wo weeks ago, Mike Pence did something weird. Every day brings with it an opportunity to be freaked out by something new, so you have probably forgotten all about this by now, but what happened was the US vice president took to the podium at a Farmers and Ranchers for Trump rally in Iowa and started talking about meat in a loud, expressionless voice. “I’ve got some red meat for you,” he intoned. “WE’RE NOT GOING TO LET JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS CUT AMERICA’S MEAT,” he shouted, opening his mouth wide in that startling way of his, where the whole top of the face stays utterly immobile, eyes dead, and the lower jaw unhinges itself. It was a noticeably strange scene, and I’m sure people would have been taken aback even if safety concerns due to the pandemic hadn’t meant Pence was addressing a vastly reduced crowd. Pence’s cadences and rhythms, his habit of looking around in belligerent appeal while rocking himself backwards and forwards using the lectern as a support – these methods are suited to large, appreciative audiences whose cheers go at least some way to masking the outlandishness of what is being said. The way it usually goes with these things is Mike Pence or whoever says something unintentionally hilarious about cutting America’s meat, and the roars of the crowd make it clear that he is telling his audience what they want to hear. These speeches are meant to have a long afterlife, full of soundbites intended to be endlessly replayed on news shows. You’re meant to watch these clips and add “red meat” to the list of things that are apparently a huge deal in the upcoming American election. Look at all those people clapping and screaming away, you’re meant to think. None of them seem even slightly alarmed by this. But without the sorely needed buffer of an audience, however, a very different picture presents itself. All this wild talk of America’s meat was instead met by nothing more than a few concerned boos and some scattered applause. Every Donald Trump campaign event is tinged with a frighteningly odd air, but it’s even weirder now. No colourful balloons descending from the ceiling, no cues in the form of cheering, no idea how any of this is being received by anyone else. Just a very strange, very powerful person, standing in front of a bank of flags, telling lies. This issue goes a lot deeper than Pence and the farmers and ranchers, of course. Around the world and across the political spectrum, politicians are trying and failing to sound persuasive as they deliver speeches and give press conferences in front of small groups of people with at least 2 metres between them. It is always very hollow and unconvincing, so that you are forced to spend long hours contemplating the meaning of the phrase “political theatre”. They look so lost up there, rocking backwards and forwards on their lonely lecterns, trying their best to bring down the empty house. Speeches streamed from living rooms or empty classrooms are not much better, as last week’s Democratic national convention made clear. Even someone as charismatic as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could not quite pull it off, looking more and more worried as she delivered a brief speech full of soundbites, still pausing at all the bits where a crowd would usually cheer. This is not to deride her efforts, or to suggest that someone else might have risen to the occasion, because there is not a politician alive capable of delivering a truly memorable speech over Zoom. The medium simply does not permit the possibility. Watching the clips from the DNC, though, it was clear that the whole thing was undergirded by the attempt not to appear too strange. This attempt was not necessarily successful, but you could see they were trying hard. The general idea seemed to be that there was no point pretending that a conference held mainly over Zoom was an ideal situation, so best to at least tacitly acknowledge this fact. Best not to give any speeches in any large empty halls, screaming at no one, etc. But no such brief made its way to the people in charge of the Republican convention this week. Again, there is a gauzy film of unreality hanging over every thing these people say or do, and that would have been the case had they been delivering their lines in a packed convention centre. They were not doing that, though. Instead what they did was stand in cavernous halls that looked computer-generated despite allegedly being real, and simply freestyled. Or bellowed out stuff about the best being yet to come while the camera cut to a shot that emphasised the emptiness of the room. Or talked about Trump’s victory in 2016 being “one of the great evenings” to the accompaniment of individual stressed-out cheers and moans of approval. Or stood outside what looked like an extremely shoddy 3D rendering of a log cabin, but was in fact a real building. Or were Donald Trump’s shiny adult children standing near Greek Revival columns, sweating under the lights as they told lies about their dad. Pausing expectantly, again and again, for applause that was not coming. It turns out that the balloons and the crowds acted as an even more effective buffer than I would have guessed, in terms of lending even the thinnest veneer of credibility to these events. Without them, it is much easier to size up the situation for what it is and always has been: just unwarrantedly powerful person after unwarrantedly powerful person, standing in front of a bank of flags and lying. • Rosa Lyster is a writer who lives in Cape Town