Convention Insanity

I was reading local blog posts talking about how much they wish they were in Denver at the moment. I thought the posts funny because I had decided to put off

If I had been able to pull off my plans. I would be in Denver at the moment.

Much as I want to get to the other side of the Zion Curtain, I decided to put off going to Denver for six months.

I am interested in things that build local communities. Coronation ceremonies don't build community. If the convention was about people exchanging ideas with the leadership of the party, then I think I would be there. But conventions are orchestrated media events where the anointed work to deliver a message honed for the maximum effect.

This applies to both D and R conventions. Political conventions are, by definition, a partisan event. As a partisan event, they don't build community. There is a tiny change that I could have scored an inbound link or two this blog and elevated it from the lowest possible technorati score of 1. I think I would have just been miserable.

I did watch Michelle Obama's speech on the tube. The message of change is that we should give up on the American Experiment that created a government that was well suited for the way life is, and change to a shiny new government designed for the way life ought to be.

The message was interesting in that I have been trying to figure out how to say just the opposite.

The Ancients through the Dark Ages held the ideal that happiness would come through the perfection of the centralized government ... The Empire. People fell for the line that the king (and the ruling class) lived as servants to the people. Serfs did horrible things to one another in the belief that the centralized government would take care of them when the emperor was strong.

The Renaissance and Enlightenment were defined by new intellectual efforts to apply reasoning to define the way life is, and to find the best way of governing a world the way that it is.

This effort came to fruition with the development of a slightly freer market, the protection of human rights and a limited government with democratically elected leaders. The system works. It is a shame that the people meeting in Denver want to end it.

The other thing I noticed about Michelle's speech. She spent the lion-share of the speech talking about the struggles of the working class. She spoke about people working themselves ragged to pay for health care and consumer goods. She lamented the people working two shifts to make ends meet and spoke about how it is nigh impossible for a person who is in the habit of living from pay check to pay check to pay for health care expenses.

Nowhere in the speech did she mention small business or ownership.

The paycheck to paycheck trap is untenable. There are two ways out of it. The first is for people to accept the world as it is, and for individual people to save in times of health to prepare for times of hardship. The second is to return to imperial dream where we have a massive centralized feudal system, and people hold to the delusion that the king is a servant to the people, as it ought to be.