The DNC couldn’t remember the Pledge of Allegiance and didn’t acknowledge ISIS yesterday

PHILADELPHIA — ISIS has struck Europe five times in under two weeks, and a native from my own home was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to join them. The OC native, Adam Dandach, is just one in a series of homegrown Islamic State members who has recently been arrested for planning to join the group which, among planning anti-Western terror attacks, also systemically oppresses, genitally mutilates and traffics their own women.

But if you watched the DNC yesterday, you’d think that the biggest threat to women, and America in general, are Republicans.

That’s right folks. Out of an alarming 61 speakers at the first day of the DNC, not a single one mentioned ISIS. After repeatedly lambasting last week’s Republican National Convention for fear-mongering and imposing a sense of “darkness” in political rhetoric (seriously, Google “RNC dark”; it’s almost like the media has been collaborating with the DNC or something!), the DNC decided ignore global terror as a threat entirely.

People are comparing this election cycle to that of 1968. Come on, though. With the Orwellian double-speak and dystopian collusion between the media and the political establishment, this is 1984.

Consider Michelle Obama’s speech. On paper, it exemplified what the DNC and the Obama administration as a whole should be. She gave a poised, appreciative, patriotic account of what incredible progress our country has made, and what resilience is required to continue to perfect our union. It made no underhanded attempts to shove unpopular policies down the throat of the people even while touting an unfavorable candidate.

“I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story,” the First Lady said, evoking the Constitutional principles which should have dominated the RNC.

“So, look, so don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on earth!” Beautiful. My patriotic heart is shedding a little tear right now. Or it would be, if it weren’t all bullshit.

Trump’s problem is that he doesn’t know why America is great. He thinks it great because we “win,” when it’s really because of our founding principles of liberty, equal opportunity and individual rights. But the only reason why Trump has such an enthusiastic base is because America is tired of Democrats who don’t think America is great at all.

This is Michelle Obama, just eight years ago: “For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.” Yeah, that’s more like the Democratic Party we know. The First Lady, like her husband, has incredible oratory prowess, weaving a gorgeous narrative of contradictions. She may have claimed America was the best country on earth, but the President certainly doesn’t vouch for American exceptionalism.

“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” President Obama once said while addressing Strasbourg, France. Just as Trump mistakes American exceptionalism for consequentialist reasons, Obama mistakes it for relativity. No, America is not exceptionalism because it’s where we live. It’s exceptionalism because it ushered in the ideas which set an international benchmark for individual sovereignty and justice for all.

Not that you’d believe that watching the DNC. There was nary an American flag to be seen, and the words to the Pledge of Allegiance had to be posted on the teleprompter. Despite the liberal media decrying Trump’s focus on global threats and horrors, the fact remains that Americans responded positively to a strongman, with his numbers surging more post-convention than any candidate since the 2000 election cycle. Trump may be a false messiah, but when Democrats refuse to even acknowledge a very real threat permeating our collective consciousness, many Americans are finding a false messiah better than nothing.

Bear in mind that I’m not a Trump supporter. I’m saying all of this as someone who voted against Trump in the California primary and certainly won’t be voting for him in the fall. But Trump at least calls a spade a spade and mocks the opposition when it doesn’t.

The fact is that ISIS poses a tangible, powerful threat to modernity. Beheading a priest in a church — is that not straight from the Middle Ages? Because that happened on Tuesday in Normandy. Yet Democrats refuse call out ISIS directly, treating it more like Voldemort than a global, geographically expanding force threatening Western values.

I don’t want Donald Trump to win. He doesn’t care for the Constitution (acknowledged zero times in his acceptance speech) or liberty (also given no shout-outs), and he embodies an anti-trade platform entirely antithetical to the market economics which form the basis of economic conservatism.

But if he wins, we’ll know why, and we’ll know exactly how avoidable it would’ve been in the first place.