just a crack, they are always at the ready to run and hide. Boo!! Oh yeah, it was that scary. The combination of Kamala Harris and the two Obamas is like a combination of Freddy Krueger and his friends, Mikey Meyers and Jason Voorhees- Hollywood’s trilogy of the Allhallows Eve movie franchise fiends. They cannot watch because they have been convinced that there are devils afoot in Chicago, coming for their wives, elders, children, and their very souls. Truth be told, the scariest monsters dwell within their MAGA houses. They live, untended, inside their minds ready to be stoked by the real monstrosity they invited for a stay. Sadly, the MAGA remnants of the once-honorable GOP are like kids left with a distracted babysitter as their parent is off on an extended vacation. And the doorbell rings…
The Democratic National Convention was joyful, openly diverse, and powerfully focused on policy. By contrast, the party unveiled a platform written in pencil while looking old and stodgy. What was most striking in the comparison for me was more than tone- hope and joy can be famously fleeting. Feisty Joe Biden leading off the first night didn’t even pretend to focus on tone, he was pugnacious and dialed up. Scarred and left for dead, Biden reminded us that sacrifice and selflessness while a process that drains the body, and sometimes weakens the mind, can be transformative. The Joe on night one was not any younger, was not more eloquent, and did not suggest that what had transpired over the past month should be second-guessed. He was simply a version of himself at peace with his decision, a man unapologetic and unbroken.
Trump on the first night of his convention played a living martyr with one more grievance to add to his list of slights. Listening to the opening night speakers that first night, one was reminded of what issues energized their psyche:
Homophobic and transphobic remarks were unmistakably present throughout the first three days of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. At least a dozen speakers have so far mentioned gender or sexuality negatively in their speeches…
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., kicked off the four-day event Monday with a speech loaded with anti-LGBTQ sentiment. “This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” Johnson said of the Democratic platform, which elicited boos in agreement from the crowd.
Johnson was followed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga, on the stage. “They promise normalcy and gave us transgender visibility day on Easter Sunday…”
— NBC News, “RNC speakers lean into homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.”
Their focus was on the tiniest of minorities within the larger minorities in America- about 1.14%of the population. They were at the top of their agenda- not guns, not violence, not the economy. No, they were obsessed with the “S” word and women. Women have been a target of their creepy fascination with women and child-bearing. This group represents about 18% of the adult population and bears the brunt of the Republicans’ archaic vision of birth, rape, male responsibility, and women’s reproductive right. They are not concerned enough to protect their physical health or reproductive rights. They are quick to suggest punishment for women who chose not to carry their attacker’s child but not so much with their rapists. Their nominees, like harpy scolds, want to control our lives, as burn books they have never read. For them, sexual preferences are not a preference at all as it is dictated by a societal norm that denies nature. Minding our business has become a cottage industry of their salacious interest in the bedroom, even as their own beds seem unmade.
While I am not a fan of early polling, the new team of Democrats seems to have changed the momentum in the race in a way Republicans never could have imagined. It is as if someone rang the doorbell late one night and the visitors were wearing Obama masks and carrying school lunch pails with Scooby-Doo peeing on a MAGA hat on one side and Tim Walz with a basketball and whistle on the other. The RNC was joy and hope-averse as the ringleaders talked about their hatreds (too many to count), what makes them unhappy (almost anything that seems like fun), and who pisses them off (the rest of us).
To make their point, the convention planners invited bouncers from the wrestling world to protect them from immigrants, LBGQT gangs, and the aforementioned Scooby-Doo. As the washed-up Hulk Hogan ripped off his shirt to honor Trump, his performance could easily be the lasting contrast between the two parties. Hogan whose real name is Terry Bollea is very much a perfect Trump surrogate. Both talk tough while facing the fake perils in a ring that has been fixed for their heroics. Bollea, who calls everyone “brother” or “bro” is the epitome of fake and phony as all his bouts have been scripted. As one of the convention’s “main events,” he explains his affinity for Trump:
“I tried to stay out of politics, but after everything that’s happened to our country over the past four years and everything that happened last weekend, I can no longer stay silent,” he said.
“Over my career, I’ve been in the ring with some of the biggest, some of the baddest dudes on the planet,” Hogan continued. “Donald Trump is the toughest of them all. They’ve thrown everything at Donald Trump, all the investigations, the impeachments, the court cases, and he’s still standing and kicking their butts.”
The WCW actor in the cartoonishly fake exhibitions of testosterone-filled stunts never had to drink the Kool-Aid, he helped invent it. The biggest threat to him and his rivals has been the steroids they have used to make their bodies puffed and toned. He testified at the famous 1994 Vince McMahon trial that convicted a Pennsylvania doctor for providing illegal steroids to McMahon’s WWE wrestlers including himself. Hogan was visually transformed into a shell of his former self after the flow of anabolic injections ended with the trial. Donald Trump’s convention was not unlike a WrestleMania production with speakers bashing phantom nemeses and the usual hucksters “amening” the nominee’s falsehoods and misrepresentations.
The DNC by comparison has been different. The vibe is upbeat. The crowd is energized by speakers who whip them up with mostly hopeful fare, tempering their political attacks with humor. The problems that speakers highlighted were introduced with solutions tied to the Democratic platform statement. The women who told their stories about the effects of the denial of abortion rights were authentic and shared their experiences openly and with emotion. One thing that caught my eye beyond the diversity was the number of younger delegates.
The GOP “party” was wakelike. The pall that hung over the arena seemed orchestrated to hide the bogeymen like the Trump pardoned associates, the judges and legislators who ignored the law for ideology, and the gratuitous racism and misogyny that broke through in speeches edited for the truth. The stage was a platform for extolling fixes for what was never broken- creating problems, painting dark scenarios, singling out enemies. The extremist GOP left the convention hall in Milwaukee on a sugar high fueled by the phooey of their own delusions.
When Joe Biden spoke on behalf of the party that urged him to give up his dream of a second term, he sealed his legacy as perhaps the most consequential president since FDR. It was as if a spell had been broken and America awoke from its Trump-induced slumber. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz accepted the baton handed them by Biden and ran with it. Trump was spared a rematch with his former rival and instead, a woman, a black woman, no less, and a coach would now face him in November. It is as if Freddy or Jason stood on that stage this week as Trump has begun to shrink. Shouts of “we won’t go back” and “when we fight we win” pierced his false patina of strength as Democrats celebrated their own resurgence from the doldrums of the last debate. Trump went full cipher at his rally just before the DNC kickoff. His statement was pure nonsense meant to be taken as a threat:
“You know, they do polls on this stuff, and I’m at like 93%. I said, so why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?”
Not sure what the 93% refers to but the rest is Donald Trump showing fear. The suggestion that elections are merely ceremonial and unnecessary is proof that he has finally taken a punch and it hurt. We all know what happens when a bully confronts his victim and the victim strikes back- he discovers fear. After the Obamas teed off on him and with Bill Clinton and Pete Buttigieg in the wings; with a raucous convention floor filled with joyful and hope-filled Democrats, Dems were ready to regain their freedom from 7 years of being bullied and pushed around. The two-bit billionaire must be shaken, You hear it in his voice as he tries now to follow a script when he speaks to the press. He sounds tired, He’s looking old. It’s as if he is home alone and someone- something- can be heard banging on his door. As the knocking grows louder and more intense he looks for cover as he hears a voice through the cracked opening of the door. He listens to hear a chorus of Americans coming for him. A voice that could only be scripted by Stephen King breaks through….
“Heeere’s Kamala!!”
* Kamala spelled backwards looking at her name reflected in a mirror
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com.
