In the euphoric early hours of this week’s Republican convention, one delegate suggested chiselling Donald Trump’s likeness into America’s ultimate secular shrine: Mount Rushmore.
Others looked beyond the secular.
To some participants in Milwaukee, Wisc., this convention has transcended the realm of earthly political gathering, into something imbued with religious significance.
It was their elated reaction to a split-second twist of fate over the weekend: an assassin’s bullet barely missing the former U.S. president’s skull, tearing across his ear, just two days before the convention started Monday.
So Trump stepped into a bath of adulation from thousands of party faithful, making his first public appearance since the shooting, arriving with a bandage over his right ear. Country singer Lee Greenwood sang God Bless the U.S.A., as Trump took his seat in the boisterous arena beside his just-named running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” attendees chanted, echoing the words Trump had uttered in the moment Secret Service agents whisked him away, streaks of blood across his face.
The convention was abuzz with talk of miracles. From the stage to the hallways, attendees spoke of Trump’s survival as the product of a divine plan for America.
“There is so much more energy [here] now,” said Zina Hackworth, an attendee from the St. Louis area.
“We actually see the hand of God has protected former president Trump.”
One Republican had just left church, and drove around the convention site with a decidedly less holy message hoisted on a flag on his red truck: “F–k Biden.”
“I believe that God wants Trump to bring the United States back to where it’s supposed to be,” said Craig Basile, a 62-year-old Wisconsin man, after Sunday mass.
Trump has also described his survival as miraculous.
As the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee gets underway, Republican supporters and political analysts alike are taking a close look at the political discourse surrounding Donald Trump after an assassination attempt over the weekend.
‘I’m supposed to be dead’
In his first interview after the shooting, he told the Washington Examiner he turned just the right amount, at just the right time, and credited it as incredible luck or an act of God: “I’m supposed to be dead. I’m not supposed to be here,” he said.
He insists it will change him.
Trump said he’s ripped up his original convention speech, which he called extremely partisan, “brutal” and a “humdinger,” filled with rip-roaring attacks against the Biden administration and the Democrats.
“I can’t say these things after what I’ve been through,” Trump said, acknowledging that his political opponents include good people.
“I threw it out,” he said of the speech. “I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is, and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true.
“Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.”
This reflects the official message of his campaign: His senior staff has ordered the campaign team to keep the rhetoric cool.
One top campaign official even deleted a social media post blaming U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democrats for the shooting.
A number of other politicians — Democrats and Republicans alike — have been saying the heated political rhetoric in this country urgently needs some cooling.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene weighed her words carefully as she took the stage to loud applause.
As the far-right congressional firebrand began speaking, spectators shouted, “Give ’em hell,” but she started by thanking God for saving Trump, spoke of her hope for a better country, then reserved her customary scorn for transgender people, undocumented immigrants and politicians who fund Ukraine.
Trump’s wife Melania issued an uncharacteristically lengthy statement, urging Americans to start seeing each other’s humanity first, rather than partisan affiliation.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump left for the Republican National Convention a day after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally killed a bystander. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden called for unity as investigators searched for the shooter’s motive.
In name of ‘unity,’ forget Jan. 6: Trump
Will this talk of rhetorical conversion stick?
It faces tall odds. Trump himself has acknowledged that if his political opponents start attacking him, he might respond — and the moment of decency might prove ephemeral.
In fact, it’s been immediately tested.
After a Florida judge tossed out his classified-documents case, Trump, in a social-media post Monday, proposed dismissing all other charges against him — in the name of national “unity.”
This includes charges connected to his supporters’ attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in his attempt to steal an election; Trump referred to it as the Jan. 6 “hoax.”
The request struck his critics as a self-interested exploitation of the shooting; cloaking his affront to democracy, in an effort to heal it.
One protester at the convention site was livid at the news of the dropped documents charges Monday. She said the convicted criminal belongs nowhere near the White House again.
“I’m shaking right now,” said Darlene Garms of Milwaukee. “He’s divided this whole country.”
On the other side of the political divide on Fox News, segment after segment blamed the Democrats and the media for hateful rhetoric around Trump.
A ‘quasi-religious figure’
Prime-time host Jesse Watters blamed the media for likening Trump to a fascist. He did so in introducing his guest, Bill Barr, who happened to resign as Trump’s attorney general in 2020 as Trump was trying to undo that year’s U.S. election.
That unpleasant history did not come up.
Still, Barr said Democrats are overdoing it with the argument that American democracy will disappear if Trump wins.
“That is an apocalyptic and hysterical position that’s bound to lead to violence,” Barr said. “It’s ridiculous. He’s not the threat to democracy that they’re portraying.”
Another thing that did not come up on Fox News? Trump’s constant use of similar language, saying things like, “If we don’t win this election, we won’t have a country left,” or that the U.S. won’t survive another four years of Biden.
Trump has also joked repeatedly about the bludgeoning attack in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home against her husband.
Maybe things are different now. We’ll get a sense, perhaps, during this convention, where he will be celebrated for days, then speak Thursday.
“He has been made a quasi-religious figure for the party,” said Kathleen Dolan, a distinguished professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
And maybe American politics won’t change all that much.
Asked about the vulgar insult against Trump’s opponent on his pickup truck, Basile, the Wisconsin man, replied that it’s a clear message — to the point — and there’s no shame in that flag.
“Best $25 I ever spent.”
Published at Sun, 14 Jul 2024 01:06:12 +0000
This mother in Gaza bathes her child with sand
In her tent in Khan Younis, Samar Surai places a bucket of water and a small dish on the ground. Six-year-old Noor stands in the centre of the tent as her mother gently unties her hair and prepares her for a bath.
Crouching on the ground, Surai gathers some sand and adds water to it to make a paste. Noor watches her mother as she stirs the mixture with her fingers to get the right consistency.
The mother of four has been bathing her children this way for months, as Palestinians still face trouble accessing aid, including shampoo and soaps.
“They have the right to have a bath, they have the right to use soap,” Surai told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife from her tent. “They have the right to use shampoo.”
As the Israel-Hamas war stretches into its 10th month, parents in Gaza like Surai are struggling to meet their kids’ basic hygiene needs.
Issues with aid delivery
Surai and her four children were displaced from Khan Younis to Rafah, where they had stayed for the last four months. But since the Israeli military took over the town bordering Egypt, Surai has had to move back to Khan Younis.
Her home was bombed in the fighting, so she and her family are taking refuge in a tent in the internally displaced people’s camps in the central part of the Gaza Strip.
Basic supplies like soap and shampoo have become difficult for some Gazans to come by. Even products made in Gaza aren’t necessarily available, says the owner of a cleaning supply store. With no other recourse, some parents have resorted to using sand to clean their children, which in itself has its own problems.
The war has been ongoing since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a devastating assault in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 and taking around 250 hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed over 38,000, according to Palestinian officials, and devastated the territory.
Though aid has been arriving, much of it has piled up at the Israel-Gaza border. Aid organizations have cited the ongoing Israeli military operation, severe fuel shortages and armed looting by some Palestinians as some reasons for the backlog. United Nations officials have accused Israel of blocking access to aid, saying the territory faces widespread famine.
Meanwhile, Israel has denied such claims. It has instead blamed the UN for failing to adequately distribute the shipments, and Hamas for manipulating their flow.
During a UN Security Council briefing on July 2, Sigrid Kaag, UN senior humanitarian and reconstruction co-ordinator for Gaza, stressed the importance of pushing for unimpeded delivery of aid to the strip.
‘The people are desperate’
On a main road near Surai’s tent in Khan Younis, Muhammad Barbakh runs a cosmetics shop. It’s standing with the help of cinder blocks, wood beams and tarps. Demand for soap and shampoo is high, he says, and he’s having difficulty meeting it.
“Even the Gaza-made [soaps] are not available,” he says. “The people are desperate.”
Some families have had to resort to other ways of bathing, like heading to the coast and cleaning themselves in the ocean. But moving around the strip remains dangerous as the war continues.
There have also been reports of skin infections, from scabies to chicken pox and lice, spreading in camps because of the difficult conditions and a lack of hygiene products and clean water.
The internally displaced people’s camps across Gaza are overcrowded, with millions of people seeking refuge in schools and in tents — some line massive garbage dumps, leading to extremely unhygienic circumstances for those living nearby.
Another round of ceasefire talks began last week, with representatives meeting in Egypt. An American representative was present to help moderate the talks.
Last week, in a post on X, U.S. President Joe Biden announced that Hamas and Israel had agreed to the “framework” of a ceasefire agreement, although much work was still left to be done.
‘There’s nothing we can clean with’
In their tent, Surai rubs the sand paste all over her daughter’s little body. Noor cries, squirming to escape her grasp. But Surai says the need to keep clean is essential, even if it’s not in the most ideal of circumstances.
“Her hair is ruined from the sand,” she says, pointing at Noor’s matted hair. “How do you want us to live in the Gaza Strip?”
Surai worries about the spread of skin diseases because using sand is so rough on the children. Although it acts as an exfoliant, it’s too abrasive, she says.
“[Their skin is] filled with pimples on their bodies from the sand we bathe them in,” she said. “There’s no soap, no shampoo…. There’s nothing we can clean with.”
When she’s done, she rinses her daughter in water from a nearby bucket. The little girl’s cries quickly become giggles; her once-quivering lips curl into a smile.
Surai helps Noor into a pyjama set — white with blue anchors, a few sizes too big for her. The top is stained from not being properly cleaned in a while.
The little girl wipes water from her face and moves her dripping wet hair away from her eyes.
Bath time is finally over for today.
Published at Tue, 16 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000
