Day: July 22, 2016

Anything you want to tell us, @SenWarren? #ColbertRNC pic.twitter.com/aVlrjZhoMn

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) July 22, 2016

More inside...

Andrew Sullivan, like myself, read Trump's draft speech around dinner time, after it was leaked by a Republican to Hillary's campaign (which by itself should strike panic into the hearts of the Trump campaign). Here is his take before seeing it:

It’s a remarkable piece of oratory, cannily crafted, framed by massive lies and distortions, crammed with incoherence, and yet, I’m afraid to say, scarily potent. It invents a reality – that the U.S. is in a state of chaos, lawlessness and soaring crime; that the world is careening toward catastrophe – and then makes a classic argument for a strongman to set things straight. This is a very new departure for politics in a liberal democracy. We’ve never heard an appeal from a major party platform to junk traditional democratic norms, and cede power to a new tyrant, whose magical powers will somehow cause almost every problem in the country to disappear. In this election, the very basis of liberal democracy is on the ballot. The fears I expressed last May about the popularity of tyranny in a late-democracy have, I’m afraid, only been fanned by events since. The speech is entirely about fear, to be somehow vanquished by a single man’s will to power. Its core message is what America was founded to resist. Its success would be an abolition of the core promise of this country for two centuries – that self-government is incompatible with the rule by the whims and prejudices and impulses of a man on a white horse. It can happen here. It is happening here. No election has been more important in my lifetime.

His reaction after delivery:

I have to say I’m relieved. This was a terrible presentation of what read like a powerful speech. It seems screechy, unmodulated, and yet also plodding. Mussolini never had a Teleprompter.

I agree completely. During the hours between reading it and 10:30, I drank. Heavily. It read like a fascist masterpiece determined to take what existing fear there is and stoke it so as to change America beyond any democratic (small d) recognition. But it was delivered like a 75 minute primal scream. If one piece of shit complains about Hillary's voice ever again, I will punch them directly in the face, and then continue the pummeling on the ground. However, it was still a dark, dystopian, fascist speech. It will do more to unify those who believe in liberalism or progressivism than anything Clinton, Sanders or Obama could do alone.

With a steady diet of this doom and gloom misanthropy, is it any wonder Donald Trump thinks (in spite of all evidence to the contrary) that America is a fucking shit hole? There is no pretense of objectivity. There is only wall to wall hate and fear mongering. Pickled in this hatred and myopic gloom, Donald Trump is ready to give birth to a new age in America. An age of "LAW AND ORDER" and an age completely unburdened by the debilitating effects of "political correctness." In short an age of one man, one vote. His vote.