by Rob Lyons
This afternoon I wasn’t able to find much happening either in the realm of protest or local counter-programming, so I decided to go exploring.
I drove around town aimlessly. I stopped at Comet Coffee and had the veggie scramble for lunch. I blundered onto a freeway heading west. I got off at the first exit and headed back toward downtown through an industrial area not unlike Third Street in SF. I drove past the Warehouse Art Gallery, which I’d visited the last time I was in town. Then I parked in an enormous garage and went into the Potowatomi Hotel and Casino. I never gamble, but I put a few dollars on the Giants and Warriors to win it all (crazy odds). The slots are in a huge room with wall to wall video monitors (like wallpaper) that feature intense undulating dragonscale patterns in red and orange and yellow, and the slots are large and wrap around you and they’re blaring sound and blaring flashing lights. The players seem oblivious to it all and just keep feeding money into the maw of their machine. I got out of there fast.
I made for the convention zone, thinking I might walk around the entire perimeter and just check things out. I only got a few blocks. Mostly it was empty and desolate, the security barriers and gates a ways down, the parking spaces all empty, the buildings empty, tumbleweeds . . . I walked past the Brewhouse, a large bar near the historic Pabst brewery, and outside the front door were half a dozen black Suburbans with burly guys in “casual tactical” gear, with earpieces, like sentry bees staked out at the entrance to the hive. Someone worth guarding must have been inside. Platoons of cops on foot . . .
Two people were sitting on a wall talking loudly about politics. I walked up and edged into the conversation. Turns out the woman was from a group called Braver Angels, a citizens group that promotes dialogue between people of divergent views, in hopes of depolarizing civil society. They have regular events, some in person and some on Zoom, all of them moderated. She also told me about an electoral innovation called “Final Five” which aims to allow for more moderate politicians to get elected, by having open primaries and then ranked choice voting. A similar system has been in place in Alaska, with very promising results.
They got up and headed down the block into a special invitation-only event. I wangled my way in, acting mild and smiling pleasantly. I sat in an open chair at a table in front. The event was a group called “Principles First,” a gathering of conservative activists who believe, most of them, in traditional marriage, small government, second amendment rights, tight borders, and the sanctity of life. I realized that I had wandered into a secret conclave of the Enemy, and I now was sitting in the front row, front and center, practically in the laps of the panelists. If there had been a stand-up comic I would have been the one he singled out to pick on.
I needn’t have worried.
There were three panels: first, three women who shared their confusion and dismay at the direction their beloved Republican Party had taken over the past eight years. They groused about the Convention speeches from the night before and complained bitterly that none of this would have been possible back in the day: one speech rationalizing Putin’s attack on Crimea, another by the President of the Teamsters savaging the capitalist system. They complained bitterly that Christian voters could look past Trump’s glaring character flaws, his disdain for the Constitution, his authoritarianism. The party has no moral North Star. One of the women made a pitch for getting active in state and local politics, where you can do things that really help people. The woman from Arizona said she’d be damned if she voted for Kari Lake.
The second panel consisted of Heath Mayo, the founder of Principles First; and Charlie Sykes, a conservative who had been host of a Rush Limbaugh-style Wisconsin talk show; and Joe Walsh, a Tea Party Republican and climate change denier who had served one term in Congress from a suburban district outside Chicago, before running for President in 2020.
Sykes and Walsh were vociferous in their denunciation of Trump. They both decried the collective “crisis of imagination,” that people couldn’t possibly imagine that Trump meant what he said, and would actually do what he said he would do. Walsh: “Our Number One Job is to defeat that Jackass that tried to steal the 2020 election!” What’s needed, they said, is a “Coalition of the Decent,” left and center and right, who unite to keep him from a second term. The Democratic base needs to be energized, the Never Trumpers need to rally, and then the suburban vote, the anti-abortion folks, young people, people of color – all need to come out and vote in huge numbers to head off a catastrophe.
The final panel consisted of Heath Mayo (again), together with two special guests: Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland and onetime Chair of the Republican Party, who had broken with Trump in 2020 and voted for Biden. And George Conway, a founding member of the Lincoln Project, and longtime anti-Trump activist. Steele challenged everyone in the room to put their love of country and their duty to country first, above their loyalty to party, then make the decision to vote for the Democrat – and then work to have that Democrat elected. “Why doesn’t this moment move you?” he challenged his audience, “Why are you struggling with this? You know what you have to do.” He noted that Trump three times had tried to withdraw the US from NATO – the third time he actually signed the order, but one of his staff hid it in a drawer. And three times he had tried to invoke the Insurrection Act, to mobilize the military against BLM protestors (also thwarted by conscientious staffers).
Conway brought out two display boards that contained the text of DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) for two conditions:
- F60.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder; and
- F60.2 Antisocial Personality Disorder
He walked us through clinical definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder:
A. A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of others rights occurring since age 15, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
- Failure to obey laws and norms by engaging in behavior which results in criminal arrest, or would warrant criminal arrest; (check . . .)
- Lying, deception, and manipulation, for profit or self-amusement; (check . . .)
- Impulsive behavior; (check . . .)
- Irritability and aggression, manifested as frequent assaults on others, or fighting; (check . . .)
- Blatant disregard for the safety of self and others; (check . . .)
- A pattern of irresponsibility; (check . . .) and
- Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. (check . . .)
Seven out of seven. Conway summed it up: “They’re both old. They both have trouble remembering names. They both slur their words from time to time. One of them is decent man and the other is a nut job. We wouldn’t hire this man to run a corporation or serve on a board, we wouldn’t hire him to be principal of a school. He should never be given any sort of power over other people, let alone the largest military on earth and the nuclear codes.”
Steele and Conway left us with a sphincter-tightening sense of the existential threat that Trump poses and the urgent duty we all have, each and every one of us, to do everything in our power every single day between now and November 5, to deny him the White House.
