That’s what the first night of the republican convention was: grotesque. It was grotesque, even by republican standards and I only made it half way through.
I’m still shell shocked by what I saw, and I’m deeply saddened that Melania Trump is all anyone is going to talk about. She’s a stupid twit. She’s a Slovenian Sarah Palin, but I already knew that. I don’t give two shits about her or her plagiarism. There are more disturbing atrocities to discuss about the republican convention. STOP talking about Melania! It’s a distraction.
Let me start with the tweeked out of his mind guy on crystal meth, adderall or some other upper he was clearly self medicating with. He was a former Navy Seal who was up there to advocate for having the strongest military with the greatest equipment the world has ever seen. At the republican convention. He was at the republican convention to talk about the best equipped military in the world.
“You go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
-Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Of Defense for President George W Bush
And everyone is cheering him on instead of getting him the help he obviously needs. The man is in eighteen different kinds of pain, and at least eighteen different kinds of drugs to help with that pain, and he’s being treated like an oracle instead of someone who desperately needs help. My heard bleeds for that guy.
Then there was the tragedy porn portion of the republican convention competition. They found about a half a dozen family members of people who died tragically to stand on that stage and exploit their loved ones deaths in the most disgusting way possible.
There was the BEEEENNNNNGGGHHAAAZZZIII mom whose desire to know why her son died didn’t include reading the nine congressional reports on the events of that night. She trotted out every right wing lie that precisely none of those reports found to be true. She really put on a vomit inducing display of ignorance and exploitation.
Then there were the family members of people who were killed by someone who was undocumented. They were there to stand on their family members’ corpses to tell their anecdotal stories so that people wouldn’t notice that what they were saying is completely contradicted by the facts. The fact of the matter is that violent crime among the undocumented community is exponentially lower than violent crime among the citizenry of this country. The fact is that this president has deported more Mexicans than any other president in US history. The fact is that net immigration has been in the negative numbers for the majority of President Obama’s term.
I revile every single one of those craven people who made me sit through their ignorant tragedy porn. Someone made a comment on my Facebook page last night, suggesting that I should respect their pain. No I shouldn’t. When a family member is diagnosed with a fatal or serious disease, you become an expert on that disease. We educate ourselves to the point of having earned half of a medical degree. I had a dear friend who was diagnosed with a glioblastoma many years ago. There is literally nothing I don’t know about glioblastomas, including the fact that she was going to die within three years of the diagnosis. This was a few years after she made me an expert on the endometriosis she had that required she get a full hysterectomy at the age of thirty-six. There are hundreds of millions of people who are experts on breast cancer, Parkinson’s, prostate cancer, multiple sclerosis, and a slew of other medical conditions because someone they love has been diagnosed with one of those diseases. Some of those people make curing those diseases their life’s work. You become an expert on things that are going to, or have killed someone you love.
These fucking people didn’t bother to educate themselves at all. They just seized on the opportunity to stand on their loved ones corpses to make a political point that was the opposite of the truth. I don’t need to respect anyone who doesn’t respect their loved one enough to educate themselves so that they can work to come up with fact-based solutions to the problems that killed someone they claim to love. They were all full of shit, and I’m repulsed by them. Sorry, there will be no respect coming from me
And then there was “blue lives matter”. They apparently matter to the exclusion of all other lives in America. There was cheering for the fact that another cop involved in the Freddie Gray incident was acquitted. Because obviously Freddie Gray nearly decapitated himself, and no cop who was involved did anything wrong. They stopped short of promising that all cops under a Trump presidency will be armed with machine guns and shoulder fired missile launchers, but that was implied.
It was grotesque. It was soul crushingly grotesque. This republican convention was grotesque on a much bigger scale than any before it.
They put the worst of humanity on that stage last night and claimed that was America. No it’s fucking not, and I’m not going to let anyone believe it is for a second.
Anyone who is thinking of getting cute with their vote by Bernie or busting, or Jill-not-Hilling needs to have their heads examined. I’m serious. If you’re thinking about doing either of these things and you haven’t bothered to watch what happened last night, you need to watch it immediately (it’s on CSPAN’s website). I mean it. Watch it now because more information is better than less information. Voting is about making informed decisions. Inform yourselves and then see if you still feel the same way.
