mikevarley.com

At the RNC Convention

Tampa 2012, the Grand Ole’ Party’s nominating convention. Spoken word might be the one thing even liberal pundits concede to the smirks of biased opinion, grounded as it is in rhythm and thought. But allow me a minute to mark how we got here in the hopes that you’ll see I don’t blindly hate elephants.

It started with the folly of race wedge politics, vintage 90’s Democrats. While it contained in its core a kernel of truth, the points it scored democrats opened a grave window. Race is an issue best treated benevolently, a principle understood by Americans inherently. When used to make another look small, it creates in the target a thirst for justice, irrespective of the history that came before it.

Politics in America if anything is sport, and the fortunes of your team reflect upon you. Half of America was implied to be racist, and Republicans set out looking to exploit this. They crafted the notion of a “liberal other” because no one corrects the flaws laughed at by others. The liberal is weak, the liberal is gay, the liberal feeds freeloaders with the taxes that I pay. They have ideas that will never work and values we should despise. And worst of all, they control the news that’s daily televised.

It’s an alternate reality of delusionally-disenfranchised whites, running a policy playbook from 1983. The rich fuel the engines and get their tax deductions, and the rest get to think that they’re on the winning team.

And here we are, 2012, with the demographics shrinking. A party with nowhere to go but forward, into the ocean of words without meaning.

Parade out the minorities as signs of opportunity, just avoid all the issues that speak to them specifically. Find me the women who don’t have a problem with stripping constituent power.

Preach to the choir of rugged individualism, of summer jobs as busboys, and boundless mobility. Ignore the fact that bus boys are also bus men, that the toll booth you speed through must always be manned, that menial labor has a dignity all it’s own. The wealth of a nation is measured in guarding the class you have deemed stepping stones.

Send out Paul Ryan to ruin his image in one grand gesture of lying. Rely on reporters differing to fact-checkers for fear of the bias better known as honesty. There’s nothing sadder than watching a wonk distort his chosen policy. The people’s trust is highly flammable. It burns bright and short and melts off all lesser enamels.

And Mitt Romney arrives to consecrate it all, through the crowd looking stiff and standing tall. The middle distance wave behind the speakers podium is well-practiced and assured. It takes a great deal of something to wave to no one at all.

His voice rises in pitch when describing hopes and dreams. The authenticity rings like a hollow horn pitched only for parody. He wanted Obama to succeed all along, and so did all GOP’s. Some lies are palatable and some are flecked with pleasure. Lies of bold revision win no new devotees.

Forty minutes massaging conventional wisdom: the idea that Mitt needs to be human. He’s clearly human, I need no more evidence. He’s not charismatic but he’s a worker. The problem is, with ideas like these, he needs to be the Mormon Frank Sinatra.

You scare me with your absolute lack of conviction in anything slightly contested. Like an old man debating with an empty chair, I never know where you’ll go next and I don’t want you near all those missles.

Scarier still, in the view of pure hindsight, you may have been the one that could have solved all this. You have the money the congressmen don’t, enough to short a true message. The moderate record could have made you the go-between the masses desperately desire.

But instead, you courted a base that still doesn’t like you and would have voted regardless. And as you conclude with platitudes and wave through heroic confetti, savor the moment, for this story will end in only one of two options. Either the race is lost for power and you’re left with no opinions, or the opinions you’ve courted on the way to the throne get four years to turn your soul sour.