09 September 2012

Political Rhetoric

I brought my sewing to visit a lady who had the Republican National Convention playing in the background, so I sewed and we shmoozed and various Republicans addressed the nation.
"I don't see what there is to cry about," she said, as the camera shewed a gentleman with a tear on his cheek.
But I do find such conventions, leaving aside the content, rather moving: it's heartening to see a whole roomful of Americans sounding optimistic about the future of the country.

I seldom hear political speeches -- I was expecting something like the Declaration of Independence: here's the purpose of life, so here is the purpose of government, so here's what we're going to do if we are elected, to live up to these ideals.
No one I heard spoke in as orderly a fashion. Instead they provided a lesson in oratory.

In between speeches, the news crew did its best to predict and analyze the speeches, which I thought had the effect of discrediting them. A person's words are not nearly so impressive when you have heard them already summarized and dissected by a news crew.

Points were made which I liked; points were made which I didn't. I await the day when a politician will arise and say, 'To harshly criticize the efforts of my opponent, which were made out of an earnest desire to serve this country, would fly in the face of all that is noble about it; and I shall therefore limit myself to telling you how I wish to serve you.' The politicians who chuckle at their own cutting remarks I find supremely annoying.

All this is, of course, irrelevant to the content, but this blog steers clear of politics.

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