Over the last ten days I have watched -- reluctantly, I admit -- parts of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in the U.S.

            Long ago, I had to write essays to “compare and contrast” Shakespeare’s sonnets with, say, Wordsworth’s. Or John Milton’s metaphors versus T.S. Eliot’s.

            It can be an illuminating exercise. But it’s easier when you can lay out two manuscripts side by side.

            I wish technology enabled me to compare the two political conventions side by side. Perhaps with 30 seconds of this audio, then 30 seconds of that one. So that I could flip back and forth, instead of relying on memory of two separate events.

            Still, the most obvious difference was visual. The Republican convention paid lip service to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its body language didn’t. During the speeches by both Melania and Donald Trump, Republican dignitaries sat cheek-to-cheek, buttwise. No physical separation. No masks that I could see. Lots of handshaking and back-patting.

            The Democratic convention didn’t have masks either. But they didn’t need them. No one else in the room – they actually practiced isolation.

Word choices

             Joe Biden’s acceptance speech included some words I don’t recall hearing recently: respect, dignity, compassion… Along with equality and justice -- keywords for the liberal stream of U.S. politics.

            Biden also made a revealing comment. He said, at one point, “I give you my word,” implying that one’s word should be as good as one’s billions.

            Political commentators called it the finest speech Biden has ever given. I wouldn’t know -- I have never paid attention to him before. Disclosure: I am not a Joe Biden fan. Anyone who has spent 47 years in politics cannot help being part of the status quo.

            If I were an American voter -- and I thank God I’m not -- my sympathies would lie with Bernie Sanders. There, now you know my bias.

            By contrast, the words I heard from the Republican convention leaned heavily on war metaphors. Melania Trump referred to mothers as “warriors.” Several speakers defined Democrats as “the enemy.” Everyone touted “law and order” -- even as a law-and-order representative shot a black man in the back, seven times.

Under attack

            Republicans see America as being under attack. By socialism. By vandals and looters. By pro-abortion lobbies. By mail-ballot fraud.

            “Don’t let them steal this election from you,” Trump warned.

            And, of course, under attack by fake or false news on the mass media.

            The Washington Post has been tracking of Donald Trump’s own false or misleading statements. On July 9, it claimed, Trump topped 20,000 disprovable assertions -- including 62 on that one day alone.

            Fake news, of course.

            The two conventions also seemed to rely on different sources of authority.

            Democrats generally cited verifiable facts and figures. Economic and employment data. Statistics from the Centres for Disease Control. Research by international agencies.

            Although I cannot now find the specific quotation, I’m sure I heard Biden promise to listen to scientists, researchers, doctors -- people who know what they’re talking about.

            Exactly the people Trump doesn’t listen to. Especially if they disagree with him on injecting oneself with household bleach or taking medications that delay COVID-19 recovery.

            Rather than bushels of facts, Republicans generally emulated Trump himself and poured out superlatives: the most critical election, the greatest threat, the worst crisis, the biggest fraud…

            Biden, by contrast, closed with “love is more powerful than hate, hope is more powerful than fear, and light is more powerful than dark.”

            The nominees’ faces mirrored that difference in style. Biden looked impassioned, but never angry. Trump looked pugnacious -- chin stuck out, mouth turned down, glowering, itching for a fight.

            I saw him smile only once -- when Melania praised him.

Literacy, or not

            Stephen Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, documents in massive detail the cruelties that used to be commonplace in western society: “slavery, serfdom, disemboweling, bear-baiting, cat-burning, heretic-burning, witch-drowning, thief-hanging, public execution, displaying rotting corpses on gibbets, flogging, keelhauling…”

            Today, Pinker says, those practices have gone from “unexceptional to unthinkable.”

            He attributes the change to literacy. When you read, Pinker argues, you are exposed to someone else’s thoughts. You enter someone else’s mind, if only temporarily.

            You can no longer be unshakeably sure that your convictions are the way things have always been, forever and ever amen.

            If indeed literacy is a key, the difference between the two nominees for president becomes even more stark. Joe Biden’s acceptance speech at the end of the Democratic convention proved he could put together a series of sentences with a coherent message. Donald Trump’s two acceptance speeches, on the first day of the Republican convention and the last evening, proved that he couldn’t.

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Copyright © 2020 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                       To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

I didn’t expect last week’s column, about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrant farm workers, would meet everybody’s approval. Indeed, Penny Gambell, a friend and a member of the congregation I belong to, telephoned me to say that I had not been fair to farmers and orchardists who have to –among other things – pay migrant workers while they’re in two weeks isolation, and pay their airfares to get here. 

In the column, I noted that the Scotlynn Group had been unable to hire Canadian workers. Tom Watson suggested there might be “a reason they couldn't get workers. The Toronto Star had an article on June 23 after the third migrant worker from that farm died from COVID-19, and stated that ‘the multimillion-dollar produce farm is the site of one of the province’s largest recorded COVID-19 outbreaks. That farm has had a long history of complaints due to working conditions’.”

Gayle Simonson  wondered about “the amount of fresh food wasted, presumably because of the shut-down of the hospitality industry. Surely most Canadians are still eating their usual amounts so markets are still there. Does that mean that there is normally a terrific amount of waste within the hospitality industry?”

            JT: I would guess that the hospitality industry has to prepare for a full house, just in case. 

“I think we will see many times of reckoning over the next few years,” Isabel Gibson suggested, “as we struggle to adjust our business and consumption practices to reflect a more-sustainable approach.

            “Is it fair to pay workers from a low-wage country less than Canadians earn for equivalent work? I don't know. If the compensation is considered as ‘fair trade’ for a certain level of effort -- something that buys an equivalent level of creature comforts and security in one's home country -= then it might be.

            “What it is not, I think, is sustainable.

            “I suspect most things we have now will cost more under pandemic conditions, and the adjustments are just starting.”

My column brought back memories for Ruth Buzzard. 

            She wrote, “I spent Grade 10 at Kelowna High, just the one year, as a visitor from Vancouver where I went to school with you. To my utter surprise, about the middle of September it was announced that everybody was going to go and pick apples for two weeks. So schoolwork was paused and the entire school picked apples until the harvest was in.  No choice. I think they paid us, but I ate so many apples I don’t think I made anything. I still can’t eat a Delicious apple.”

Keith  Simmonds offered words of praise: “I am always uplifted by your thoughtful consideration of those who live on the edge of society and culture. In many ways you continue bringing us to attend to those otherwise unconsidered or unheard in the larger discourse or the confined spaces of our minds.”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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                       And for those of you who like poetry, you might check my webpage https://quixotic.ca/My-Poetry. Recently I posted a handful of haiku, something I was experimenting with. If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca, or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blank email (no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca (If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

                       Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

                       I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

                       Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

                       The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.