Cheering at big rallies

First off, even though I noticed this listening to the DNC speeches, I don't want this to come across as partisan. Now that I notice, I know I've heard this same phenomenon at every political rally from which I've ever heard sound bytes and quite a few other places as well.

I was listening to Patrick Murphy's speech at the Democratic National Convention. It used to be up on youtube but it looks like it's gone now.

Here's a slightly enhanced transcript from the middle

For eight long years, we've had a president who rushed to stand in front of soldiers at political rallies but abandoned them at Walter Reed

[cheering by the crowd]

We had a president who spent billions on private contractors but not enough on body armor for our troops

[cheering by the crowd]

We had a president who was there for the photo-ops but AWOL when it came to doing right by our fellow veterans.

[cheering by the crowd]

For the first time I had the presence of mind to ask "Why are we cheering about veterans being left in inadequate medical facilities and failing to get the combat equipment they need?" Some of the cheering was reserved but a lot was definitely in the "WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE" vein.

Shouldn't these be fairly sobering statements? Shouldn't our next thoughts be to question why we haven't already fixed this? Congress approves the budget. The Democrats control the house and the senate. Why didn't they hold out for that body armor? Why aren't they passing bills to improve oversight of Veterans facilities?

As far as I can tell, these people can't wait 30 seconds to hear about how we might actually solve the problem. They smell blood. They know that since things are bad they are more likely to get what they want if they promise change. The fact that people are cheering the existence of problems because it might advance their cause means we have let a conflict of interest sneak in. I don't mean the kind of conflict of interest that fits through your front door. I'm talking about a conflict of interest you need an aircraft hanger door to let in. We have aparently created a situation where someone who wants to get something (election, promotion, etc) has a vested interest in 1) not helping out or 2) causing problems until the decision is made. Thats BAD. Attack of the 50 foot woman bad.

Of course I don't know what to do about any of this. Perhaps everyone at one of these conventions will get mild food poisoning and spend the rest of the convention vomitting. Then someone from the overworked food service lobby can get up at the "Stop Big Emotional Conventions" convention and give an exhilarating speech about how horrible that convention was where everyone puked their guts out.

Then we can all cheer long before they get to the part about the new handwashing public service campaign they are planning.