NOTE: This article was originally published at Right On on July 22, 2016. I’m re-posting it here as the site is now defunct.
After two sedate days at the Republican National Convention, I assumed that the action would ramp up on Thursday, the convention’s finale. (Un)fortunately, the Leftists in Cleveland had run out of gas.
I went into the Republican National Convention earlier this week expecting it to be a complete clusterfuck. Monday lived up to those expectations, with antifas pursuing me through downtown Cleveland for the crime of observing their big protest. I spent Tuesday inside the RNC itself watching Donald Trump be formally nominated for president, and Wednesday saw the only major protest of the day burn itself out before I could get there. Logic would dictate that the Left was storing up their wad for Thursday, the last day of the convention, where they’d march on the hated GOP and prove to all of us that they shut shit down.
Nope. After I spent much of the day with my Red Ice colleagues preparing to tackle the day’s protests and keep ourselves, the Leftists wimped out. Aside from a #BlackLivesMatter march where things got heated—with Lefties attacking police with poisoned stickers and syringes that put several officers in the hospital—there was very little action to speak of. The counter-RNC movement ended with the tiniest of whimpers.
My colleagues and I had determined that our focus would be the big anti-Trump rally taking place in Public Square at 6pm, roughly the same time that the RNC would be warming up the speaker’s podium for the Donald himself. In addition to my usual crew of Edwin Oslan, William Rome and Nathan Damigo (plus several other volunteers), we were also joined by Blonde in the Belly of the Beast, Cynic in Chief and a few others. We few, we happy few, we band of shitlords.
During the day, we wandered around Public Square, linking up with a group of pro-capitalist protesters who were following a group of anarchists around mocking them. However, a thick, mobile police cordon that was several dozen officers thick kept each group from clashing with each other. We also met Owen Shroyer, the Trump supporter best known for his argument with Carl the Cuck and AIDS Skrillex outside of the Donald’s St. Louis rally.
All our plans and preparations went to pot after witnessing what the evening rally actually was. Instead of the anarchic free-for-all everyone was expecting, it consisted of Lefties grandstanding in a corner of Public Square while Trump supporters, Westboro Baptist Church members and neutrals filled the rest of it. The closest thing to danger was when our group was approached by—once again—Daryle Jenkins. But even he didn’t have the energy to argue with us; he just sat off to the side like a nerdy creeper at a party. By the end, the only people left were the Revolutionary Communist idiots who’d been marching the day before.
At the same time as the rally, Roosh and Mike Cernovich organized a meetup a block north at the Tilted Kilt, a chain restaurant that’s essentially Hooters with more skin and fewer fake nails. I had originally planned on covering that event with Blonde, then bounce to the protests afterwards, but the limp-out at Public Square made even turning my camera on redundant. You can watch Red Ice’s live coverage here, which mainly focused on analyzing Donald Trump’s presidential nomination acceptance speech.
Theories abounded as to why #BlackLivesMatters’ “Summer of Chaos” died on the vine, from Leftists being scared off by the presence of alt-Righters at the convention to the fact that progressives are always more vicious to their own. After all, the most violent political convention in American history was the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which was… Leftists whaling on other Leftists. Because of this, I believe next week’s DNC will outstrip the RNC in violence by a wide margin.
The other big item of the night was progressive media “watchdog” (aka witch-hunter) Media Matters exposing how I had gained entry to the RNC on Tuesday to report for Red Ice. I was also the focus of a Slate profile on “White supremacists” at the RNC, despite the fact that the reporter had also talked to Edwin (who is Jewish) for nearly an hour longer than me. Neither Slate nor Media Matters seemed to realize the contradiction of accusing a man who was hanging out with a Jew and a half-Persian man and who sat on the convention floor with the Hawaiian delegation of being a “White supremacist.”
My crew and I watched Trump’s speech at the Tilted Kilt, where the atmosphere resembled a baseball game more than a political event. Every time the Donald spoke, the patrons clapped and cheered like the home team had just scored a goal. The actual speech was remarkable by American standards: instead of moderating his views, Trump has hit the accelerator. The only difference is that his off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness ramble has been replaced with a more polished, presidential demeanor.
Overall, while I didn’t see as much action as I thought I would, I enjoyed my week in Cleveland. The Republican convention was a happy and joyous event, focused on celebrating America, American nationalism and the virtues that made this country what it is. The negativity brought by Leftists wasn’t enough to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for helping make America great again.
Conversely, next week’s Democratic convention in Philadelphia is almost certainly going to be a sour, paranoid and miserable event. Hillary Clinton has no ability to inspire confidence or respect in her followers, and she has no vision that can inspire Americans. All she has is the fear-mongering of identity politics, and the DNC will revolve around whipping up fear about Trump’s “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia” or what have you. That miserable environment will no doubt spawn the violence that everyone expected in Cleveland.
I’ll be heading to Philly on Sunday after resting and recuperating for a bit. While I don’t know what will happen, I do know that every move the Left makes from here on out will just add wind to our sails.
Read Next: All Quiet on the Midwestern Front
The post What if They Held a Riot and Nobody Brought Any Matches? appeared first on Matt Forney.