Terry Glavin:

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at his party's convention in Cleveland on July 21.
J. Scott Applewhite/The Associated Press
 

If you’ve recently come to conclude that American democracy has degenerated into a hopelessly dystopian reality-TV spectacle and it seems as though we’re all teetering at the abyss of a broken America that is no longer a force for good in the world, you are wrong. It’s worse than you think.

That’s the good news. Because there is quite a bit of terrain to traverse between now and the November 8 presidential election, and the odds are at least even that by then, the penny will have dropped and American voters will have awoken to the realization that shrieking vulgarities and unceasing assaults on both reason and common decency have dragged the United States to the point of no return. If this keeps up, it’s banana republic time. That’s looking on the bright side, which at the moment is a difficult thing to do. The past few days will not have induced feelings of sunny optimism in any reasonable person.

The Republican Party is gone. Its national convention in Cleveland was a four-day carnival of shrieking vulgarity, a meticulously stage-managed incitement of the lowest and ugliest impulses in the American political character. Its climax was something almost unimaginable only a year or so ago: the Republican nominee for the office of the president of the United States of America is the loudmouth caudillo Donald Trump.

With the nomination of Hillary Clinton, this week’s Democratic Party convention in Philadelphia is concluding with the party’s least-popular Democratic presidential contender since Jimmy Carter ran in 1980. It remains to be seen whether her close rival Bernie Sanders, a genuine democratic socialist, will be capable of mustering his impressive talent for oratory with a vigour sufficient to persuade his legions of hardcore supporters to stop burning Israeli flags and parading around with giant, bus-sized spliffs long enough to actually expend some effort in the attempt to get Clinton elected.

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Still, there are months left to go, and if this has all come across to you like some media elite shilling for Hillary Clinton, enjoy your “narrative.” Have a nice dystopia.

National Post

 

 

Terry Glavin has worked as a reporter, columnist and editor for a variety of newspapers. His assignments in recent years have taken him to Afghanistan, Israel, the Russian Far East, the Eastern Himalayas, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Geneva, China and Central America. He is the author of seven books and the co-author of three. His books have been published in Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom. He has won more than a dozen literary and journalism awards, including the Hubert Evans Prize and several National Magazine Awards, and the B.C. Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. Terry's most recent book is Come From the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle For Peace in Afghanistan.

 

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