Something changed with Trump. The acceptance was the first time he’s prepared a script and stuck to it with real seriousness. After watching it, part of me wants to say, “Oh sh*t, now the guy really does want to be president.” And maybe I’ve been wrong all along, and he seriously intended to win and complete a four-year term. But one of the main functions of spectacles like the RNC is to produce that sense of unity and force, so it’s easy to be overwhelmed and terrified by it — particularly when it involves half the US explicitly embracing fascism. Once the post-convention glow wears off, though, he’ll still be a bullsh*t artist, with a bumbling organization, who ‘thinks’ by provoking and surfing the resulting chaos. And he’ll fall back into his pattern of providing a ready supply of scandalous idiocy — he can’t stop that. But was his acceptance speech the first moment of a serious operation? Pretty hard to believe that’ll happen.