And then it was pointed out to me tonight that the speech he gave at the DNC wasn't for me. He already knows how I'm gonna vote. He wasn't talking to me. I am not part of his target demographic.
Ouch? Yeah! As much as I hate to admit it, it bruises the ego. And my pigeonholing can really be boiled down to two major factors: my profession & my age. Damn it: I'm predictable.
Okay, okay. Get over it. I'm not special. I'm not a wounded vet. I'm not a displaced autoworker from Michigan. I'm just another average American, right?
But no. There is NO AVERAGE AMERICAN. This thing bugs me. I'm still discovering why it bugs me, but it does. It's not new, but it's new to my consciousness. Every single one of the candidates in this primary/election season has peppered their oratory with biographical snippets of "average Americans". "The autoworker in Detroit", "The single mother in Chicago", "The abandoned veteran"... It's the statistical bullshit that wears at me. Even if a candidate were to reference five hundred sound-byte-anecdotal-neatly-packaged biographies of "average" Americans over the course of their campaign it would be no where near a big enough sample set for a country of hundreds of millions of people. Even though it's perfectly acceptable semantic logic to use a series of micro examples to support a macro thesis, this stuff is statistically flawed. The macro outweighs the micro so heavily that the experiential support of these true stories becomes irrelevant.
Yes, it's nice to hear about "real" people. But it's a maneuver. Can you imagine if you had a week to tour the United States and your only job was to talk to "regular folks" and get their opinions about STUFF? I think you'd likely be able to assemble a dozen testimonials to support just about any cause.
Whether you like the candidate or not, it's a maneuver.
Are these speeches meant for me?
2 comments:
I hear what you are saying. But isn't a leader's job to make communities feel united enough to get shit done? And sometimes people unite under empty symbols (the notion of the average American) without discussion, because if you really investigated what the symbol meant no one would agree and the group would fracture. It may be manipulative, but its also practical, in my mind anyway.
I suppose by their very nature, symbols are meant to represent, not to define. But is it practical to unite under emptiness?
I don't know. I guess I'm just naive enough to be surprised by the realization that these are the tools of politicians. Even politicians I like.
Post a Comment