The Triumph of the Chaos Candidate

And so it came to pass, in the year 2016, on a sunny day in America’s heartland, in a hall smelling of sweat and popcorn and filled with a seething, roaring crowd, that Donald Trump—builder, shocker, demagogue, smasher of certainties, destroyer of the Republican Party, winner—accepted his party’s nomination, with a vow to restore order.

“Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities,” Trump proclaimed, his hand slicing the air, his pompadour gleaming with the reflection of hundreds of lights. “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,” he added.

Yet Trump had just finished presiding over a convention that was anything but orderly.

.. This was something quite different, something rarely seen in the age of lockstep partisanship and spin: a ramshackle, thrown-together, halfhearted spectacle, one that brutally exposed the flimsiness of a campaign that has always been little more than a man, his plane, and his Twitter account.

.. if America is in chaos, Trump seems more a symptom than a remedy.

.. If this election is to be fought over chaos versus order, the convention did not make a convincing case for Trump as the candidate of control.

.. “Trump is anti-establishment, just like punk rock,” he said.

.. at one point, the conspiracist radio host Alex Jones had to be escorted out by police.