Robert L. Terrell

I am watching the Republican National Convention with a sense of incredulity and dismay.  Amid the military salutes, cowboy hats, imperial hubris and tributes to inequitable policies that systematically ravage the lives of average Americans, the tawdry spectacle is deeply disturbing. These are the people who enthusiastically support torture, military assaults, capital punishment, assassinations, secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, unchecked presidential authority and an economic regime which ensures that major portions of the rest of the world subsists in wretched poverty.  

I assume they mean well—at least for themselves.  For the rest of us, the current Republican regime impacts our lives in much the same manner as a relentless, deadly plague. In any event, here they are on television night after night celebrating banal commentary, and systems of thought and action that frequently result in horrendous crimes against humanity.  They are an anomaly to me, people who appear to have no heart, little conscience and scant compassion or commitment to common decency.  Many of those in attendance, including Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman, and the deeply confused Joseph Lieberman, are prodigiously wealthy.  Their sparkling jewels, fine clothing and comely tans are testament to their economic prosperity.  I am particularly struck by the extent to which their rhetoric focuses on enemies, wars, imperialism, business affairs and symbols of empire. 

  “Country First,” proclaim their posters.  But what does this mean?  Does it mean we should ignore and forget the hordes of homeless U.S. citizens whose very existence belies Republican propaganda about the alleged wonderfulness of the national economy? Does it mean we should ignore and forget the New Orleans-type slums and ghettos filled with millions of people living in squalor with little or no hope for better lives?  Does it mean we are supposed to ignore or forget the secret prisons established and maintained by the Bush administration? 

 Does it means we are supposed to ignore and forget the gruesome, and patently illegal, methods they use to torture hapless colored people merely  suspected of being enemies of “country first?”  Does “country first” mean we should ignore and forget the host of international laws broken by the Bush administration during the past eight years?  Does it mean we should ignore and forget the possibility that arrest warrants will be issued by international courts charging George W. Bush, Dick Chaney and other principal members of the current administration with crimes against humanity because of the vicious, clueless manner in which they have pursued the so-called “War on Terror?”

 If I accurately understand what I am hearing from the convention’s featured speakers, the answer to each of those questions is yes.  That’s why I am dismayed by this convention, and what it portends for the future of this nation.  When those in attendance heard Fred Thompson assert that Sarah Palin is the only person on a presidential ticket in the history of the nation who knows how to “field dress a moose,” they burst into ecstatic applause.  Why expertise at eviscerating defenseless animals is cause for joyous applause escapes me.  Moreover, I have no understanding of the reasons why such expertise might remotely qualify one to be vice president of the United States of America.

 On more occasions that I care to recall, convention speakers have provided dramatized accounts of John McCain’s ordeal as a prisoner of war in Viet Nam.  The decades-old tale is no longer a story about a forlorn warrior.  It has morphed into an iconic account that Republicans use to subvert critical thinking.  As such, it is indicative of the low state of far too much of the nation’s mainstream dialogue regarding important political matters.

During moments when those in attendance at the convention are overcome with enthusiasm, they break into a boisterous chant: “USA! USA! USA!”  Similar kinds of fervent, patriotic exhibitions, simple-minded homilies and fetishistic, military fantasies were common in Hitler’s Germany…