Back at the Roach Motel

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Best post-convention analysis I’ve seen so far (via) — “Stuck in a Room With Mitt Romney” by Paul Constant. Just a taste —

So the messaging sounded inoffensive, but when you really think about what is being said at this convention, you realize that all the red, white, and blue bunting and clothing and video imagery is a put-on. All the talk about patriotism, about supporting the troops, is just lip service. This is the most unpatriotic crowd I have ever been a part of. What they are against is community. Every sentence is devoid of empathy. Every finger-wag is aimed directly at an American who can’t afford health insurance, who hasn’t had a raise on their minimum-wage job in four years. Even as they rail against a statement that the president never really made, they are talking about tearing America down and leaving something meaner and greedier in its place. They’re radicals—radicals who’ve gone over the edge and are trying to make their radicalism mainstream.

Do read the whole piece. You won’t be sorry.

11 thoughts on “Back at the Roach Motel”

  3. Thanks maha,
    I finished reading it a few moments ago, and was just about to link to this piece.
    And what I took it wasn’t just their sense of entitlement, it was the palpable fear, anger, and hatred of the people who attended.
    Yes, they feel entitled – all of the attendee’s are big fish in their own little “small” Republican pond, either in a town, city, or state. And ALL of them feel like they’re “Big Kahuna’s,” and should have been helicoptered in, instead of being made to walk and wait in lines.

    Then there was the woman who refused to take a shortcut through a brightly lit park, that was sorrounded by police, with her husband, lest something happen. I guess getting back to their hotel quicker never occurred to her, because getting mugged by some “other” was what she was afraid of. FEAR! She was afraid of an empty park in the virtual police state that sorrounded the convention center, put there to protect sorry scared @$$holes her.

    Then there was the anger. It wafted in the air of the convention center like an onion, garlic, and limburger cheese omlette fart in a crowded elevator. These people are angry at, and about, EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE who isn’t like them.

    And anger and fear beget hatred.
    You hate what scares you, and you’re angry for being scared. When others around you aren’t afraid, you feel isolated and inadequate – ‘Why aren’t the rest of the people afraid of the same things I am?’ Ultimately, that hatred for ones own anger and fear, that hatred of oneself, is projected back ten-fold, onto what it is that makes you that way in the first place.
    And ‘hatred’ loves a crowd. That hatred is then projected a hundred-fold, because you’re in a group of people who are angry and fearful about the same things you are.

    And THAT is why they hate Liberals. We’re not afraid of the same things they are. We’re not afraid of black, brown, yellow, or red men or women. Or whether any of them are gay or not. Or who or what they pray to. Or if they don’t pray at all.
    We Liberals are INclusive.
    Conservatives are EXclusive.
    And their anger and fear, which manifest themselves into hatred, is more broad than the anger and fear that Liberals have. Conservatives hate Liberals, and all of the people we don’t find objectionable, but that they do.

    And we Liberals don’t hate Conservatives.

    We fear them and their anger and their narrow-mindedness. We’re angry that they won’t listen to reason. Their fear precludes them from listening to ration/logic. “Flight or Fight” is the response when you’re fearful. Who has time to listen, when they’re scared, and have to run, or put-up their dukes?

    This was a great piece by Paul Constant.
    It nailed their entitlement, fear, anger, and hatred, better than almost anything I’ve ever read is such a short forum.
    Even Freud would be afraid of these people. He lived long enough to see what can result from it – Nazi Germany.
    My apologies to Mr. Godwin and his ‘law,’ but both he and his ‘law’ can go feck themselves, because when the shoe fits…

    The Republican convention, all 3-4 days of it, should be edited down to 2 hours, and retitled, “The Triumph of the Will-ard!”

  4. I am out in Oregon visiting friends. But, I can’t break the habit of checking in once or twice a day. This article really nailed it as did the comments.

    I lived in Tampa for many years. Rural NC has its faults, but Tampa has an oppressive ugliness, even without the Republicans. I apologize to the who love Tampa and I admit that this opinion is a result of my personal, somewhat eccentric sensibilities. But, adding the Republican convention into the mix of strip clubs and tattoo parlors that is the Tampa of my mind, summons up something very similar to Hell.

    My wife’s grandfather was a British novelist, who died in Tampa after moving there from many years in Morrocco. He and my wife were headed downtown, probably near the intersection of Dale Mabry and Kennedy Blvd, for those of you who know Tampa. He turned to my wife and said, “I think this is the ugliest place, I have ever seen.”. This from a man who fought in both world wars.

    I can’t say that I disagree with him.

  6. Ok – time for my gulag mantra:
    O Waa… Tah Foo… Liam.

    My OT comment is on the later post.

    No – I’m NOT drunk.
    At least not yet.

  7. erinyes …I loved the video.. It’s too funny. I watched the Blazing Saddles KKK clip on You Tube also, and loved the line…”How many times have I told you to wash up after the weekly cross burning.”

  9. I hit “Submit Comment” too soon. While I loved the Constant snippet you posted, his perception that the RNC attendees are anti-American – despite the hyper patriotic symbols – comes down to how each of us viscerally understands what America is. For the empathy challenged, “community” is a meaningless, even threatening, un-American word. America to them is all about Ayn Rand style hyper individualism, not community. Lakoff talks about this in Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America’s Most Important Idea. And so these people see themselves as the true patriots, versus everyone else who subscribes to the idea of community, who are perceived as weaklings, or parasites, who threaten America.

    Never mind that these hyper individualists – or so they think of themselves in their delusion – are oblivious to the fact that every one of them got to where they are with the help of others. The whole “We Built It” self deception.

    I don’t know how you reach people who have such a deep blindspot, one that collectively manifests itself as the social pathology known today as the Republican party.

  10. I guess the repugs did’t grasp the core reason why Obama was elected.. It was HOPE.

    And you can’t sow hope through fear. That’s a metaphysical truth.

  11. Yeah, Swami;Blazing Saddles seems to fit the right’s disrespect for Obama to a tee.

    Goatherd, have a GREAT time in Oregon. I had the best chicken dinner in my life in Medford back in ’89. I was in route to Seattle ( with my Amazon parrot “Pancho”) in my Jeep Scrambler for a big diving job at the foot of King Street. Wonderful memories.
    Tampa is indeed pretty ugly ( Courteny Campbell Causeway excepted). I’m working there most Mondays, good Pho at HoWah.

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