CLEVELAND, OHIO—Hello, America. It's Morning In Somalia.

Instead of pointing out that last night's Masque of the Red Death acceptance speech already is being graded on a curve the size of the Gateway Arch (And that Ivanka's turn in the spotlight is being graded on a curve the size of the orbit of Neptune. Government-paid child care? Pay equality? Please to be giving me a break) I thought I'd just mention the three most nakedly and inescapably authoritarian moments in the unprecedented 75-minute harangue.

Being nakedly and inescapably authoritarian, they perfectly sum up the great paradox of this week in Cleveland—to wit, the angry delight the participants took in submitting themselves to the vulgar talking yam speaking down to them from on high.

I am your voice.

I alone can fix this.

And that moment in which the crowd chanted, "Yes, you will." Try, for a second, to measure the distance from the president's signature line, "Yes, we can" to He, Trump's, "Yes, you will." (I am sure that the people chanting it thought they were being the cleverest dupes in the universe.) Somewhere in that gap is the place where a self-governing political commonwealth starves itself to death.

The rest of the speech is best dealt with elsewhere, but this entire week was powered by the vigorous applause of people begging to be led, to be directed, to be ruled. A wise old friend once told me that the most basic paradox in American history can be summed up in the question, "Do you govern or are you governed?"

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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.

The country is not what He, Trump said it was on Thursday night. The country is not what all the speakers in Cleveland said it was. The country is not what all the people below think it is. There are problems, but not crises. There are perils, but not ghastly night terrors. Compared to other moments in our history, the year 2016 is a walk in the park on a day where it might rain.

The truth did not matter. Volume was all that mattered. Reality did not matter. Fear of the imagined criminal Other mattered.

Once, for example, almost 25 percent of the labor force was unemployed. People slept in tents in Central Park. Millions of people fled the center of the country and headed west. American society was coming apart and, unlike the period of the Civil War, it was not dividing itself cleanly into competing sides. It was dissolving to all points on the compass. The authoritarian impulse was powering Huey Long in Louisiana and Father Charles Coughlin on the radio. The convulsion was general and sweeping and there seemed to be no end to it.

And a presidential nominee from the state of New York named Franklin Roosevelt addressed the truly dire situation from the podium of his party's national convention.

The great social phenomenon of this depression, unlike others before it, is that it has produced but a few of the disorderly manifestations that too often attend upon such times. Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much. To fail to offer them a new chance is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience. To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite disaster. Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the party with clean hands. This, and this only, is a proper protection against blind reaction on the one hand and an improvised, hit-or-miss, irresponsible opportunism on the other.

Nobody chanted, "Yes, you will." Times were too serious for that. The situation was too dire. Actual wolves were at the door. The terrors were real, and not imagined. Fear didn't need to be stoked. Fear was the resting pulse of the nation and democracy was being threatened with murder, and not. There was no need for passages like this:

Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims. I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end. Beginning on January 20, 2017, safety will be restored.

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.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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