One More Miserable Night

There are already plenty of blow-by-blow accounts of the Democratic Convention, so I won't be adding to the shallow pollution in any substantial way. Life is too short, and besides, I find I can only take this mind-numbing spectacle in extremely small doses.  Even abandoning the hopped-up heads on MSDNC and CryptoNationalismNetwork for noncommercial C-Span didn't help. Because what is this convention anyway, but one long freaking commercial for the Neoliberal Project and Permawar?

It's as though the Home Shopping Network had a mind-meld with all the grotesque military recruiting videos ever made and then gave birth to an Academy Awards show that goes 72 hours over schedule. Every speech runs the pea-sized gamut from platitudinal to fear-mongering (fear Trump, not the weaponized capitalism that created him!). Every speaker focuses on identity and biography rather than on issues, every actor proclaims that America is the greatest country on earth.

 I keep waiting for the warning music from the orchestra to cut these people off.

I wait in vain. The music only enables them, as it attempts to create being from nothingness.

Take last night. A bunch of Broadway stars sang "What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love" which hideously segued into Master of War Leon Panetta bragging that Hillary will be able to bomb people to death more responsibly than traitorous Putin fanboy Donald Trump. The cognitive dissonance was relieved only by a group of brave Sanders delegates chanting "No more war, no more drones," while Clinton operatives scrambled to hand out fascistic "America Stronger" signs to the other delegates to drown out the unsanctioned love. (Since the DNC is still refusing to divulge the corporate sponsors of the glitzy convention, I can't wait to find out which defense contractor footed the bill for this particular bit of "muscular" propaganda. Maybe Trump can ask Putin to find out for us.)

I could have sworn I was still in Kleveland.... or Nuremberg.

I finally had to shut off the TV when the Gold Star mother was introducing Obama. The message was that as long as she can get a triple hug from The One, losing a son in a war for oil and treasure is almost bearable. Life gets better. Especially since it was Obama who inspired her to overcome her grief by getting into local politics, just by virtue of his magical hug.

So I am sorry to say that I unpatriotically skipped the president's ode to Hillary and to his own legacy. Maybe I'll parse it at a later date. But probably not. Like I said, life is short, the sun is shining and the birds are tweeting louder than the Tweets canonizing his speech as the greatest speech ever by the Greatest President in the history of time, space and propaganda.

If it's a more scathingly detailed synopsis you crave, then Jeffrey St. Clair over at CounterPunch is your guy. His daily blow-by-blow blow-ups of the botulistic canned festivities are actually very funny reads. And that is quite an amazing accomplishment, given the ingrained torture of the entire grotesque spectacle.

Party on.