Conventionally Speaking
Political conventions are probably the dumbest aspect of American politics, especially in the modern technological era. Half a century ago, they still made some sense from a logistical perspective. Getting all the national and local players together in the same physical place was the only way to maintain the network. It was also a television event that gave the party a chance to make their pitch. They also brought in the donors for the grip and grin sessions that seem to work on rich people.
Today, the old-style convention looks increasingly like a pointless relic. The only people who need to meet in person these days to talk politics are dissidents and that’s because of the pogroms against white activists. The people in charge can avail themselves to all the modern technology of the day. As far as a television event, the convention looks ridiculous to most modern people. It’s like watching a movie from the 1970’s, where people are using pay phones and wearing suits on airplanes.
The parties stick with them mostly because politics is a risk-adverse game. These days, every campaign has pollsters and consultants telling the campaign what to do. Inevitably, they say the same things over and over, as that is the low risk strategy for the consultants and pollsters. If the campaign does the normal stuff and fails, the candidate gets the blame. If it succeeds, then it proves the tried and true methods work. That’s why the parties stick with convention format.
As silly as it all is, the convention does offer some insights into what is happening behind the scenes of the party. That was clear on day one of the Democratic virtual convention now in day three. The people hired to produce it were not creative wiz-kids given the challenge of creating the first virtual convention. Instead, they hired people who make corporate videos and infomercials. Anyone who has had to consume corporate video saw the fingerprints on day one.
That tells us the people running the DNC and the Biden campaign are just as old in their thinking as the people running the party. Joe Biden (77), Nancy Pelosi (80) and Chuck Schumer (69) hit middle age before the typical voter was born. They were set in their ways before the first ISP came into operation. These are analog people living in a digital age, by avoiding anything new and different. This virtual convention was made for people who put their face right up to the screen in a Zoom session.
Thus far, the convention tells us that there is a serious rift between the young woke crowd and the old guard. The choice of speakers to highlight is the tell. They featured the genocidal Andrew Cuomo and Obama’s Wookie on the first night. They gave Bernie Sanders a few minutes and a canned speech. The Bernie wing is not happy, which is why they are rioting in their strongholds, so using the first night to remind them who is still in charge of the party was a message.
Maybe the most amusing part of the show thus far was the angry guy routine done by Andrew Cuomo. He did his thing sitting at a desk, like a corporate CEO addressing the company by video conference after a big round of layoffs. The point was to be inspirational in a tough time, but instead it was angry and bitter. The only thing missing was a threat that if morale did not pick up, the beatings would continue. Cuomo is the argument in favor of sending the sons of politicians into exile.
It’s also clear the party bosses don’t understand what they have unleashed with the anti-white rhetoric. They did the old corporate diversity crap on the first night, but it was actually worse than the corporate diversity training videos. It did not address anything that has been happening for the last few months. The use of the Buffalo Springfield song would have gone over well with the 70-plus crowd, but by that point it was well past lights out in the nation’s rest homes.
Another indication of the general detachment from reality is the use of Republican turncoats in this convention. The idea is to use these faithless finks to show undecideds that even the Republicans are abandoning their man. Most people unsure about voting for Trump already hate the GOP. That’s why they tend to sit out elections. Trotting out Colin Powell and John Kasich just reminds them that they hate the same people who hate Donald Trump. It has the opposite of the intended effect.
Another insight that can be gleaned from this thing is the party is deeply worried by the overall lack of enthusiasm for their guy. The first night drew roughly half the audience they drew in 2016. The party then ordered their media organs to bump the numbers up in subsequent stories. In this age of lies, we can expect the media to claim the Biden speech was watched by every human on earth, but the reality is this thing and his campaign are not all that interesting to people.
Now, it should be pointed out that the lock downs have broken all the normal patterns of behavior with regards to media consumption. The sports leagues are experiencing their bad television numbers. People working at home are no longer talking about sports and TV shows with co-workers. There are no live audiences, so the social proof has been removed from sports. This convention may be suffering from the same thing. People are disconnecting from mass media due to the lock downs.
Putting that aside, what comes through in this convention is that conventional politics has reached the end of the road. The Democrats will soon be the brown party and their cries of racism will sound even more absurd than they do today. Whatever replaces the Republicans will be the white party and calls for constitutional principles will sound as absurd as the whining about white privilege. This convention and its reliance on 50-year old pop culture references is the end of the end.
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