So much for the Emperor. The rest of this history must deal with the Monster. —Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
MILWAUKEE—It was an altogether remarkable night on Tuesday. It was a night of surrender for a great number of people, and of triumph for a single individual. It was a night of self-abnegation, and of implacable arrogance. They should have held the whole thing in a railroad car outside Compiègne in France.
The former president* sat there with his chosen running mate, grinning a predator’s grin with his absurd gauze earmuff firmly in place, nodding mirthlessly as once-powerful Republicans paid homage to him and set their own principles and ambitions ablaze for his private satisfaction and amusement. And they all performed these self-sacrificial rites—Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who sought the same office this past year, and even Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and, most abjectly, Ted Cruz, from the 2016 Republican primaries in which this creeping darkness first arose. Their speeches were oaths of allegiance to an indomitable and anti-democratic cult, delivered on a night dedicated to “keeping America safe,” in celebration of a man convicted of thirty-four federal felonies, one who had been adjudicated of a grotesque episode of sexual assault. Something beyond irony sang in the night. Hear it in their rites of supplication.
Haley:
I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.Ramaswamy:
But there is one reason I’m going to ask you to vote Trump, and it’s the most important one. It’s the one the media won’t talk about, but it’s the truth. Donald Trump is the president who will actually unite this country not through empty words, but through action.DeSantis:
Now, Donald Trump stands in their way and he stands up for America. Donald Trump has been demonized. He’s been sued, he’s been prosecuted, and he nearly lost his life. We cannot let him down and we cannot let America down.Like many of you, last week I watched with horror as the events unfolded in that Pennsylvania field. I saw President Trump, a dear friend, escape death by mere inches. And my thoughts immediately turned to the book of Isaiah that says, “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.”The last few days remind us that the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind is in the hands of God. We were brought to the precipice of the abyss and by the hand of God reminded of what truly matters in our lives and in our country.God bless Donald J. Trump. And let me start by giving thanks to God Almighty for protecting President Trump and for turning his head on Saturday as the shot was fired.He sat there and smiled at all of them, even stood and applauded every now and then, but he was applauding what they were saying about him, and that he had made them all say it, one way or another. It was not a smile of humanity or of genuine warmth and healing, no matter what some overpriced saps in the commentariat want to believe and want to sell to an uneasy nation. It was a smile of conquest, the grin imperial. Ignore the emperor, it said. Embrace the monster.
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Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
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