courtesy of theresurgent.com

HUUUUUUUUUUGE!

I have a confession. I did not think it would be worth studying the Republican National Convention because it would not enlighten me about American politics. It would be one long infomercial for The Donald and any pearls of wisdom studied in PolySci would not apply. It would be "the end of politics" just as one historian talked recently of "the end of history" (Francis Fukuyama, I believe). This is what we have evolved into. End of story.

Well, actually, I may have been looking in the wrong places to find my pearls of wisdom. After all, my journey on the information superhighway which drives thought in the 21st Century has been a fitful one. It's time to go hitch-hiking with some American drivers who are different from me: younger, poorer, less educated, more macho, etc. 

OK. So. Who am I before I take this high-tech ride? I am a history professor who also teaches communication on the the college level. Though I am the type to get worked up over politics I have not really dissected it academically since my high school days which ended in the late 1970s. But since what will happen in downtown Cleveland next week will one day be history and therefore part of my purview, I felt it important to observe matters more closely. 

My wife thinks I am nuts. She thinks the RNC Convention in Cleveland, Ohio will be ground zero for the next terrorist attack or riot and me traipsing around amid red-state-ers will be a sitting duck for whatever violent foolishness is yet to come as politics mixes with demagoguery, bigotry, and other polarizing factors under The Donald's ascent to the mainstream.

So what are the lessons I intend to learn in these few weeks?

- I think Social Media and the evolution of how we get our news and how we form our opinions is going to be where some answers will be found, not in the Sunday New York Times or on NPR.  

-I think the new national divide will not be between Liberals and Conservatives but between the elite and the hoi polloi, the dispossessed, the disillusioned, the unthinking.

-I think BREXIT might have relevance here. Is the "peasant revolt" across the pond similar to the anarchic adoption of The Donald as the leader of the free world by the American populace?

-I think any man immune to the things most politicians sink or swim with- money, issues, character, statements- getting this far may make him the most significant figure of our time and tell us more about ourselves than we care to know.

Thomas Friedman thinks we are just one more terrorist attack away from electing Donald Trump because we will vote with our fears rather than our aspirations. He hopes he is wrong. He is less wrong usually than most columnists, in my opinion, but nevertheless, I am with him on this. It is time for the pundits who never saw this coming to be wrong now predicting his success.