Before night 4 began my thought was that my exhaustion with the vitriol, the hate, the anger, the lies was pretty complete and I threatened that this post would be

Peace, Out

I want to do an objective, political analysis. I’ve wanted to do that all week and I feel like I’ve fallen down on the job and I’m not sure I’m going to do better today.

Donald Trump’s rise into the political world has taken this country by storm and it makes me afraid. From day one he tossed out red meat and the press took it and ran it. Their “horror” at Trump’s racist remarks from that first day. His escalator ride down to the applause of paid supporters. Rather than giving him the minute of airtime that he deserved they covered him constantly, analyzed it all and said that he could not possibly win anything. They continued that coverage, first because it was so awful and then he began to lead in polls and they justified covering him and like and avalanche they propelled him forwards.

Now they begin to analyze how Trump made the rise that he did and excuse themselves because it was a story. They perhaps begin to recognize they made the story. It’s a bit of a circular argument and I think one that needs a lot of thought and a strong look at history. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the first half of the 20th century.

One thing that does come to mind as once again we are watching wall to wall coverage of an incident in another country because it may be terrorism.

Terrorism is at the root of the fear that Trump is preaching and terror is something that we have control over. This wall to wall coverage is an echo chamber that serves no one except for anyone who to terrorize us, whether that is a group with a nefarious name or a man who wants to take advantage of it.

President Obama has been fighting the avalanche of fear and  hypersized reaction to it. From the man who he defeated in 2008 and the party who supports him to the terrorists who want to benefit from it and the media who can’t look away. The President has been castigated for not overreacting. He doesn’t say radical Islamic terrorism because he is morally opposed to it – he doesn’t say it because it serves no one but the terrorists. It gives them the power because it puts Islam into the fear and that helps no one but the terrorists who are trying to tell one people that this other people hates them. Instead, he has tried to call them by a name that diminishes them, that they hate and the Republican’s and the media machine behind them refuse to do that. It’s an almost insane circle that makes no sense in any other manner than they want to see our President fail. They need him to fail and because they have nothing to offer to the strategy to defeat terror they put their entire focus onto that name. They want our world to grind to a halt and feel fear because that will mean that the President is failing. All they offer is “we will crush them” and if we say the magic worlds that will solve the problem. Because the President calls them ISIL or Daesch – names that give less respect – they say somehow the terrorists don’t know who he is talking about and so, they say, they are not afraid of the United States.

Because we see the hours of coverage when there is an attack and we don’t see the bombings that we do in the Middle East the Republican’s are selling and perhaps are believing themselves, that we are not responding. Perhaps, as a people, the United States doesn’t want to see the destroyed cities, the starving people that our years of war have contributed to. There were problems in the Middle East before we began an illegal and unprovoked war but we are partially to blame for the ensuing carnage and we have to own that. Before that invasion one of the generals cautioned that if we do this and it doesn’t work – well you break it you buy it. That President Obama hasn’t solved terrorism, that one group is morphing into another isn’t his fault. Has the strategy been perfect, I’m sure not, but for a President who has one party in his own country working not to help him but to see him fail he’s done exceedingly well. Oh, and our military isn’t failing. They are doing an impossible job exceedingly well.

Meantime, back at the Republican National Convention, for people who say they want to somehow restore our military which they say isn’t supported they sure didn’t thank the troops, mention the actual fighting, or anything that acknowledges the men and women who are doing the fighting. This is the second Republican Presidential nominee who has done that and it is astonishing.

The military, just like the 9/11 responders, are only of value to the Republicans as a prop – something to bash the President, Secretary Clinton, and the Democrats with. They will point out failings at the VA but they won’t fund it properly. They will talk about the horrors of terrorism or 9/11 but they will not fund the health care for the first responders who are slowly dying from their heroism. It took Jon Stewart, trooping around Washington with dying first responders, and using friends TV shows, to shame the REPUBLICANS, and it is Republicans into funding the health care for those brave men and women.

Those are the same BLUE lives that the Republicans say that President Obama doesn’t respect enough. The Republican’s value lives only when they can use them to attack someone else or when they can chant that all lives matter as a protest against the cry of Black Lives Matter because police shooting unarmed black men and children might threaten the expansion of guns everywhere. They aren’t doing this for the police. It’s about guns and its about all of the other programs that they underfund.

Our government isn’t the enemy. It’s not even the problem. The problem is the Republican’s. They have forgotten how to compromise. They have forgotten how to govern. They have decided that some of our own people are the problem. It’s the blacks, or the gays, or the trans, or the women. It’s all the pesky “sub-groups” who want to be equal. The people who are tired of being shot, being stopped for no reason, groped, and put away into a corner.

We are all American’s. We are all Humans and we all live on this world. Oh, and climate change, another unmentioned crisis at the Republican National Convention is something that matters to the entire world. We fought two world wars but we can’t confront this problem that is a threat to everyone. We all live on this shining planet in a black expanse of darkness together and we have to acknowledge that or we will fail far more than a budget test.

So

Peace OUT!!!