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The Republican National Convention Reminded Me Of A Joke

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Image of John William Davis of West Virginia, Democratic nominee for President of the United States, standing at a podium on the stage, viewed from the crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, 1920s. The building was at Madison Avenue and 26th. From the Chicago Daily News negatives collection. (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)

Image of John William Davis of West Virginia, Democratic nominee for President of the United States, standing at a podium on the stage, viewed from the crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, 1920s. The building was at Madison Avenue and 26th. From the Chicago Daily News negatives collection. (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)

[tweet_quote display=”There’s a retro aspect to the Republican convention: Nixon, negativism, straw boaters and—on the fringe—anti-Semitism.”]There’s a retro aspect to this year’s Republican convention: Nixon’s shadow, negativism, straw boaters (just like in Mencken’s day) and—on the lunatic fringe—anti-Semitism.[/tweet_quote]

Which reminds me of a joke.

I’ll keep this short because there’s no percentage in a gentleman blogger like me writing about an event as widely covered as the Republican National Convention. The convention may lurch at a glacial pace but coverage of politics moves at warp speed. I am way behind already. But I will end with a joke, so bear with me.

I fell behind even further this morning using precious minutes to find a reputable source that would confirm that a live stream of the convention had to be shut down because of anti-Jewish comments. The post on Inverse, which is no longer up on the site (as you may have discovered by clicking on the link), was entertaining and credible, ending with a screenshot of the stream admitting defeat: “Chat is disabled for this live stream.” Trust me. I saw it while it was up. But remember that word: inverse.

Every candidate has lunatic followers, and the Trump camp is entitled to float the claim that the offensive comments were a schmutzig trick by anti-Semites pretending to be Trump supporters or by Clinton supporters pretending to be anti-Semitic Trump supporters.

There’s always the possibility, too, that Trump supporters were pretending to be Clinton supporters posing as Trump supporters. As usual with Web matters, anything can be asserted and nothing can be determined for sure.

But dirty tricks, of course, brings us back to Nixon, whose campaign provides a template of sorts for Trump, as the New York Times has pointed out. Nixon’s running mate, Spiro Agnew, made his way into Bartlett’s with his wonderfully alliterative “nattering nabobs of negativism,” a reference ripe for revival amid the doom and despair of the RNC speakers.

When their speakers are on message, the tidings are: Things have never been worse, and you’ve never been less safe.

Does Trump believe that? Can he prove it? Will he even try?

My personal opinion is that Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make American Great Again,” is predicated less on the opinion that the U.S. is in awful shape than on the assumption that people who can be persuaded that this is true are likely voters for the Trump-Pence ticket. You may choose to believe that either Trump is a cynic or I am. Maybe both of us are.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to acknowledge America’s economic and military strength, finding evidence of its reach—not always happily—all over the globe, and continuing to trust the dollar, U.S. equities and U.S. Treasurys as safe havens in uncertain times.

Trump’s negative view of the country’s condition may be the inverse of the actual situation. Which, finally, brings us to a very old joke set in Berlin in the late 1930s.


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