Now that both conventions are over, do speeches really matter any more?

1. 56

   quatrainposted 11 years ago

   Now that both conventions are over, do speeches really matter any more?
   
   It's funny. I was entertained by the speeches but, unlike 4 years ago, I saw them as political theatre rather than something that really mattered. Filling up my car this morning took about $80. I sighed, and realized that no speech spoke to this. What about you?

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2. 74

   lone77starposted 11 years ago

   The pain at the pump is nothing compared to the pain in our Constitution.
   
   How many of our soldiers have died defending the Constitution of the United States? How many of our Founding Fathers suffered to give us the liberty our families have enjoyed until recently.
   
   Now, with Bush and Obama, we've seen the erosion of our liberties accelerated greatly. I don't like paying $80 or even $1000 at the pump, but these are nothing if we lose what America stands for. What will our soldiers be protecting if we lose our liberty?
   
   Bush started with the UnPatriot Act and gave us other reasons to worry. Then Obama promised to restore Habeas Corpus, but forgot that promise and went on to do even more damage with NDAA and its indefinite detention clauses for American citizens (without due process), Obama's Kill List (which includes American citizens), and Obama bypassing Congress and going to war with Libya at the recommendation of the UN.
   
   We're losing our country. It's no longer just a conspiracy theory any more. The New World Order that Bush Sr. gushed about on September 11, 1990 -- exactly 11 years before 9/11 -- is the same group that perpetrated 9/11 and then blamed it on convenient patsies in order to stir up a lucrative war. But more importantly, to give the government an excuse to ratchet up the death of America and the final dismantling of its meaning. Soon, we'll have the North American Union and the Amero as its currency. Financial analysts have already started talking about it.
   
   And, if what the late Aaron Russo said was correct, then Nick Rockefeller and the rest of his elite family knew about 9/11 long before it happened. Prior knowledge makes them complicit. Just look for the YouTube video on Aaron Russo's last interview with Alex Jones. And look at Bush's slip up when asked about his own prior knowledge of 9/11. I don't think I've ever seen a politician look so guilty. And why wouldn't he be guilty? He blocked every early effort to investigate 9/11 by others, and dragged his feet for over 400 days to investigate. He lied about WMDs and Al Qaeda camps in Iraq. And the government allowed the destruction of crime scene evidence starting on 9/11!

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3. 81

   Attikosposted 11 years ago

   Political speeches have mattered from the time of Demosthenes, no doubt longer. Our problem today is that we cannot believe anything we hear from presidential politicians. They have the funding to hire operatives, speech writers, focus group researchers, polling companies, policy strategists, and all the other professional image shapers they need to run a campaign in the era of instantaneous mass media. Nothing in their speeches can be taken at face value. A growing number of people see through the sham.
   
   A result of that is growing disillusionment and spreading cynicism. The political professionals know it, and so they have essentially given up trying to communicate their candidates' ideas to us. They have plunged all but totally into tearing down the other side's with negative campaigning in the hope theirs will be the last one standing. National politicians are now engineered products, not leaders. As the embarrassing show in Charlotte has just shown us, the platforms on which they stand are mere marketing materials, not statements of actual goals.
   
   Speeches reflect that reality. The political system is not working for us, it is an illusion machine. The bottom line is that, to answer this question directly, speeches do not matter, nor did they before or during the conventions.

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4. 78

   junksellerposted 11 years ago

   Of course they matter. We can blame them for being terrible, but we also have to blame ourselves for listening. That doesn't mean they necessarily matter because of  any depth of their content (if that even existed), but they will still matter based upon how far soundbites from them can go. Obama was driving 50,000 tweets a minute during his speech. Was there any great debate taking place? No of course not, it is more like a whole lot of superficial head-nodding. The side with the most bobble-heads wins. That's the way we do it today.

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