Too bad my comment on David Brooks’ op-ed in the
Times missed the boat. It’s one of my best.
He wonders if the conventions give the impression that the Democratic party is now the more patriotic – is now and always has been – and the more conservative – gotta be kidding!!
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“If you visited the two conventions this year you would have come away thinking that the Democrats are the more patriotic of the two parties — and the more CULTURALLY CONSERVATIVE.” [caps mine]
I stopped reading here! The absurdity of the Democrats being more culturally conservative! I’m sorry, but culturally conservative, at least the cultural conservatism of the Republican Party constituency, is xenophobic, bigoted, and mean.
While watching the Republican convention I wondered why all the frequent sympathetic references to LGTBQ people, and others I would have expected to be excoriated by “dog whistle.” And from the convention crowd, for this, why all the enthusiastic approval with wild and abandoned applause, standing and cheering?
The reason: Propaganda to disingenuously fool voters outside the Republican base constituency – decent people who should know better – into believing a lie: that Republicans really care. Like the propaganda of the 1936 Olympics, it was not to show that the Germans were the master race, but to fool the world into believing the opposite of what they were fearing about Nazi Germany – to fool the world into believing that they were an open democratic society, a good citizen of the world.
So too the propaganda of the Republican convention. Shamelessly: Amorally faking sympathy and support for those they despise and harm, in order to give the false impression that they are the opposite of what they are. That is, bigoted, xenophobic, and mean.
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