Tuesday in Cleveland, Republicans Sing “Shake It Off”

8:51 AM

Coming slowly awake at the California Palms Hotel, here in Youngstown, Ohio. Since dawn the 18-wheelers have been rattling the wall near the interstate, darkening the few hours of sleep I’ve managed to grab. I wish I could tell you I dreamed of Richard Nixon. If only! On this morning he’s busier than he’s been in years.

On the computer, the first news is about Melania Trump, how she very clearly lifted parts of her speech from Michelle Obama. This is the sort of thing everyone’s worried about now? In my notebook I’ve been keeping over the last few months I find this headline, and I feel better; we’ve had this conversation before:

6/30/16 New York Times: PLAGIARIZED REAL ESTATE LESSONS USED AT TRUMP UNIVERSITY

Outside: two fake palm trees flank an American flag. It is a high blue Midwestern morning. Goodbye to the California Palms Hotel and its chlorine halls. Cleveland is 1.5 hours away. The plan is to march in the “Unite to Stop the Hate at the RNC” parade, then head to Cleveland Public Square afterward.

* * * * 

· Annie Dillard: “Gentlemen of the city, what surprises you? That there is suffering here, or that I know it?”[1]

· Claudia Rankine:

“So tell me this, have you

noticed these white people, they think

they are better than everyone else?

Have I noticed? Are you joking? You’re

not joking. Where are you from?”[2]

· Ian Haney-Lopez: “Blood is metaphor not just for race but for human suffering.”[3]

* * * * 

5:48 PM

On CNN, Paul Ryan is banging a gavel; once again he appears to be wearing a blazer that’s two-sizes too big for him. (He’ll grow into it?) The scrawl at the bottom of the screen says there may be some sort of roll-call challenge in the works. In the crowd, an awful lot of people appear to be wearing hats.

All afternoon I’ve been walking around Cleveland in the sun. There was no march at noon. Well there was, but it was at 1pm, and then it was at 2pm, then 3pm, then maybe it was actually at 10am, and we all missed it, and by the time I left downtown Cleveland later in the afternoon and drove to nearby Lakewood—I’m staying at an AirBnB, a few miles away—the action had moved to the Cleveland Public Square, where a large shoving match broke out when someone supposedly pushed a sheriff, but where, for the most part, order has been kept by an enormous contingent of cops, many of them are out of state. They’re from Louisville. Austin. They represent The South Carolina Highway Patrol. The Indiana State Police. And even from California—my home state.

“SHHHHH,” Paul Ryan says.

Earlier today, when I walked the parade route at noon, it was completely empty. In Cleveland, the designated protests must conform to a set path on Lorain Avenue that crosses the Memorial Bridge in a way that is best described as resembling the shape of a snake eating its own tail; there’s nowhere to go. All along its pink embankments wasps were burrowing. At the end of the route I sat in the shade for a while, resting. Other people showed up. They all identified as journalists. A young man in the blue-blazer/khakis outfit of a Northeast boarding school held up his Daily Caller badge and begged to know a way through the fence. Others kept asking about “the protestors.” Eventually I crossed a freeway ramp that had been cordoned off, the glass on it like sand across the braided concrete. Now I was downtown.

Over the next few hours, the ratio of delegate-convention buffs to cops to protestors seemed surprisingly equal. From my numerous notes:

-Four women in sundresses with walking boots/casts

-A guy with a Mohawk and a sign that reads “Make memes great again”

-A woman in a salmon dress with two very overheated poodles

-Four men in wheelchairs draped with American flags

-Five very skinny young people gliding on their Schwinns down West Superior Avenue

-Three needlessly sweaty Politico reporters

-A woman with a glaring Newsweek badge who I overheard saying: “I’m going to a series of things this afternoon. Like, Kasich things.” And: “I don’t do well when they don’t give me enough sleep.” And: “That’s for 1-C. I’m in 25. I heard level 22?”

-An elderly man with the shirt: “What’s your name? Where are you from?”

-And a septuagenarian couple—one of whom, after pausing, exclaimed: “Oh! We could go into the casino and have a drink at the bar…” A fantastic idea.

The thing I noticed most of all: so far no violence. People seem to want to be around it. A main event, as it were. Some sort of commotion, if it happens—and perhaps they even would like to see it. But everyone has been acting with restraint. So far.

It is almost time to declare Donald Trump the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. The votes are rolling in. Corey Lewandowski is announcing the New Hampshire delegation. The sound is off on my computer, but from what I can tell he seems to be shouting over and over again LIBERTY IN THE DEFENSE OF VIRTUE IS NO VICE!

Now it’s official: Donald Trump is going to be remembered in the history of humankind to a greater extent than Walter Cronkite and Kanye West combined.

Which means it’s time, now, to head back to the city. I have an old college friend coming into town who, besides being a huge fan of the Canadian musician Dan Bejar, works for a Republican governor, and we’re going to hit up a Republican lobbyist party incognito, so I’m told.

I can’t wait. I’m going to ask everyone I see if they’re as astonished at Richard Nixon’s revival as I am. I plan to start a discussion on his wife’s respectable cloth coat. And to point out his historic and clearly fatal perspiration in his debate with JFK. And not to mention his very close win in 1968 over that gutless old ward-heeler Hubert Humphrey.

CNN is now saying that Donald Trump will appear at 9pm—he is set to make another grand entrance. “This is a guy that goes to bed at midnight and wakes up at 4AM every day,” a Trump flak is saying. Seriously though: that’s mania. Not hard work. But, it seems, paranoid megalomania is once again in style.

To say the least. After all, it’s 2016 and Richard Nixon is here to stay, baby. A generation of our finest historians—from Douglas Brinkley to Jon Stewart—have heaped enough shit on the field under which he was once buried to make sure any future clones will only have a 2/1 chance, at best, of resembling anything besides his faithful companion, the cocker spaniel Checkers, whom we all know he was buried alongside… and related to in more ways than one.

* * * * 

3:41 AM

More on the lobbyist party tomorrow—and what happens when a bunch of Republican congressmen sing and dance to Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and Janet Jackson.

But this is neither the time nor the place for a proper recounting. We are now being told it’s last call an empty very forlorn casino in downtown Cleveland. Earlier, a representative from Virginia bought shots to mark his state’s last failed stand against Donald Trump. He was not in the mood to talk about Richard Nixon.

Let us end on a final note, the last in my notebook from the night:

-Republican Congressman singing “Shake it Off” = Kanye West wins

[1] “The Deer at Valencia”

[2] Don’t Let Me Be Lonely

[3] Racism on Trial