As many of you are aware, the Republican National Convention (RNC) is happening this week. It is so full of positivism that it’s scary! It would appear that Trumpism has consumed the Republican Party, once a viable and respected political entity in America. What’s worst is that although the President earlier stipulated that the RNC would be full of positivism, it has to date been anything but. On top of which, the Trump re-election campaign has no platform for 2020, but is instead referring back to its 2016 platform. Also, during the course of the four days of the virtual RNC, Trump in an unusual move will be speaking to his followers — as if he’s heading up some kind of cult. The only and primary onus of the entire event will be to attack Joe Biden and the Democratic Party as being out to destroy the American way of life with radical socialism and unholy devil-made policies.
This leads one to the next well defined theme that, when one cannot defend one’s policies while in government or has no real new platform to offer, then the next best thing is to employ “scare tactics”. This is exactly what the Trump campaign intends to do. Forget the fact that the U.S. is leading the world in coronavirus deaths (over 177,000 deaths to date) and confirmed cases and that average Americans are suffering from the worst economy since the depression, Trump believes that everything is just honky-dory. Miracles will happen, right? However, should the Democrats come into office, Trump supporters literally scream out that the American way-of-life will be destroyed, freedoms will be lost, cities will burn and crime will increase ten-fold. One might call this “negativism” or a warning of the coming of armageddon.
Nothing has changed in Trump’s extreme style and approach to campaigning. It may even be worst this time around. Again, he is perpetuating baseless conspiracy theories such as the one surrounding the extent of potential voter fraud in U.S. elections, particularly due to the use of mail-in voting. His most recent theory is that, if the Democrats win the election, they will have done so through electoral tampering. Trump further claims that this is the only way that he would not be re-elected. Perhaps he should give the American electorate a little bit more credit for their active participation in free elections.
Many leaders of undemocratic countries, Russia, Iran and Belarus to name a few, use scare tactics to remain in power. Hopefully, the U.S. 2020 elections will not go as far as the case in such countries. Simply defiling your opposition’s positions without any substantive evidence is not the way to go. Such scare tactics should be seen for what they are — the undermining of credible debate over the important issues of the day. Failure to provide meaningful and plausible policies to voters would be an unfortunate outcome of the RNC. Such an outcome would simply confirm that a once proud Republican Party has been swallowed up by the occult of Trumpism and left to fade away into darkness.
FROLITICKS 