All They Want Is The House
On the lawn of the “people’s house”, the final evening of the 2020 Trump/Pence Convention set up a garden party to rival in imagery the Mar-a-Lago-esque extravagance of a bygone era. It was reminiscent of an era marked by extreme wealth and decadent privilege, by Playboy models and Jeffrey Epstein. For the Trump family, this must have felt like a dream. Suits, dresses, greasy makeup, drinks, sweat on Caucasian upper lips, white rental chairs arrayed in close proximity to one another holding the robust asses of a group of individuals swarming around a lit up stage at the foot of the White House. Barely a mask in sight. People hugging and holding hands. According to accounts, of the over 1,000 people at the event, only the front seats had to be COVID-tested, those closest to the stage and the Trump family. The majority of the people there were only accounted for by thermometers. One news network reporter quoted a White House Official who said that “everyone’s going to get it eventually anyway” and shrugged the question of why social distancing was not put in place. Recently, after attending a Trump rally in Florida, former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain got coronavirus and died from the disease. Staffers and attendants have contracted the disease. In every way, this event is the most wild flaunting of the kind of immorality and corruption that the Trump administration has brough to bear on our country, and it will go down in history as the peak of blatant denial — conservative leaders, all eyes on them, pretending together that there is no real threat of this disease, this president, this way of life on display. By the close of the day, August 27, 2020, a reported 1,118 people had died of COVID-19, the disease caused by SARSCov-2, the uncontained, untreatable global coronavirus pandemic.
I have been processing the spectacle of the Republican National Convention and the upcoming election. I do not know really what to say at this point, but I want to ask you to please vote in November, to vote for Biden/Harris and not for Donald Trump. That is what I do know. It is an emergency, a public health crisis, a moral crisis, a lockdown crisis, a civil rights crisis. We are on a descent. If Trump is reelected, there are new bottoms on the way for us.
One of the ugliest moments of the RNC was a broadcast spot featuring a couple that threatened to shoot protestors in St. Louis. They have been charged as felons. Like many criminals, they support President Donald Trump. Days after their broadcast, a young white man brandished a gun in Kenosha Wisconsin and killed two young protestors in cold blood. Just yesterday another protestor was killed by a “militia” group, another word for White Rights terrorists in Portland. As I watch protestors be murdered in the streets and public news broadcasters praise them for “defending”, as I watched the RNC “Reality Show” aesthetic tell a story so vastly untruthful and arrogant, using women and people of color as props for a value set that benefits exactly 1% of the population. There were many people proposing a kind of American nation, and speaking about a presidential candidate, that none of us know or have ever seen. Someone that hasn’t let us down? That saved people from COVID? The rest of the world has minimized cases through actual leadership as ours continue to take lives. That the economy is booming? We are on the edge of a housing and eviction crisis. That there’s no God in our schools? Our schools have been defunded while police drive tanks through our cities. Our schools are closed. Our playgrounds are closed. Our children are alone. That our country would somehow be safer or have more law and order? Look at any major city right now and explain in what way we are safer or unified. We are not.
The legacy of “Trump” that they have created is a falsehood. It relies patently on blind loyalty, and to what? A family that steals and cheats and now doesn’t want to be kicked out from the most important residence on the planet. A family that by all accounts neither loves one another or anyone else. A family who does not care about you or your kids. A family that wants to live on our dime, use our tax money, and destroy the fabric of our moral and national infrastructure for four more years.
I couldn’t bring myself to watch the president’s speech. I already know the things he has to say. I’ve heard it before as have you. I did watch Ivanka Trump’s speech and, suffice it to say, learned very little. One thing that did hit me was when she referred to the White House, gesturing her hand toward the “property”, a treasure to the world that people come from every side of the earth to see. As she waved towards the White House, she referred to it as “the residence” with a twinkle in her eye. I could see it so clearly then — they just don’t want to leave. They are property hoarders, real estate tycoons. They are bored Monopoly players. They are not real public servants. They are billionaire squatters. All they want is the house.
