By the sharpest of contrasts, speeches given at this week’s Republican National Convention have distinguished themselves by going in the opposite direction, by going “low” into a dark and frightening appeal to fear and division.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama said this in the midst of a passionate and heartfelt, memorable plea to the American people to rescue the nation from the clutches of Donald Trump on the first night of the virtual Democratic National Convention Monday night.

Reflective of his best days as the principled and combative senator from Delaware, former Vice President Joe Biden chose not to play it safe to embrace the one Democratic political figure in Sen. Kamala Harris who can do the most damage to the toxic boil that is Donald Trump in the run-up to the Nov. 3 election.

“It is what it is!” This was Donald Trump’s summary explanation for why over 150,000 Americans have died from the Covid-19 coronavirus in just the last five months.

There is no doubt in my mind that paid, violent provocateurs are being deployed on both sides of this scenario. The same sinister forces are functioning as puppet-masters on both sides with the aim of creating a false justification for the imposition of domestic marshal law and the suspension of the November presidential election.

It is appearing less and less likely that no matter the outcome of the November 3 election, that Trump will go peacefully.

Who knew that in this modern, complicated and sophisticated world, reality would conform so fully to medieval morality play content: knights in shining armor pitted against sleazy, vicious merchants of pain and death.

Trump is a clinically-ill sociopath. His condition is described in detail in the professional psychiatric literature, and it is a frightening diagnosis.

It was a good time to re-air that “1968” series this June 26, because the events of this June 2020 alone, starting with the nationally-televised murder of George Floyd on May 25, have measured up to the non-stop sequence of critical events in 1968, when so much came to a head to either create meaningful social change or almost did.

But now watching Trump rallying his minions into arenas and churches that function in the context of an ongoing deadly coronavirus pandemic as petri dishes for contamination of our mortal human flesh is eliciting a similar response.