Prem Thakker shares his sober realizations after two days at the DNC.

By Prem Thakker, Zeteo

My second day at the Democratic National Convention led to a realization. For all the talk about mass protests and heightened security, about disruption and the pro-Palestinian movement overtaking events, things have not materialized in a way that’s taken any kind of spotlight away from the DNC. If anything, the DNC – its delegates, the headline speeches, the whole vibe – seems so insulated that one could assume there isn’t a genocidal war, with more than 40,000 Palestinians killed, that the Biden-Harris administration is currently fueling. Based on how attendees have behaved, one could assume Gaza is no big deal really, a now-rote nuisance some have to merely account for in their daily motions.

“When they [the police] had ‘controlled’ the protest, everyone was watching it live on the CNN live feed in the bus,… [and] everyone started clapping and applauding,” a Democratic delegate told me in describing what happened on Monday as convention attendees passed time in a long line of delayed shuttles to the United Center. That’s worth repeating: DNC attendees cheered as the police “controlled” those protesting against what human rights groups worldwide call a genocide (a US-funded one). One murmur traveling across the bus, sparking much excitement, was that the police even used tear gas (something that did not, in fact, seem to happen).

Buses leading to the convention were stalled in part due to protest activity on Monday, according to the Secret Service, but “two other separate shuttle bus incidents caused significant bus delays,” CNN reported, and subsequent bottlenecks of entrances compounded the delays.

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