RNC 2016: Rehearsed like a reality television show...

(D)ude: Man! The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported that this year’s Republican National Convention was likely to not be scripted. That 60 Minutes interview yesterday night—Leslie Stahl’s question and answer with presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his tentative pick for vice president Mike Pence—is being raved by the Republican Party and the American Press Corps as spontaneous and unscripted, but it was all carefully crafted drama nonetheless.  

(M)an: Dude! Leslie Stahl’s 60 Minutes interview was rehearsed like a reality television show. Donald Trump and Mike Pence were playing quirkily with specific purpose, the purpose being to appeal to the politically disinterested in the United States of America. Reality television writers and actors from The Apprentice have essentially joined forces with Republican presidential speechwriters like Peggy Noonan because the Republican Party is desperate to win the White House with essentially no party platform other than to recreate 1968 and 1980 from now until Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2016, in the hope of creating havoc and unrest alongside a press corps that is essentially bought, hence biased, and constructing a Republican Party win this election cycle.  

D: Man! Why 1968 and 1980?

M: Dude! The havoc and unrest of 1968, as it was portrayed by the American Press Corps, saw the ushering in of Richard Nixon into the White House on January 21, 1969. The period of time the Iran Hostage Crisis was being dealt with by a calm and resolute President Jimmy Carter in the face of a brutally critical press corps—from Election Day in the United States, Tuesday, November 4, 1979 to Inauguration Day in the United States, Sunday, January 20, 1981—saw the ushering into the White House of Ronald Reagan on January 20, 1981.

D: Man! How is the press corps constructing a Republican Party win this election cycle?

M: Dude! The Republican Party and the United States Press Corps are playing with the core heartstrings of the American public with cognitive dissonance.

D: Man! What exactly is cognitive dissonance in the case of the Republican Party playing with the American public’s core heartstrings?

M: Dude! According to the website dictionary dot com, “cognitive dissonance is the anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like, as when one likes a person but disapproves strongly of one of his or her habits.” Lawrence O’Donnell anchored the MSNBC news desk for an hour right before midnight this morning and Brian Williams took over afterwards. In footage taken earlier in the daylight, there was an unforgettable black male youth angrily protesting in front a banner reading “Black Lives Matter. Muslim Lives Matter.” outside the Cleveland, Ohio site where the Republican National Convention is being held today, tomorrow, and the next day, before concluding the day after that on Thursday, July 21, 2016. This particular youth was frustrated and angry to the point of sheer incoherence and continues to concern me deeply. I wish I could encourage him to channel his pent up frustration and anger towards registering as many of his colleagues in the crowds outside the convention hall in Cleveland, Ohio this week to vote come Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2016.

D: Man! You remember Chris Wallace’s interviews yesterday with Paul Manafort and Reince Priebus? Remember how Reince Priebus disclosed how the convention center where the Republican Party is gathering this week was next to the water?

M: Dude! Yeah?

D: Man! That’s the tentative escape route if things get out of hand for the Republican Party membership inside the convention hall. Like when Donald Trump fled protesters with the assistance of the Secret Service before things got out of hand. Where was it? Hmm? Oh! Of course! It was the rally in Dayton, Ohio on Saturday, March 11, 2016.

M: Dude! No! Donald Trump was visibly startled by an approaching protester in Dayton, Ohio and clung fiercely to members of his Secret Service detail then. According to the Daily Mail, the incident you’re referring to happened in San Francisco, California on Saturday, April 29, 2016… “Donald Trump's motorcade faked out protesters in front of a San Francisco airport hotel by detouring to the back & the move required the billionaire to jump around a fence to a grass median and then climb uphill to a loading dock.”

D: Man! The Republican Party and the Press Corps is ruthlessly, through rhetoric and inaction, placing the lives of all levels of law enforcement officers in danger!

M: Dude! According to what Lawrence O’Donnell shared on Sunday, July 17, 2016, rhetoric and inaction are the seeming mantras of the Republican Party. For example, this is how Lawrence O’Donnell reported the ruthlessness with which Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich has chosen to remain unconcerned in the face of Cleveland’s police officers’ verbal and written concerns about concealed weapons being allowed at the Republican National Convention…

Lawrence O’Donnell: “The president of the Cleveland Patrolman’s Union asked Ohio Governor John Kasich today to somehow revoke the right to publicly carry guns during the Republican convention in Cleveland.”

Stephen Loomis, President, Cleveland Police Patrolman’s Association: “…very passionate groups of people on both sides of the spectrum as far as ideologies go… The last thing that we need is to introduce weapons into that. So we are reaching out to our leadership in the state of Ohio. Governor Kasich—if he cannot do it directly—then he certainly has the juice to help us.”

Lawrence O’Donnell: “Governor Kasich doesn’t think he has that juice. Governor Kasich issued a written statement saying, “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws.””

D: Man! As the sci-fi/fantasy writer Mark Lawrence wrote, author of the endlessly quoted read Prince of Thorns, “Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.”