First, Queen
has previously denounced Trump for using the song and Brian May said no
permission was sought or received to use the song again last night. He said
they don’t want it used for any political purposes, but I imagine having it
played for the Republican nominee with the most anti-LGBT platform in history
would have Freddie Mercury turning over in his grave.
Second, the
so-called “benediction” by Mark Burns last night was a “prayer” of sorts, but
unlike anything I would call prayer. It praised Trump for “believ[ing] in the
name of Jesus Christ” and declared Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party to
be “our enemy.” It has been denounced by religious leaders of both the
conservative and progressive branches of Christianity for being far too
partisan and not remotely spiritual. Let me just say that apparently Mark
Burns, like Donald Trump, believes “in the name
of Jesus Christ,’ but not at all in the teachings
of Jesus Christ. Peter may have denied Jesus three times, but he never saw
Jesus as just a name. Similarly, there are reasons that devout Jews don’t speak
or write the name of God. One website explains it this way: “Because a name
represents the reputation of the thing named, a name should be treated with the
same respect as the thing's reputation.” But if Mark Burns believed in the
teachings of Jesus, in the example of Jesus, he never would have declared war
on half the country. It’s one thing to denounce certain beliefs or policies
(which would also be too partisan for a benediction), but to declare millions
of people to be “our enemy” places Burns, and anyone who thinks like him, back
into the Middle Ages and the times of the Crusades.
Finally,
there is the plagiarism controversy. Yes, Melania Trump (if you believe her NBC
interview) or her speech writers (if you believe Paul Manafort) took two
paragraphs from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech and reworked them slightly for
Melania’s 2016 speech. It’s plagiarism, pure and simple. But it’s more
insidious, as The New Republic’s
Brian Beutler explained: “[L]et’s not gloss over it, this is a depiction of a
campaign – a campaign that nurtures white grievance and resentment – trying to
profit off the work of a black woman, from an African American family that
Trump and his supporters regularly belittle. The fact that the plagiarized text
in question was about the value of hard work just makes matters worse.”
To this, let
me add that Melania Trump spoke about her (very atypical) immigrant experience
after Senator Jeff Sessions decried all (legal and illegal) immigration to the
U.S. for taking American jobs.
So let me
sum up the RNC on Day 1 – they collectively co-opted Christianity as a
religion, along with ethics like hard-work and honesty; stole material from an
intelligent and accomplished Black woman and an immensely talented gay man; and
denounced immigration while trumpeting an immigrant. In essence, it was an orchestrated,
multi-pronged attempt to take what is good, and right, and just in many peoples
and cultures in the United States and twist it to Trump’s own political ends – to
take credit for all of that for the benefit of a rich, straight white man.
In fact, the
only thing which could make it worse is if they simultaneously denied doing
anything of the kind, if they pretended that somehow only white straight
culture was responsible for all the good in the world …
Oh wait …
they did that too! Representative Steve King (R-IA), in an appearance on MSNBC
yesterday, said “I would ask you to go back through history and figure out
where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of
people that you are talking about, where did any other subgroup of people
contribute more to civilization [than old white people]?”
I will leave
the long answer to that question to another post, or another blogger, but the
short answer is right in front of you. Western Civilization has taken, stolen,
and/or co-opted labor, resources, ideas, and technologies from other peoples
and cultures and claimed them as their own. Now the GOP is replicating the
process in front of our eyes, complete with a vengeful whitewashed Jesus.
And all for
a man who has himself taken, stolen and/or co-opted labor, resources, ideas and
technologies from others, left them behind in a string of bankruptcies and
lawsuits, and claimed all the credit for himself.
So the
#NeverTrump crowd was doomed to failure. Trump is the embodiment of the
Republican Party. They’ve gotten exactly what they deserve, and they are
showing us exactly who they are.
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