some years, i've blogged the conventions minute by minute. i can't stand to do that this year, though i've been watching intermittently.
surely this year is a reductio ad absurdum of the two-party system. this is what we're left with. i'd say both that no one had the guts to jump ship, and that these idiot factories really have made it more or less impossible to develop alternatives.
donald trump jr.'s speech last night has been welcomed with 'a star is born.' christ, did you watch that? on melania's plagiarism, etc: billmoyers.com points out that both she and michelle really nailed the inspiring values on which we all agree: that our word should be our bond, that we're doing it all for our children etc. but really, most political speeches are indistinguishable from plagiarism because they focus-grouped phrases like 'hard-working families' or whatever in 1991 and have been doing nothing but running through them mechanically ever since, both treating us as idiots and actually being idiots, both at once. oh, she did really swipe sentences, but if you listen to any of these people (donald does better than most on this), they're all just yipyapping hyper-repetitive empty manipulative bullshit.
it's the science of communication, baby. you put a bunch of people in a room with some sort of little meters, and when you say 'children' they turn the dial to 'positive.' so then you hide behind the podium, raise your sock puppet up in front of the the teleprompter it says 'children children children.' it's sophisticated, clever, thoroughly researched, mindless, meaningless, useless, and evil.
simultaneously, the hyper-partisan vilification continues to intensify, when you thought it couldn't get any worse. these people hysterically hate each other, which is all the content that remains. hop off this shit now, or be so gross, as though you were the new york times opinion operation.
