The State of the Union
On Tuesday, February 4th, President Donald Trump will enter the United States Congress to deliver the completely superfluous tribal posturing ritual known as a “state of the union address.”
Upon his entry, he will slowly wend his way down the aisle toward the altar, like a bride about to marry his own ego, during which parade — or perp walk, depending on your perspective — he will be swarmed by Republican senators and congressman desperate to be seen on camera fawning and swooning over Trump, like middle school girls at a K-Pop concert.
During the speech, Trump will sound slow, sloppy, and occasionally confused, because he will be using a teleprompter, which is difficult for him. The reason this is difficult for him, and also the reason he speaks more or less extemporaneously at rallies, is simple and patently obvious: He cannot read very well, fumbles with words of more than two syllables, and cannot hold a written thought together in his mind well enough to find and remember the correct intonation and emphasis to make the sentences sound reasonably coherent, let alone like his own thoughts. His own thoughts are all, and always, of the extremely blunt, concrete, and superficial sort, ungrammatically expressed; hence, writing a speech for him — one meant to be read by him on live television — is an exercise in capturing the tone and temper of profound ignorance and semi-literacy, which in turn will have to be read in a manner that, though rehearsed, believably approximates that tone and temper. Perhaps William Faulkner could write such a speech, but American politics is a bit short on Faulkners at the moment.
At any rate, coherent or otherwise, during his speech Trump will say America is stronger than ever; the Republicans will cheer and rise to their feet, while the Democrats will sit on their hands and try to look stern for the cameras. He will boast that the economy is booming; Republicans will cheer, Democrats will sit on their hands trying to look stern. He will boast of having killed major terrorist leaders, including the Iranian general; Republicans will cheer wildly, many rising to their feet, while Democrats will sit on their hands and scowl, some of them playing on their phones to look distracted. He will announce the latest perfect Middle East peace plan, and vow America’s eternal support for Israel; Republicans will cheer loud and long, while the cameras “coincidentally” focus on Ted Cruz, who has expended the most effort of any Republican to position himself as an honorary Jew and personal crusader for Benjamin Netanyahu, but the Democrats will be silent, except Rashida Tlaib, who will be heard spitting on the House floor. He will mention “our great military, the greatest in the world, ever”; Republicans will cheer enthusiastically and shout “Yeah!,” but Democrats will be split between those who clap politely (36%) and those who sit on their hands and try to look annoyed in a manner that cannot be interpreted as anti-military (63.8%). (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and/or Rashida Tlaib will be caught on someone’s smartphone camera mouthing the word “fascists” at this moment.)
And so on and on, with clockwork predictability, until finally, the staged tribal cheering and scowling show will end, perhaps slightly earlier than the Best Picture announcement at the Oscars, and then the television news analysts will come on the air and spend two hours repeating the exact same rehearsed tribal formalities, though in their own sassy, quick-witted way.
That is what you would see, if you were naïve or self-hating enough to sacrifice an evening of your life watching such a phony spectacle.
Here, however, to cut through all that empty posing and posturing, is the real state of the American union, as of Monday, February 3rd, 2020.
Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire propagandist for global progressivism, believes the government should have the authority to regulate the size of drinks sold at restaurants, because he is a paternalist who is sure he knows how each person should live his daily life, and what choices each person should make, right down to the calorie count at the soft drink counter, and therefore that he deserves the coercive authority to force everyone to act and “choose” as he decrees. He has now decided that he ought to be President of the United States. Since the other Democrats running for president are at least as unpalatably totalitarian as he is — but less wealthy and New Yorkerish — the Democratic National Committee has decided to make accommodations to boost the visibility of his late-declared candidacy, in order to see if he might have a little more traction with ordinary people (sometimes euphemistically called “voters”) than the crotchety communists, Harvard Cherokees, and taxidermy vice-presidents currently on offer.
In response to this threat, Donald Trump, the leader of the free world, has taken to social media to mock Bloomberg for being short and to call him “Mini Mike,” just as he used the “Little Marco” taunt to demean Republican rival Marco Rubio. And the millions among Trump’s cult followers who also happen to be at least as vertically challenged as Bloomberg and Rubio will not take offense at their idol ridiculing another man’s shortness or suggesting a man can be too short to be president — because “Trump is god and always right, so none of his attacks about other people’s appearance or deficiencies apply to me” — just as they blithely ignored Trump’s use of the schoolyard bully stunt of chanting “Everybody hates Ted” to belittle another rival, or being so boorish as to ridicule a woman candidate’s appearance by shouting “Look at that face.”
Replying to Trump’s sub-moronic jibes, Bloomberg’s camp, proving beyond doubt that there is a sixth way to become a billionaire in America, beyond Robert Reich’s alleged five — namely to be dumber than a rock — fired back at Trump, calling him “a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity and his spray-on tan.”
Meanwhile, another Democratic presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren, has publicly promised that if she is elected, she will let “a young trans person” — a nine-year-old “transgender boy” to be precise — interview and vet her secretary of education. Yes, a nine-year-old child (I suppose the child will be ten after the election) who is being encouraged and aggrandized in his/her childish confusion about pre-sexual “identity” is going to decide who will be the United States’ secretary of education, in control of billions of tax dollars and holding significant (and utterly illegitimate) power to permanently influence the moral and intellectual development of most of the country’s children.
And those who dare to question Warren’s judgment on this, or her unhinged pandering to the Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn “prairie fire” types, are being vilified, by all the best Marxist tribunalists, as regressive and bigoted — for not turning their nation’s future over to a pre-pubescent child.
Republican voters, of course, are gleefully mocking the insanity of a leading Democrat proposing such an absurdity — while remaining not only sanguine, but positively enthusiastic, about having the nation’s entire federal cabinet vetted, and then casually fired and belittled on Twitter, by a Fox-News-addicted, narcissistic twelve-year-old mean girl with the most acute case of Napoleon complex in American presidential history.
“Members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, special guests, and my fellow Americans: I’m here tonight to proudly tell you that the state of our union is strong — strong smelling, that is, like all rotting meat.”
