Maybe we'd all be better off if the political conventions weren't televised. I watched Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin at the RNC tonight and it just made me sick to my stomach. You can't complain that they were meanspirited and misleading (though I suppose one could object to known and knowing falsehoods), because their purpose is simply to rally the crowd, to demonize their opponent and to glorify their candidate. Perhaps sports teams prepare for a match by swapping slanderous and obviously trumped-up stories about the opposing team, but I'd rather not hear them do it. The conventions with their faceless mobs of delegates cheering at every other word, roaring like drunkards and chanting like hooligans seem like a knowing parody of true political exchange, where discussion is open and applause must be earned not by wit or the repetition of the same old slogans or names but by argument. Nothing is exchanged here. Nobody's listening critically - that's not the point.
Now it's true I was inspired by some of the DNC speeches I heard (not Barack's, which didn't soar). But I'm aware, especially as I try to wipe off the grime of Giuliani's snideness and Palin's knowing distortions, that part of what got to me was the political performance, the implied sense that these speeches deserved to be interrupted by applause and delirious chanting. For the DNC I was willing to be taken in, taken in by the collective élan and the illusion of a world in which questions have clear answers and everyone who matters agrees - and there's the problem. I wanted to be a face in that crowd, wanted to let the speakers (some of them) put their words in my mouth.
In place of thought: slogans. In place of actually making up your mind and taking responsibility for a view: chants as at a sports game. Yes we can, drill baby drill, o-ba-ma o-ba-ma, yooessay, sa-rah sa-rah. If this is necessary to gear people up for the months ahead, so be it. But don't let anyone else see it, and don't pretend it's democracy in action!
