As a nation America is on the mental back foot
WE, the media (unlike the grandeur of we, the people) have a highly inflated idea of the impact we make on events and trends. Most of the time it is even more fleeting and little of it sticks. Despite all the froth we create and the drums we beat nothing really changes because of us. Oh, yes, a passing shower, a false perception that the truth has been exposed and justice done, the good fight fought but it all adds up to nought.
We do not influence elections much as we would like to think we do. We do not have much impact on war, terrorism, injustice, the human flotsam and jetsam that floats past our lives everyday. We think we do but in all honesty, what exactly is the impact of media? There was a time, not so long ago, when media was limited and what was said or spoken had a certain sanctity and more importantly, was believed. Now, the deluge drowns the receiver, destroys his synapses and overloads the sensory board. Result: Short circuit.
It’s on this canvas that I would not get too excited about the Democratic convention in the US, a nation whose media model of search and destroy so many nations now so violently follow. Of course, Michelle Obama gave a stirring speech. Slavery and children, lethal combination. She finger painted pictures of the legacy for tomorrow so eloquently that sunbeams frolicked on the floor. Bill Clinton being folksy, the rhetoric of President Obama resonating as it always does, even former New York Mayor Bloomberg’s salutation to Hillary, collectively soul stirring and wonderful.
Making the wolfish Donald Trump look callow and cowardly and pathetic. Doesn’t add up to a spit in the wind. Just words that will dissipate in the winds of time, just a little time, days not even weeks. All it needs is one more act of gratuitous violence and Trump will leap back into the saddle, these words of wisdom lost to the electorate.
Americans have been given what is arbitrary and new shock. They have been taught how to be scared, vulnerable and suspicion, states of mind that have not been part of their psyche.
Trump is strumming their fate with his plump little fingers and he knows the words so well. As a nation America is on the mental back foot.
So much so that even his inelegant, politically incorrect and totally graceless call on Russia to hack Hillary’s e-mails has flown under the bridge without much condemnation. In these circumstances, pomp and ceremony, well written speeches and great delivery are soggy cardboard. It is all just a more refined version of what Americans have heard at the preamble to an election since the days of JFK.
In an odd way, there is comfort in being scared. It is like battle inoculation and that’s exactly what Trump is doing; a call to arms, to gird your loins for war, for war it is. It is like the wild West and it is striking at that macho streak that has been consecrated in the American psyche.
The fact that by now Trump has not disillusioned his Republican support base either in the Houses or on the streets speaks volumes for his tack. To believe there will be no terror attacks between now and November is a bit of a stretch. Every such attack will add a brick to the man’s walls and his prejudices will feed off it.