Life of Wry

I watched the republican nominee deliver his acceptance speech last night. The no longer presumptive Trump dumped quite a load.

Longest speech in decades by a convention nominee. Clocked in at an hour and fifteen minutes.

I actually watched it all. That was more Trump in one hour than I’d seen in the last year. Um, wow.

He played his crowd like a fiddle. Set out to scare the bejibbies out of them. His people sure seemed to buy it, we’ll see if the country does.

I doodled and scribbled notes as he went along (what else are you going to do during a speech like that?). Things that I wrote on a piece of scratch paper…

What United States? This is the kingdom of Donald. He’s going to fix everything, he’s going to make the deals, he’s not going to bother with alliances; he’ll take care of everything on his own.

The arrogance is breathtaking.

America first. Screw the rest, those pesky global partners . We are going to rule the world. 

Sounds like Putin building his empire. 

Knucklehead. 

He’s going to have a coronary. [He was pacing a lot, sweating and red.]

He views this as a conquest. Dictator Trump wants to rule the world.  

Which jives, right? This is all about him. And about him saving us.

He seemed to come off the prompter toward the end.. more adlibbing with a lot more repetition of sentences for effect, and then out came the “believe me” punctuation. Over and over. “Believe me, believe me.”

Nails on a chalkboard.

So, there it is, the Law and Order candidate who, alone, will FIX EVERYTHING. On day one. He said the country will wake up the day after his swearing in and be safer.

He is going to fix our police force and make them strong again. Our criminal justice system will work. He won’t let in any scary people.

What else?

Oh, the wall.

Just like his kids said he would. “My father will fix everything.”

He painted a picture of the country as on the verge of collapse, with violence and unrest rampant. Especially the killing of cops, those who should, but can’t, protect us, um, because of the immigrants. Too many of them are killing cops and raping women.

He made up all kinds of stats about all the killing, plus he had amazing stories about how Hillary took us from a safe and stable world, to a Middle East that is warring and now after us, via ISIS.

Breathe, breathe.

I guess scare tactics are effective in elections. Our “collapsed and weak” country, and a “dangerous world full of enemies who want to destroy us,” both play right into his role as fixer and father and ruler of the world. This plan will certainly work to rally his folks. I don’t know if a majority will buy it.

But wow.

A friend just posted this quote as a reminder of how these things work, time tested:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Joseph Goebbels – German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.

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I’d like to hang around and talk more about all this, lord knows, but we leave for Yosemite in a couple hours. Will miss the whole DNC. Bummer.

But Tuolumne Meadows. Respite!! Cool mountain air, clear skies, the crunch of pine needles beneath our boots. Granite, granite everywhere. And that smell.  Time with my guys, hiking, reading, gin rummy, lots of sleep. No trump. I. CAN. NOT. WAIT.

There is our beloved lodge (whose new name–thanks to hard feelings all around and sticky legal wickets as there was a change of hand with the park concessions contracts–alludes me):

There’s our goofy little cabin:

There’s the spot behind the cabins, along the Lyell Fork:

And there will be hikes!

With my guys:

The above, all from 2013.