The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph

 

 

  "The standard of oratory, at the Fiserv Forum, could politely be described as mixed. A popular trick was to add a splash of aggression to one’s vocabulary, whatever the topic at hand. What, for example, was Representative Mike Waltz talking about, on Monday, when he exclaimed, “We’re going to send a cruise missile right into the heart of it”? Tehran? Harvard? George Clooney’s villa on Lake Como? The answer was “inflation.” Waltz, who hails from Jacksonville, Florida, was formerly a Green Beret, and he had other promises tucked into his kit bag. “We will flood the world with clean, cheap American oil and gas,” he said, adding the familiar nostrum “Drill, baby, drill!” His audience eagerly took up the chant—a rousing one, and I trust that we shall hear it sung afresh in October, with a ring of even greater confidence, at SmileCon, the annual gathering of the American Dental Association."

READ REPORT BY ANTHONY LANE