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If there's one thing we learned from the first day of the Republican National Convention it's that we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe.

Luke, I am your father.

Where's the beef?

OK, if we're being honest, the main thing we learned is that if you're a presidential candidate, it's a bad idea to have your wife lift part of her prime-time speech from a speech previously given by the wife of the president you think is an incompetent Muslim impostor.

Melania Trump was supposed to take the stage Monday night and give America a glimpse into the more compassionate, human side of Donald Trump. And she did a fine job, showing a charming sense of humor and a poised delivery.

But some of her words seemed familiar, and soon enough we saw clear evidence that one of the more heartfelt passages of her speech was lifted almost directly from a speech First Lady Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

The gut reaction is to not blame Melania Trump, instead pointing the finger at one of her husband's incompetent or careless speech writers. But just days before the speech, she said in an interview that she "wrote it with as little help as possible."

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

While "my wife is a plagiarist" is probably not the message Trump wanted coming out of the first day of his convention, the truth is that it's better than the message delivered via the umpteen other speeches delivered before a borderline bloodthirsty crowd of GOP delegates.

Rep. Steve King went on MSNBC and took a stand that would make white supremacists smile, commenting on the intense whiteness of the GOP crowd and saying: "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

The mother of a victim of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi gave a gut-wrenching speech blaming Hillary Clinton for her son's death. While that was happening, Trump was doing an interview on Fox News, effectively counter-programming his own convention.

Two members of a security team that fought in Benghazi spoke in gruesomely casual detail about the experience. The description of shooting a terrorist to death--"dropping him like a sack of potatoes"--were met with wild, fiery cheers from the audience. All of which was lapped up by the devoted Trumpsters who filled about two-thirds of Quicken Loans Arena. (There were many empty seats. As Trump would say, sad.)

The problem is this: For someone who isn't a die-hard Trump backer, Monday night's convention looked like an ad that Clinton's campaign would make to highlight why you shouldn't vote for Donald Trump. It was mean-spirited, occasionally unhinged and angry, and apparently part of it was plagiarized.

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Rex Huppke is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Editorial on 07/21/2016

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