The opening and conclusion of my dispatch from the 2016 Republican National Convention, first published here July 22 of that year. I’ve reposted this many times over the last decade—mostly, because I don’t know what else to say. —DM
CLEVELAND—I had a couple of beers before heading over to the Quicken Loans Arena, where alcohol was only served in the private suites. So when I saw a guy with an “America First” sign, I felt just loose enough to ask, “If America’s first, who will be second?”
“The rest of the world!” the guy shouted happily.
We’ve seen what happens when one nation sets itself against the rest of the world.
My dad fought in Europe, in World War II. He wound up in Berlin, and what he saw there, and the rotting death he smelled there, he didn’t say much about when he returned. He said so little, in fact, that his steel-executive father, on a fact-finding trip to assess what it would take to make German industry work again, was shocked by the total demolition and human degradation he saw, two years after the end of the war.
“Bud,” my grandfather said to my dad when he got back. “You didn’t tell me.”
My dad’s response was, “How could I have?”
When Adolf Hitler had spoken to the German people during the Great Depression 15 years earlier, he had convinced them they had nothing to lose. The currency was worthless, the country was secretly controlled by Jews and had been unfairly treated by all its neighbors, and it was time to take drastic measures. Many Germans must have been skeptical that he could deliver them from such dire straights, but even when it’s a drunk who knocks on your door at midnight and tells you your house is on fire, you’re susceptible, however skeptical, to suggestion.
By 1945, the German people realized they’d had far more to lose, back in the early 1930s, than they’d thought. Despite their troubles, they’d still had everything to lose …
We each—still—have everything to lose.
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