Illustration--MC
It was with great reluctance that I watched Republican Party’s presidential nominee Donald J. Trump’s acceptance speech last night. My brain can no longer pick individual words in what he says but hear a cacophony of conflicting ideas mixed in a blender whose blade is so blunted by excessive and reckless use that it cannot even cut through butter. (Phew! That was one tiresome sentence. That’s how I feel.) Nevertheless, the journalist in me is not totally asleep and hence these few observations about what he said.
If I were to distil down his speech to one overarching phrase, it would be, “I alone can fix it.” Wait, he did indeed say precisely that in a garden variety case of messianic complex.
He said, “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people who cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” Although he promised specifics in what he would do as president what he actually offered was a presidency on the fly. Never mind how and what I will do but I will do it seemed to be the approach.
TV news anchors were bracing for a lofty, presidential pivot from Trump that floated above the grimy fray that he himself has been creating for over a year now. Instead, they got pretty much the same vision only slightly better dressed. He cast himself as “the law and order candidate”, not just a law and order candidate but definite “the.” I do not know what that means in practical terms.
This is how he put it: “When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country. I will work with, and appoint, the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country to get the job properly done. In this race for the White House, I am the law and order candidate. The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than frankly I have ever seen, or anybody in this room has ever watched or seen.” That from someone who began his presidential campaign by calling an entire people (with exception of some good ones) criminals and rapists.
The sense one got from hearing him was that most of America’s major ills, including its economic challenges and law and order problems, can be solved rather quickly if he is in the White House. For him, solving problems is only a simple matter of saying that he will solve those problems. Be it radical Islamic terrorism as represented by ISIS or trade deals everything will be solved by lunchtime on January 20, 2017. I exaggerate, of course, but that is the sense one gets.
This is what he said about ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism: “We must work with all of our allies who share our goal of destroying ISIS and stamping out Islamic terror. This includes working with our greatest ally in the region, the state of Israel. Lastly, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place.”
It is just a question of working with allies and suspending immigration from countries “compromised by terrorism”. That is a pretty nebulous and broad policy prescription which can be seen to mean countries as wide ranging as France and India. What does “compromised by terrorism” mean? Does it mean countries which have been victims of terrorism? Or does it mean countries which have been victims of terrorism because their lax “vetting mechanisms” allowed refugees, some of whom could be harboring such antipathies? My suspicion is that Trump believes in improv presidency. Policy-making on the fly; do what it takes at a particular moment to get the deal done sort of thing.
No one was expecting a cohesively crafted and electrifying acceptance speech from a man who swings from idea to idea with a level of skill that would make Tarzan proud. The problem with this approach is that the hard, knotty vines that you leave behind in your wake get entangled.
Although I came to America barely 18 years ago I have never viewed this country from an immigrant’s standpoint. That has everything to do with my grounding in science generally and physics particularly. The lowest level I can operate on is cosmic. I do not quite get the angst of being an immigrant at all. Notwithstanding that approach one gets this feeling from any Republican engagement, particularly of the vociferously partisan kind that such a convention necessarily is, is that one is not particularly welcome. “You are here and that’s fine but don’t get in my way as I go about fixing things because I alone can fix it” is what is being implied.
Much is being made about the ease of immigrating to America by many Republicans. They live in a fantasy world where immigrating to America is a simple act of buying an airline ticket and and going to the nearest American mission to get a visa. Have they tried to immigrate themselves? If they had, they would have discovered how tedious and demanding the process is. It takes several years, sometimes even a decade or two.
CNN and other network anchors kept insisting that this was going to be the most important speech of his life. Listening to it gave one no such impression. He just put together some disjointed ideas and read it to a captive audience that couldn’t care less what he was saying as long he was saying something. Speaking of saying something that fit their partisan notions of reality, he said at one point that the detention of 10 American sailors by Tehran preceded the Iran nuclear deal. The simple chronological fact is that the sailors were detained on January 12, 2016 while the nuclear deal was secured on July 14, 2015. He had to reverse the order in order to imply that with US sailors on their knees at gunpoint the nuclear deal resulted. But then why must facts come in the way of a powerful partisan yarn?
I suppose I have made enough insightful points about a speech that I was reluctant to vote to begin with. Now if you do not mind, I have to get back to the more pressing issue of whether we live in a simulated universe. Can there be greater evidence of it than what I just wrote?
P.S. Trump often ends his sentences with “believe me”, especially when he makes grand promises. That is because he is trying to convince himself and because he says many unbelievable things.