Those who have studied history’s most detestable regimes will instantly recognize the most sinister kind of political theater.
In a regime built on lies, the performance means everything.
On Thursday evening, former President Donald Trump and others took notice when Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris opened her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago by repeatedly thanking the crowd in a manner so awkward that it exuded the sort of phoniness one always finds at the core of history’s most rotten regimes.
“Too many ‘Thank yous,’ too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.
Indeed, Harris unleashed 23 “thank yous” in a mere 42 seconds.
In fact, by posting only the 42-second clip, Trump actually cut Harris some slack.
On the social media platform X, Tom Elliott of the online news multimedia marketplace Grabien posted a longer clip that showed Harris saying “thank you” 31 times in less than two minutes.
Kamala Harris says “thank you” 31 times to start DNC convention address pic.twitter.com/rvyK5qADzO
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 23, 2024
Was this a good move by Trump?
Yes: 95% (18 Votes)
No: 5% (1 Votes)
It is remarkable how the smallest things can reveal so much.
Remember, for instance, the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. After the bullets started flying, and for those terrible seconds that Trump remained on the ground, no one in the crowd fled.
Then, when the former president rose to his feet in defiance, a wave of relief and genuine joy ensued. Trump’s bravery cemented his years-long bond with the supporters who so obviously love him, in part because of his authenticity, in part because of the enemies he has made, and in part because those supporters know what he has sacrificed for the country’s sake.
Contrast that scene with the cheering crowd and Harris’s rapid-fire “thank yous” on Thursday.
For one thing, no one who cheered the vice president had actually cast a vote for her in the 2024 primaries. She only stood on that stage because party leaders had carried out a coup against President Joe Biden, the octogenarian who they knew could not string two coherent thoughts together, let alone defeat Trump.
Furthermore, those same Democrats had badly rejected Harris in the 2020 presidential primaries.
Thus, they did not love her. She cannot even claim to have their consent in any meaningful way. They merely played their part in the political theater that required them to clap like trained seals in order to legitimize the coronation.
As for Harris, the rapid-fire “thank yous” came across as anything but grateful. Instead, they looked like something a person might do if he or she had studied how grateful people behave.
In other words, the entire spectacle reinforced the massive authenticity problem plaguing Harris and the Democrats.
Having acknowledged as much, however, we cannot simply call them liars and phonies. We must remember what really matters to them, and why.
In short, for authoritarians and their propagandized victims, the performance is the entire point. If they suspected any real sincerity, they would probably find it suspect. After all, for the kind of power they hope to wield, they must banish all truth.
To illustrate, consider how one Chinese woman described her reaction to the Communist tyrant Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.
Jung Chang, author of “Wild Swans,” grew up during China’s catastrophic Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. By a series of chances, she encountered enough Western sources that privately she began to question Mao’s regime. By the end of Mao’s life, she had come to detest him.
Chang’s description of her reaction to Mao’s death, which she learned of while gathered outside with other students for a special broadcast from state media, spoke volumes.
“The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance,” she wrote.
Chang then turned to the crying woman in front of her.
She said, “I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick.”
No one believes that rank-and-file Democrats love Harris. Deep down, not even they believe that if given the choice they would have chosen her as their nominee. But they performed.
Likewise, no honest observer of human behavior believes that Harris expressed genuine gratitude, for that would have required Trump-like humility.
Thus, she too performed, for the performance is always the point.
