The GOP is famous for its civility, its reasoned arguments, its uplifting messages, its thousand points of light, its doughty flag-waving.  Historically, it's always been a bit of an anti-climax to the more raucous version from the Democrats.

Not this time.

What stood out for me in this convention was not its uplift, which was there, but its ragecat fury, its fight.  As Eric Hoffer wrote in his 1979 memoirs: "People need to get angry," and earlier, "there is a lack of ability to get angry."

The GOP is getting angry. 

But it was a positive anger, one that explicitly targeted the left and all its lies, all its incredible miasmas of power.  Several speakers explicitly denounced socialism.

First, there were the myth-busters.  Former NFL football star Herschel Walker, in his dynamite speech, decried the repeated media lies that President Trump is a racist:

It hurt my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald. The worst one is racist. I take it out as a personal insult that people would think I've had a 37 year friendship with a racist.

Transcript here.

Also notable were the COVID first responders, ordinary people who did extraordinary things at the outbreak of the virus, whom Trump spoke with in one segment, while more fiery GOP representatives sought to debunk the left's lies that Trump mismanaged the COVID pandemic.  According to one tape:

One leader took decisive action to save lives — President Donald Trump, banning travel from China and coronavirus epicenters. Biden charged xenophobia, but President Trump was right," the narrator of the video says. "Signing the CARES Act, providing immediate relief to American families, workers and businesses. Declaring a national emergency. Tapping into $42 billion in existing emergency funding. Quickly getting crucial personal protective equipment to the states.

There were also the ringers of tocsin bells, people warning about what Democrats really had in mind for us.  One of the most effective was Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top GOP fundraiser:

"They 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 they can control how you live," Guilfoyle said. "Don't let the Democrats and their socialist comrades take you for granted." 

That works for me.  Better still, she warned that if you like California, Democrats are going to bring you more California, without the weather.  Transcript here:

If you want to see the Socialist Biden/Harris future for our country, just take a look at California. It is a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation, and immaculate environment, and the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets, and blackouts in homes. In President Trump's America, we light things up. We don't dim them down. We build things up, we don't burn them down. We kneel in prayer and we stand for our flag.

Someone else, probably Don Trump, Jr. called the would-be takeover-desiring leftists "a rotten cabal."  He blasted the Democrat double standards on rioting and looting.  Transcript here:

People of faith are under attack. You're not allowed to go to church, but mass chaos in the streets gets a pass. It's almost like this election is shaping up to be church, work and school versus rioting, looting, and vandalism, or in the words of Biden and the Democrats, peaceful protesting. Anarchists have been flooding our streets and Democrat mayors are ordering the police to stand down. Small businesses across America, many of the minority owned, are being torched by mobs. The Democrat mayors pretend it's not happening. They actually called it a summer of love.

Same message from Rep. Jim Jordan, transcript here:

And while they're doing all this, they're also trying to take away your guns. Look at the positions they've taken in the past few months. Democrats won't let you go to church, but they'll you protest. Democrats won't let you go to work, but they'll let you riot. And democrats won't let you go to school, but they'll let you go loot.

The McCloskeys, both of whom spoke eloquently, too, at the convention (transcript here), had the ragecat fight on, too.

Patti McCloskey warned: "What you saw happen to use could just as easily happen to you."

Mark McCloskey issued the edgy warning that "they want power."

Andrew Pollock, father of the Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollock, was solid ragecat, one of the most effective speakers.  According to the New York Post, which devoted an entire article to him:

In a gripping speech in support of Donald Trump, the father of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollock accused Barack Obama and Joe Biden of "forcing" flawed restorative justice policies into schools, leading to his teen daughter's 2018 murder.

Speaking at the 2020 Republican National Convention kick-off on Monday evening, Andrew Pollock zeroed in on what he said were "far left Democrats" in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School district in Parkland, Fla., and praised President Trump for taking action.

Former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, while graceful, had some ragecat too, delivering a very effective speech, transcript here:

Now the UN is not for the faint of heart. It's a place where dictators, murderers and thieves denounce America, and then put their hands out and demand that we pay their bills.

Well, president Trump put an end to all of that. With his leadership, we did what Barack Obama and Joe Biden refused to do. We stood up for America and we stood against our enemies. Obama and Biden let North Korea threaten America. President Trump rejected that weakness, and we passed the toughest sanctions on North Korea in history. Obama and Biden let Iran get away with murder and literally sent them a plane full of cash.

President Trump did the right thing and ripped up the Iran nuclear deal. Obama and Biden led the United nations to denounce our friend and ally, Israel. President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem, and when the UN tried to condemn us, I was proud to cast the American veto. This president has a record of strength and success.

There also was Maximo Alvarez, whose words praising America and warning of the false Castroite promises of the left left viewers bawling, based on what you read Twitter. Alvarez got the most votes for favorite video from Daily Caller's poll, where Trump himself weighed in:

Those folks' promises - spread the wealth, free education, free health care ... defund the police? First a socialist state more than your family and your community? They don't sound radical to my ears ... they sound familiar. When Fidel Castro was asked if he was a communist, he said he was a Roman Catholic. He knew he had to hide the truth. But the country I was born in is gone, totally destroyed. When I watch the news in Chicago, Portland, other cities, when I see history being wiritten... When I hear the promises, I hear echoes of the former life I never wanted to hear again.

There were beautiful speeches from Sen. Tim Scott, freed hostages expressing gratitude, and many others. There was also my favorite, that of bone cancer survivor Natalie Harp, who spoke of the lifesaving help she got from President Trump for his right-to-try law for terminal patients. "I wouldn't be alive today" if he hadn't done it. "Without you, I would have died waiting for the [trials] to be approved," she said, speaking of how her odds of survival were so low no one would even allow her into their clinical tests, not wanting the results to go down.

Yes there was uplift in these speeches, but I liked the fighting quality best, the ragecat feeling of it. This is a GOP that intends to fight.

Hoffer also wrote: 'Anger is the prelude to courage.' 

Image credit: RNC YouTube screen shot.