Here Lies One Whose Name is Writ in Smoke

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"  Molly Ivins in her final column

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."  Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Philaster", on John Keats' headstone

And lie he did, often, during his narcoleptic, 70 minute-long acceptance speech, the second longest in history (bested only by Bunker Boy's 2016 acceptance speech). In fact, Trump seemed so bored reading off the teleprompter (which shouldn't surprise anyone who's been paying attention to this shambling brain stem), he delivered his speech slowly enough so that Rachel Maddow, who was covering the RNC convention with Nicolle Wallace and Joy Reid, could fact check him in real time (while admitting she couldn't identify and rebut all the lies)

     The "Woodstock of germs", as Joe Scarborough called it this morning, was held on the South Lawn of the White House and was so blatantly, thoroughly criminal even the fireworks were illegal, according to former Obama White House Ethics lawyer Norm Eisen. In terms of the sheer depth and scope of seething hatred and race-baiting, it made the notorious 1992 Republican convention (which featured Pat Buchanan at the height of his Fourth Reich form- The late Molly Ivins asked him backstage afterwards how it sounded in the original German) look by conspicuous relief like a Patchouli oil-impregnated, semen-flecked sex orgy. Packed onto the South Lawn were 2000 violations of the Hatch Act (almost but not quite equivalent to the 2200 Americans who'd died from COVID-19 yesterday and Wednesday) with hardly a mask in sight, leaving many wondering what happened to the virtual convention.

    The answer is simple: Not content to scream in an empty room as Kimberly Guilfoyle had in her Hunger Games speech on night one, Trump needed to hear that live applause that never seems to fill the black hole where his soul should be and to hell with the consequences.

    The entire convention was bloated with right wing arrogance, racist fear-stoking. Mayor Rudy said last night in a pool of sweat that reached past his ankles that if Biden's elected, Black Lives Matter protesters would destroy all of, presumably white, suburbia (which is difficult to imagine, since Biden's 1994 crime bill put a half a million black men in jail for non-violent offenses.).

    Jacob Blake's name was never mentioned once during the four day Lieliepalooza. Completely ignored were the 180,000 Americans, a quarter of the world's fatalities, who've died from COVID-19. Hardly a true word was uttered over all four nights from James Madison signing the Declaration of Independence (he didn't) to Ivanka's repurposed Lego story that she projected on to her son's so-called White House Lego model.

     It was the same old racism only dressed up not in overalls and MAGA hats but in Brooks Brothers suits and designer evening gowns. The impeached, sued and investigated Trump once again positioned himself as the "law and order" president, and he and he alone could keep the ravaging (black) hordes at bay and all we have to do is pull the lever for him. And at a time when middle America and independent voters are leaving him in droves, at a time when Trump should have been addressing a wider cross section of the American electorate, he instead chose to address not John Q. Public but Johnny Joe Bob Bubba QAnon One Third of the Public.

Please, Bwana, Don't Take Away My Pardon!

One of the most deplorable and pathetic sights of the convention also came last night. That was the result of Trump calling in the note owed by Alice Johnson, whose cocaine life sentence was commuted by Trump two years ago. Last night, Johnson gave an impassioned speech and perhaps knowing full good and well that getting a full pardon from Trump less than 24 hours later depended on the earnest, tragic sincerity of her performance.

     And yet dangling that pardon in front of Johnson still couldn't get Trump an actual endorsement from her. But in the end, it didn't matter- She'd played her token role and thanked Bwana for her liberation. Maybe Trump will commemorate the moment in his "Garden of Heroes" depicting Johnson on her knees before Trump holding a broken chain in his tiny hands.

     The very fact the right wing speakers didn't mention Kenosha police shooting victim Jacob Blake's name even once, let alone acknowledging and condemning Trump backer Kyle Rittenhouse's act of double murder proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the Trump White House's complete apathy toward addressing let alone changing a single thing about the race war that is raging in this country. The message is clear- If you don't play ball and appease the Godfather, especially if you're black, don't expect decent or equal treatment.

     In one of those oddly satisfying acts of fate, the RNC convention, a strange, distilled, homemade version of CPAC, began the same night as the Kenosha protests, except they will last a lot longer in that Wisconsin city of 100,000 and it's only a matter of time before sympathy protests will begin popping up again all over the country just as with the George Floyd protests earlier this summer.

     If you want a more honest version of last night's events, just replay Jared Kushner's comments on the NBA playoff strike. Jared's position was clear- "We only have use for black people when they entertain us and you should be grateful to us for what we've let you achieve. Beyond that, shut the fuck up."

     But as with everything about this administration, it's all glitz and artifice, with ratings equating with popularity and commutations and pardons handed out like Halloween candy. Even Melania's smile to Ivanka last night was deeply disingenuous, calling to mind her smile to her husband on inauguration day only to frown and bow her head after he turned around.

     At the end of the night, the First Family from Grand Daddy Warbucks to the grandkids took up the entire width of the stage like an economy-sized police lineup as the fireworks exploded from the National Mall. Twice Trump's name then "2020" were briefly writ large through the miracle of gunpowder, to be inevitably replaced by the ghostly shadow of the smoke, rent and dispersed by the breeze. It was an unintentionally fitting end to a convention in which idiots full of sound and fury and signifying nothing had strutted across that stage. And, like his name writ in smoke, Trump too will soon be gone.