Hate-Watching the Conention

  Yes, readers, I have steeled myself  - I have resolved to watch and report on all four nights of the Democratic National Convention  The only thing that will keep me from watching  is if yet another one of those increasingly common freak storms knocks out my electricity and/or internet again, preventing me rom watching the freak show.

Meanwhile, corporate media outlets are hyping the show so much that the performances and entertainment are bound  to be a letdown. I mean, we already know that there will thunderous applause and a zillion standing ovations for Joe Biden. That is how relieved the audience will be that they won't have to exert themselves any longer to praise him and damn him in the same hypocritic breath.

If the canned speeches and glycerin tears don't move the audience, there are always the fetishized props. The Republicans had the uniform and gear of the firefighter killed during the Trump assassination attempt. They had Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt. Best of all,  had the oversized blinding white bandage on the Trumpian ear. It contrasted nicely with his spray-on tan, if not with all the faces in the audience.

What do the Democrats have? Well, besides the fetishized prop of a brand new miracle candidate, they have erected a 20-foot high inflated I.U.D. (intrauterine device) named Freeda Womb. 

The sight of this T-shaped inflatable is bound to induce a massive cringe in many a woman who has undergone what really amounts to a minor surgical procedure without the benefit of pain relief and sedation.  Women  have been flocking to their doctors' office to get the device in the wake of the Supreme Court's barbaric decision overturning Roe v Wade. Although the procedure has long been acknowledged to be barbaric in its own right, it has taken years and much pressure from women's health advocates to finally get the CDC to offer mere "suggestions" for pain relief.

So the giant I.U.D. virtue-signaling fetish is also a reminder that they've even abandoned the old Clintonian joke about "feeling your pain." The Kamala fetish is all about women being strong and tough. Even tough enough to allow a genocide. You've come a long way, baby!

What I would like to see erected at the convention is a giant face mask to remind everybody that Covid-19 is still a thing. But the barbaric ruling establishment - and that includes the C.D.C. - no longer encourages wearing a mask , either to protect yourself or protect others.  Because you gotta Freeda Face. Because Americans are tough enough to show their faces to seurity cameras and best of all, to smile though your heart is breaking. If an Olympic sprinter with asthma can win a bronze medal while in the throes of Covid, then so can you!

If it succeeds in nothing else, maybe the convention will succeed in becoming one of those epic superspreading events.

I'm old enough that I remember watching the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention, with the networks giving equal amera time to cops busing heads in Grant Park and Dan Rather getting all worked up about it iive on air, and Mayor Richard Daley acting like the fascist dictator he truly was.

Nowadays, the corporate media tends to ignore things like massive political demonstrations occurring right outside political events. But since they can't very well ignore this year's massive anti-genoicide protests, they're making sure to placate the audience by showcasing carefully selected Palestinian and Zionist speakers throughout their festivities. Good luck with that pitiful attempt at diversion. 

It seems that lecturing protesters that if they don't shut up and get with the genocide program they will be responsible for re-electing Donald Trump is falling on deaf ears.

The pundits are flailing between urging Kamala to heed the protesters and urging her to stand firm on Israel's ongoing rampage.

Their framing is not the fact of US complicity in genocide. It's that the protesters are implicitly part of the party machine whether they like it or not, and that their demonstrations are thus  "threatening party unity."

As one recent New York Times editorial so smarmily put it, the issue is not whether Harris should condemn the genocide. It's that Harris should combine telling hecklers to be quiet with going through the motions of listening to them. She should take "divisions" seriously, is all. My published response:

The time to put pressure on politicians is while they are ;campaigning for your votes. If you wait until they are safely ensconced in office, they will have little reason to listen to constituents - other than, of course, the war-profiteering donor class and corporate lobbyists. So I hope that the anti-genocide, anti-apartheid protesters will continue making their voices heard. They shouldn't be cowed into shutting up, for fear they'll be blamed in the increasingly unlikely event that Trump wins this election. I get that nobody wants to risk that. But the hard truth is that both of our war-hungry political parties are in full support of what most of the rest of the world views as crimes against humanity. So what if Kamala Harris offers to "listen" and mouths whole volumes of empty platitudes of how heartbreaking it is that so many tens of thousands of innocent people are being killed by American bombs. Her spokesman just said she supports the continuing transport of these bombs. Put the pressure on her now and throughout the campaign season to take a principled stand against our current foreign policy. Before it's too late. Before any more innocent people die.