A dictator on downers: Slow-motion mass hysteria at the Republican convention [View all]

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A dictator on downers: Slow-motion mass hysteria at the Republican convention
Donald Trump's speech was depressing and soulless, even for him. He can taste doom coming, and he doesn't like it

LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
AUGUST 29, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)


(Salon) would have loved to have been a fly on the wall as Donald Trump's dosage-tuning was done by a team of crack drug-doctors in an anteroom of the White House before he gave his Big Speech on Thursday night. Hand me that penlight, Tom. I want to give his pupils another quick check. His anisocoria looked a little pronounced when we hit him with the last dose a while ago … look right, Mr. President … now look left for me … that's good … uuuhhh … just as I thought. We better hit him with another two cc's before we give the OK to push him out there. If we don't get him tuned up just right, he'll never make it down those steps from the back portico…

Were you watching the last night of the Republican National Convention on Thursday night? It looked like a Nuremberg rally on Nembutal. Whatever they gave him before he took the stage overlooking the back lawn of the White House, they managed to get max-automaton out of him. Holding onto the podium like he was on the deck of a pitching ship at sea, Trump droned through 70 minutes of his acceptance speech like a seventh-grader giving a book report on "Great Expectations" in English class. He had that strange singsong delivery he does when he's reading off a teleprompter: sentence … pause … phrase … pause … now comes the big applause line and they clap and it says I can look at the audience and give them a smile and point to someone ...

Early in the speech, he uttered this gem in the exact same depressed, soulless tone and delivery he used when he assured his audience that his brother, Robert, was "looking down" on him from heaven: "In the new term as president, we will again build the greatest economy in history, quickly returning to full employment, soaring incomes and record prosperity." He sounded like he believed it about as much as he believed Melania would share his bed that night and he'd get lucky. He looked like he was going to burst into tears, the future looked so bright. It was like watching somebody on acid trying to wrangle their way through a bad trip, his face contorted in mid-zone between agony and ecstasy, belief and despair.

But in the words on the teleprompter, everything was peachy-keen. Everything he has done for four years has been perfect. Jobs? The jobs that have disappeared by the tens of millions since March? Why, they're up! Income? Income that's plummeted since businesses closed by the thousands and federal unemployment payments ended? Income is up! Pandemic? The virus that has sickened millions and killed more than 180,000 as schools open and outbreaks at colleges multiply? What pandemic? The wall? The wall that's being scaled with ladders and sawn through with $50 Home Depot battery powered saws? The wall that got blown down in a stiff wind a few weeks ago? The wall that Steve Bannon will be going to jail for? We built 300 miles of it! Our borders are more secure than they've ever been! Health care? You mean the coverage for pre-existing conditions we've been trying to kill in a federal lawsuit for the last couple of years? We're for it!

....(snip)....

Here's where we're at, folks: It's all about revenge. Republicans would vote for a squirrel in a hair-sprayed blonde wig if the squirrel promised them a fall football season and swore he would "own the libs." They want revenge for the '60s. They want revenge because the "libs" got laid more than they did in college. They want revenge because Obama had Dylan and Mick Jagger and Willie Dixon and Carole King in the White House, and all they've got is Kid Rock and Ted Nugent. They want revenge because we have more fun than they do. They want revenge because love is stronger than hate, and we believe in love. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/29/a-dictator-on-downersslow-motion-mass-hysteria-at-the-republican-convention/