The Democratic Nominating Committee from August 17-20, 2020 presented one of the most diverse, racially and ideologically, line up of speakers ever seen at a nominating convention. Many of the speeches resonated with fearful and disappointed voters. Many inspired me to do more to put Biden in the White House. President Obama, Michele Obama, Joe Biden, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Kristin Urquiza, whose father died from COVID-19 to start. Before the convention I’d said many times that I did not care who was running as the democratic nominee or his VP, I was voting straight Blue regardless. After the convention, my vote on November 3 became more than a vote against Trump-Pence. It became a vote for Biden-Harris.
Next up was up was the Republican National Convention, August 24-27,2020. The line up of RNC speakers should be looked at not just in turns of who is speaking but who is not speaking. Only one Republican facing a difficult re-election fight, no seasoned politicians but everybody but the children in Trump’s family. At a convention already rife with Hatch Act violations, alt-right conspi-RACISTS and revisionism, Melania Trump took the stage.
Her speech was hyped to high heaven as the most important speech of her life so expectations were running high. And then she spoke (read the full text of her speech here and analysis here and here) and high expectations gave way to appeals to temper our expectations and a slew of main stream media tempered reviews.
In typical Trump fashion, she pointed down and told us it was up. She could not even manufacture a creditable record of public service since becoming FLOTUS and no one anywhere has conjured before the inauguration. But this isn’t the subject of my post. My purpose here is to call out the reception her speech received from some people and some media (Trump supporters and Fox aside).
I’m a horrible chess player. I get tense like the outcome of WWIII is riding on the game. I am so afraid that I’ll make a mistake that I make not what you would call a mistake but a blunder. With 10 good moves on the board, I’ll make the one that will checkmate me in one. I wish I were better because if I were better I’d play more. There’s that whole thing of chess and intelligence that makes you fearful you’ll demonstrate how little you have so a loss is more painful than it should be. This feeling that I’m failing an IQ test when I lose a game of chess extends to games in which I am playing the engine in a chess app. It doesn’t go away even when I am playing a machine in a game nobody knows I’m playing but me. My thing now is logic puzzles – ironically they hone the same skills.
