Tag Archives: National Conventions

Political Rants

Empty room.

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You may recall from last week that I skipped most of the Democratic National Convention. Well, I gave equal time to the Republicans, though the thing they were broadcasting this week didn’t even pretend to be a nominating convention in the true sense. That process took place during the day on Monday in North Carolina, where the RNC was originally going to happen. I believe it consisted of a vote to not have a party platform, to simply endorse Herr Trump in all his glory, then to nominate him formally before getting to the main event: Trump giving a rally speech, full of the usual wild claims, distortions, and outright lies. The man should have a laugh track.

What was billed as the RNC is a long infomercial to white aggrievement that kicked off with Charlie Kirk from Turning Point USA calling Trump the “body guard of Western Civilization” – i.e. white people. It always amazes me to watch these grifters attack the Democratic party from the left on trade, as it Trump represents any departure from globalized neoliberal capitalism. Of course, as soon as they’re done decrying outsourcing, they start in on socialism, communism, Marxism, whatever they’re calling it at any given time. Kind of a contradiction for those of you keeping score at home, but that won’t slow them down. If Republican conventions are mostly about owning the libs with nasty quips and jabs, they’re having a great week.

Many of the speakers – both pre-recorded and live – are speaking in a large, ornate, empty hall in Washington D.C. Watching them talk as if the Coronavirus has subsided, I thought of all those who have died as a result of Trump’s historic incompetence, and pictured their spirits populating those empty seats, bearing witness to this pathetic spectacle. Of course, so many things in the actual world seem to evade their notice. Police brutality, global warming, wealth inequality, exploitation of labor, etc., etc. … none of it made its way into the various remarks. Pence articulated a vision of law and order, channeling his Nixonian forebears, in hopes that they might repeat the 37th president’s landslide re-elect. That seems a tall order, though they still might squeak by.

Lord know … if we had a decent opposition party, this race would be over by now.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The loudest voice.

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I haven’t been watching the Democratic National Convention in its entirety, just pieces here and there. It’s no surprise that this thing is unlike any political convention we’ve ever seen before. What’s kind of astonishing is the degree to which it looks like a long political ad, with some variations in production values. A lot of it is just a crap show, putting a spotlight on some never-Trump Republicans and various center-right figures. I keep expecting some kind of technicolor tribute to Ronald Reagan, or a cameo by George W. Bush. Stuff like that makes it a bit more like drinking urine than it should be, but then I am a leftist, which means I’m just supposed to suck it up and offer my unqualified support. Still, being asked to sit through Colin Powell is a bit beyond ridiculous, in my humble opinion.

I have talked about this on my podcast, Strange Sound, so I won’t go into great detail, but my decision to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket is rooted in the notion of harm reduction, some of the contours of which have been highlighted throughout the virtual DNC. The fate of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “dreamers”, as well as refugees from both state sponsored or tolerated violence and economic hardship, hangs in the balance – a second Trump term would spell disaster for them, and very likely for so-called legal immigrants as well. It would not surprise me to see a second-term Trump move to strip legal residents of their rights, then perhaps naturalized citizens, particularly if they are members of the communities he most despises. (I can picture an Ilhan Omar-focused executive action revoking citizenship from those who escaped Trump-dubbed “shit hole” countries.)

Then there are those who depend on their health insurance … like just about everybody at some point in their lives. A second Trump term would mean a death sentence for many of those people. Hell, the first Trump term was enough to dispatch more than 170,000 unnecessarily. Single-payer advocate Ady Barkan made this case quite eloquently at the DNC in one of the better speeches. For as little effort as is involved in casting a ballot, it seems to me that we should listen to the voices of people on the edge of disaster, for whom four more years of this might amount to a death sentence. As I said on Strange Sound, we don’t need to invest in the new administration – quite the opposite. We need to be ready to push them from day one. And they will need to be pushed. The lobbyists always have the loudest voice, but we have the numbers. We can flip the tables of the moneylenders if we all do it together, but we need to have an administration that will respond to pressure. Trump won’t. Biden will.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave a comment or a question. Excoriate me. Shake your cyber fist! Always glad to hear from you.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Yea or nay?

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Another week of national convention television, this time, the Democratic party. Different from last week, to be sure. Less venom, less doom and gloom – in some ways, more similar to what Republican conventions used to be. That’s not surprising: the Republicans have officially vacated the hyper-nationalist territory they have occupied pretty much my entire life, heading decidedly off to the reactionary end. So now, Democrats are a mixture of Eisenhower/Nixon/Reagan Republicans, with some elements of center-left muddle in the middle politics and labor-left sensibilities. The most energized base is certainly on the left, but from what I’m seeing this fourth and final night of the DNC, they are shooting for these centrists and disaffected Republicans.

Yeah, I know.This is not a great strategy. They’re risking turning off some of their most ardent activists with the bluster, the hyper-patriotism, the parade of military officers, etc. Chants of USA, USA, USA! It’s pretty horrifying on a certain level to see them resort to overt jingoism. But Trump has given them that opportunity, and politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

That’s the bad news. The good news? A lot of Bernie Sanders’s core issues are represented in the major speeches, including the one Hillary herself delivered. Her speech was pretty slow to get started, but she got on track about halfway through, when she started talking policy specifics. A lot of the economic points were good. National security stuff is giving me heartburn. So … someone got Bernie on my Hillary. Someone got Hillary in my Bernie. It’s a mix, for better or worse.

I’m not going to tell people what they should do. Everyone needs to work this out for themselves. But it’s pretty clear to me, from watching these two conventions, that as binary choices go, this one is pretty much a no-brainer. It only takes five minutes to figure that out and actually vote (unless you’re a person of color, in which case the latter part might be more like five hours). One of those two people is going to be president. Among the many, many things we need to involve ourselves in politically, we need to take that handful of moments to make certain we never let somebody like Trump lord it over us.

So in my world, it’s yea. What say ye? Get back to me.

luv u,

jp