Republicans’ ‘uplifting’ convention turned into a rage-fest

President Donald Trump over the weekend said he expected a “very uplifting and positive” convention.

Uh-oh. Dude must have gotten into the hydroxychloroquine again.

The Republican National Convention on its opening day was as uplifting as the apocalypse, as positive as perdition.

“The woke-topians,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., warned, “will disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS13 to live next door, and the police aren’t coming when you call.”

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox News personality and current girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr., informed the convention that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live. They want to enslave you to the weak, dependent, liberal victim ideology, to the point that you will not recognize this country or yourself.”

Midway through this rage-fest, the convention went to news footage of violence and destruction in the streets and bleeped-out obscenities — then cut to the mansion of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who were charged with firearms violations after they threatened racial-justice demonstrators with a pistol and military-style weapon.

The pair, personal injury lawyers both, spoke about the “outof-control mob” and the “Marxist liberal activist” and “radicals”

who menaced them by walking past their house — which “could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country.”

“They’re not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether,” the McCloskeys declared. “Make no mistake, no matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”

It was a veritable festival of fear — made all the more intriguing because it was delivered by the incumbent president’s party, much of it from an ornate hall near the White House, the Mellon Auditorium, named for a robber baron. Four years ago, Trump pledged to end “American carnage.” Now he’s asking for another four years to put an end to all the additional

American carnage he created in his first four years.

Officially, the convention tried for some positivity and uplift. It served up implausible testimonies about what a fabulous job Trump has done handling the pandemic. The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, spoke about Trump’s “reverence for the office of the presidency.” Ex-football great Herschel Walker said that the president is not a racist and described Trump, in a business suit, joining him and their kids at Disney World’s “It’s a Small World” ride. Cancer survivor and Liberty University alumna Natalie Harp likened Trump to George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

But the celebration of Trump was tedious — even Fox News cut away from live coverage — and the rage and dystopia invariably overtook the scripted calls for “hope.”

Anti-union activist Rebecca Friedrichs declared that labor is “subverting our republic,” turned “schools into war zones” and wants to start “defunding police” and to “pick on loving teachers and little kids.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, determined that “Democrats won’t let you go to church.”

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley warned of a “socialist left” bringing “anarchy.”

And Donald Trump Jr. warned of “Beijing Biden” (“the Loch Ness monster of the swamp”) encouraging tyranny, illegal immigrants, rioting, looting, vandalism, torch-bearing mobs and “radicals who want to drag us into the dark.”

And there was more to come! How much uplift can one nation stand?