Hope and Healing: The Surprising and Unexpected Republican National Convention

I’m sitting in the Milwaukee airport, coming home to San Diego after being a Delegate at the Republican National Convention. I feel compelled to share what I experienced with you. A shift is happening in America, and attending the RNC has confirmed it for me.  I’ve felt it for a while now, but I’ve been reluctant to acknowledge that the first signs of spring have begun to emerge after such a long and bitter winter.  I remember when the Berlin Wall fell, and people laughed, hugged, and danced in the streets.  That was the feeling at the convention.  It was not just the camaraderie of thousands of like-minded people moving together towards a common goal but the palpable reality that most of the country feels it, too.  

At this convention, we heard from many bright and articulate politicians, but the cries for fairness and justice from the mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters cut through the noise and clattered like a bell. Mothers crying out for children who died of fentanyl poisoning, fathers who lost sons needlessly in Afghanistan, and parents who have children rotting as hostages in a Gaza tunnel or safe house.  The tears shed could cynically be construed as political theater, but I can tell you, having seen and heard it live – this was no show.  What we saw and heard were the heartbroken groans of grief of those who have suffered profound and unnecessary loss as a result of a blind adherence to a far-left-wing ideology that sets itself above everything – including the lives of ordinary Americans. This is a Democrat party that has left not only rational Democrats behind but all of the country.

We have seen unlikely unity from a broad cross-section of people from all strata who have felt the weight of radical policy and who have had enough.  We saw Sean O’Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union, making it clear that union voters have allegiance to no political party but to their own pursuits of happiness and prosperity. We heard from Amber Rose, a model, influencer, and rap star who committed apostasy by telling the world that Trump and the conservative movement are not only NOT hateful and racist but exactly the opposite, the better way. We heard from young Kai Trump, who described Donald Trump not as the bombastic and embattled warrior but as a tender and loving grandfather. We heard from the women in his orbit telling stories of a man who shares power and sees the potential of all the people in his life, providing great authority and autonomy. Right before his speech, he gave his stage to Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock, who stretched the traditional Republican sense of decorum. We are now a larger, more inclusive group that accepts and embraces all of the political parties and all types of people.

Those who think that this convention was about Donald Trump alone are mistaken.  He is not just the inspiration and the leader of a party but of a movement.  This movement was born of midnight SWAT raids, assassination attempts, and spurious convictions that made us shiver because we all know that today, it is Donald Trump, but tomorrow, it could be any of us.  The security provided by the Constitution makes us a better nation than all the others. Still, it is now close to being just a memory, like a photo album that shows our childhoods nostalgic and happy days.  This movement is a manifestation of the trampling of our border and the subsequent raping and killing of our neighbors. It is born from the poisoning of our children and the all-out war on our traditional values of hard work, law and order, justice, and the freedoms not given to us by our government but by God. It is born of our turning our back on freedom of speech, assembly, religion, due process, and the protection of our families from thugs and killers.

If history repeats itself, which I believe it does, then we have just had our Boston Tea Party and Pearl Harbor all at once. Change is in the air.  Not “Hope and Change” but “Hope and Healing.” The hope is for the sunrise after a pitch-black night, and the healing is the promise that all will be set right. I paraphrase Donald Trump from a few nights ago when he told the world that we should not lower our expectations but expand them. Like seeing crime and homelessness in the streets, we have been conditioned into believing that this is just the way it is now.

We have accepted defeat in the face of the overwhelming shock and awe of the left, but today, coming back to California of all places, I don’t believe that anymore. It’s just possible that I am going to live, to be free, to die knowing that my children and grandchildren will be safe in America. Safe again, like the country I was born in.