Watching the Republican National Convention tonight, I realized that it has eerie similarities to another gathering which makes my skin crawl. Burning Man, which recently took place in the Black Rock desert in Nevada, consists of a very large group of people who descend on an otherwise rarely talked about destination.
They party for about a week and act as if they are solving the world's problems with their superior knowledge of How Things Work, although the only ones who seem to benefit are those who actually attend.
In order to celebrate, they wear ridiculous outfits that involve one or all of the following: large (often sparkle-encrusted) hats, feather boas and cowboy boots. They carry homemade signs with messages that make no sense, pop prescription drugs and break into awkward and ill-advised dances.
They get all hyped up together touting unity and spouting off a bunch of vague but impassioned ideas about how things should be when, in reality, they are a bunch of privileged white people obsessed with blowing things up.
Both groups are delusional enough to think that they are not hurting the environment, and though Burning Man culminates with "the man" being burnt down, while the RNC ends with a man being exulted, in the end you suspect that everyone came all of the way there just for a glimpse of someone's breasts.
