A tale of two conventions
During the last 10 days I have watched — reluctantly, I admit — parts of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in the U.S.
Long ago, I had to write essays to “compare and contrast” Shakespeare’s sonnets with, say, Wordsworth’s. Or John Milton’s metaphors versus T.S. Eliot’s.
It can be an illuminating exercise. But it’s easier when you can lay out two manuscripts side by side.
I wish technology enabled me to compare the two conventions side by side. Perhaps with 30 seconds of this audio, then 30 seconds of that one. So that I could flip back and forth, instead of relying on memory of two separate events.
Still, the most obvious difference was visual. The Republican convention paid lip service to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its body language didn’t.
During Melania Trump’s speech, Republican dignitaries sat cheek-to-cheek, buttwise. No physical separation at all. No masks that I could see. Lots of handshaking and back-patting.
The Democratic convention didn’t have masks either. But they didn’t need them. No one else in the room, period.
Joe Biden’s acceptance speech included some words I don’t recall hearing recently: respect, dignity, compassion. Along with equality and justice — keywords for the liberal stream of U.S. politics. Biden also made a revealing comment. He said, at one point, “I give you my word,” implying that one’s word should be as good as one’s billions.
Political commentators called it the finest speech Biden has ever given. I wouldn’t know, I have never paid attention to him before.
Disclosure: I am not a Joe Biden fan. Anyone who has spent 47 years in politics cannot help being part of the status quo.
If I were an American voter — and I thank God I’m not — my sympathies would lie with Bernie Sanders. There, now you know my bias.
By contrast, the words I heard from the Republican convention leaned heavily on war metaphors. Melania Trump referred to mothers as “warriors.” Several speakers defined Democrats as “the enemy.” Everyone touted “law and order” — even as a lawand-order representative shot a black man in the back, seven times.
Republicans see America as being under attack. By socialism. By vandals and looters. By pro-abortion lobbies. By mail-ballot fraud.
“Don’t let them steal this election from you,” Trump warned.
And, of course, under attack by fake or false news on the mass media.
The Washington Post has been tracking Donald Trump’s own false or misleading statements. On July 9, it claimed, Trump topped 20,000 disprovable assertions — including 62 on July 9 alone. Fake news, of course.
The two conventions also seemed to rely on different sources of authority.
Democrats generally cited verifiable facts and figures. Economic and employment data. Stats from the Centres for Disease Control. Research by international agencies.
Although I can’t now find the specific quotation, I’m sure I heard Biden promise to listen to scientists, researchers, doctors — people who know what they’re talking about.
Exactly the people Trump doesn’t listen to. Especially if they disagree with him on injecting oneself with household bleach or taking medications that delay COVID-19 recovery.
Rather than bushels of facts, Republicans generally emulated Trump himself and poured out superlatives: the most critical election, the greatest threat, the worst crisis, the biggest fraud…
Biden, by contrast, closed with “love is more powerful than hate, hope is more powerful than fear, and light is more powerful than dark.”
The nominees’ faces mirrored that difference in style. Biden looked impassioned, but not angry. Trump looked pugnacious— chin stuck out, mouth turned down, glowering, itching for a fight.
I saw him smile only once — when
Melania praised him.
Stephen Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, documents in great detail the cruelties that used to be commonplace in western society: “slavery, serfdom, disemboweling, bear-baiting, cat-burning, hereticburning, witch-drowning, thief-hanging, public execution, displaying rotting corpses on gibbets, flogging, keelhauling…”
Today, Pinker says, those practices have gone from “unexceptional to unthinkable.”
He attributes the change to literacy. When you read, Pinker argues, you are exposed to someone else’s thoughts. You enter someone else’s mind, if only temporarily.
You can no longer be unshakeably sure that your convictions are the way things have always been, forever and ever amen.
If indeed literacy is a key, the difference between the two nominees becomes even more stark. Joe Biden’s acceptance speech at the end of the Democratic convention proved he could put together a series of coherent sentences.
Donald Trump’s impromptu acceptance on the first day of the Republican convention proved that he couldn’t.
Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca