One of President Donald Trump's ultimate tells is the phrase "as you know." Whenever Trump says something and follows it with "as you know," it's got one of two purposes. The first is flattery, as in, "I know that you are privy to this incredible insight that I have, too." The second is conspiratorial, making you complicit in his lies. If he says something absurdly false and adds "as you know," barring anyone shouting out, "No, I don't fucking know," he's essentially acting as if you have assented to the lies.
For the idiot hordes of his voters, it doesn't matter. For the rest of us, it should be alarming. Trump could say, "I strangle hobos with Ivanka's panties and lean in to kiss them as they take their last breath because it's the only thing that makes me ejaculate, as you know." We might raise a hand and say, "I'm sorry. Could you go back to that strangling part? We didn't really know that." Trump voters would nod and say, "Yes, of course, we know about the hobogasm. Do continue," and then, when Democrats started to complain about the president jizzing on hobo corpses, they'd get outraged and tell us, "Look, we all know that's who he is. We don't care."
Last night, on the fourth night of the GOP's Convention of Horror and Doom, Trump gave his weary, practically mumbled speech accepting the nomination of his party, essentially just doing his stump speech mostly without his usual riffing. But he did manage to deploy one "as you know" in service of one of his most-repeated and most-obvious lies: "We have spent nearly $2.5 trillion on completely rebuilding our military, which was very badly depleted when I took office, as you know." No, motherfucker, we don't know that because it wasn't "very badly depleted," and the only people who know it are liars.
Lies were legion throughout the RNC. Every single speech by a politician there and most of the ones by "real people" contained lies. If lies were currency, Trump is truly as rich as he says. Practically every single thing said about the coronavirus was false, starting with the ban on travel from China, which was a bullshit action that did almost nothing, and going all the way to the vaccine that is definitely not going to be available before the election except to murder people. But the lies weren't the only fuckery. Perhaps worse were the contradictions between the present and the projected.
The contradictions in the speech and what we used to refer to as "reality" were so ridiculous and clear that the only excuses were Trump's contempt for everyone watching and an expectation that his voters would gobble up whatever he shit out. Just a sample:
- Trump grunted, "We must always have law and order. All federal crimes are being investigated, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law" while he was committing a federal crime, violating the Hatch Act, by forcing employees of the federal government to participate in a political campaign, which also meant that every federal employee there, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, was breaking federal law, too. They will not, one imagines, be punished to even the least extent of the law. (And no one there gave a damn about the abuse of the White House for campaign shits and giggles.)
- Trump talked about how Democrats will allow the federal government to take over your life while he's saying, "We will take care of your problem in a matter of hours. Just call. We have to wait for the call. It is too bad we have to, but we have to wait for the call." In other words, he wants the federal government to take over cities because they are run by Democrats. (Funny how troops aren't sent to Lubbock, Texas, where protests have been ongoing.)
- Trump said of the coronavirus, "To save as many lives as possible, we are focusing on the science, the facts, and the data. We are aggressively sheltering those at highest risk, especially the elderly," while speaking before a mostly unmasked audience that was crowded together, with many elderly people there, like Wilbur "I'm Not Even Sure If I'm Alive" Ross.
- Trump talked about prison reform but fundamentally doesn't understand the justice system, when he said that Biden wants to do away with cash bail and that would end up "immediately releasing 400,000 criminals onto the streets and into your neighborhoods." Except bail is for the accused, not the convicted, as I'm sure he fucking knows, considering all the people around him who have had to put up bail.
- Under Biden, Trump said, cities will essentially be filled with rising murder rates, riots, looting, and more. Like is happening now under Trump. Like right now.
- Under Biden, Trump said, we will "surrender" to the coronavirus as over 1000 people died of COVID-19 nearly every day of the RNC.
- Under Biden, Trump said, the economy will never recover while every week a million more people file for unemployment and more businesses are closing, again, right fucking now.
- Joe Biden is a "Trojan horse for socialism" and a puppet to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Trump said, and he's also an extremist who said he wants to defund police and open the borders, which would mean he very specifically is neither a Trojan horse nor a puppet. (Side note: I'm confused by the idea that providing some of the things that they have in, say, Germany and France will turn the country into the Soviet Union.)
The lawless, violent, depressed dystopia is here, now. Trump said in 2016, "I alone can fix it" when the truth is, no matter how much they try to paper it over with lies, he fucked it all up. And he fucked it up worse than Republicans usually fuck things up.
And the promise that he made last night is that he will continue to fuck it up. That's it. That's the platform. "You like how shitty things are? Well, this shitstorm in a shithole can continue for four more years."
What's frightening is how many people will fall for Trump's frankly retro invocation of socialism and crime in the streets (even as overall crime continues to be at incredibly low rates in most of the country). Fear of non-white people invading the pure white spaces is the driving force behind the Republican Party, as it has been for over 40 years.
But, see, it's not just through crime that they fear Black and brown people. Despite all the useful idiots protesting that Trump is not racist or the GOP does include them, what they really fear is the undermining of whiteness's central power role in the United States. That is the real crime. And for them, this loathsome, sweaty cretin who whines out his grievances is their last, best hope. All roads lead to him and all things are about him and only him. You must thank him, you must honor him, you must obey him.
It was a terrible speech, delivered badly, to an audience of assholes while shitting all over the White House and the law. It was the rhetorical nadir of a movement whose only motivation is hatred of the Other.
And, frankly, the violent, angry way in which everyone spoke about the left makes me wonder what they have planned for us if they eke out, cheat, and steal a victory. It won't be peaceful. As you know.
