The answer throughout the week in Cleveland was something beyond even the parameters of that question. These were not people begging to govern. These were not even people begging to be governed. These were people begging to be ruled. For all the palaver about freedom and liberty, and all the appeals to the Founders and the American experiment, this whole convention was shot through with an overwhelming lust for authority.

This was a gathering of subjects thirsting for a king.

We'll leave the fact-checking to others. It's pointless anyway. The facts did not matter to the people here. The Voice was all that mattered. The truth did not matter. Volume was all that mattered. Reality did not matter. Fear of the imagined criminal Other mattered. Abandoned and unfocused wrath mattered. What ultimately mattered was fashioning actual freedom into a quaking shadow of itself. What actually mattered was being free to choose your own despot.

***

That is how men with ribbons and gold buttons speak to people from balconies. That is how kings talk, and not particularly bright ones, either. God save the Republic, because I don't know if we're up to the job any more.