On The Matter of the State of the Union.
Jan. 30th, 2018 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[This, too, can be excluded, as it is tagged appropriately.]
The Constitution of the United States only mandates that "from time to time", the President must address the Congress and give them information about various aspects of the world and the state of the Union. Over time, partially from practice and a lot from tradition, it has become an unofficial idea that the President addresses the Congress once per year during the time when the President holds the office.
Tonight was the first run at it for the current administrator. I am working off of the NPR annotated transcript for the speech itself, which also has video of the remarks as delivered, and the NPR annotated transcript of the Democratic response. which also has video of those remarks as delivered.
To the initial speech. The introduction aims to summarize the year previous, which has a fairly high count of disaster, both by nature and by humans, to it. It also jumps straight into the recognition of people, something that could be seen as a way of trying to pull focus away from the polarization of people's opinions on the administrator and into territory where there might be common ground, such as the recognition of heroism in the country. The choices of a firefighter and a Coast Guard captain, meant to call forth stock images of heroism, may instead evoke a bitter opinion as they bring to light the natural disasters that the government's response has been wholly inadequate for.
The next selection, a Congresscritter who was nearly killed by a shooter, betrays that the underlying cause for the shooting was a significant increase in partisan rhetoric, to the point where a person thought that firing upon elected representatives as they were practicing for an inter-party softball game was an acceptable course of action. We are quite happy that the Representative is alive and recovered, in the same way we were happy that Representative Giffords was also able to recover. But the reasons behind those acts of violence undermine any good that can be gathered from the swift action of those who prevented the tragedy from spreading, or claiming lives.
The claim to unite and set aside differences, likewise, rings so far out of tune that one might be forgiven for hearing a completely different pitch than the intended one. The actions of the current administration seems very focused on fulfilling the desires of their partisans much more than on governance or on helping the rest of the country survive.
Strategically, it's a good idea to then go talk about the economy and taxes. Admittedly, every administrator believes they have more control over jobs, wages, and economic growth than they actually do, but the current administrator ran on a platform that insisted that massive tax cuts, deregulation, and giving corporate entities and the rich whatever they wanted would result in an improved economy and better things for everyone. If you go solely by the stock market, you could be fooled into believing that he had delivered on that promise. If you are one of the wealthiest people in the country, you can certainly rejoice in your own newfound largesse, even though it comes with exactly no strings or direction to use it to help others or improve their lives. Which makes it strategically interesting to have found someone to tout who is a small business owner and doing the things that will make people believe corporate titans are doing the same thing, reinvesting their prosperity into wages, new hires, and expansion of business. Which as the annotation points out, might be happening, but not necessarily fully focused in the United States.
The pivot after the economy, however, is the sort of thing that will make the neighborhood canines perk their ears up and possibly set up a howl.
To further entangle the issue and attempt to gather legitimacy towards actions and ideas that are decidedly not as far in the mainstream as the administrator would like to believe, he calls out a person who started a movement to place American flags on the graves of veterans, who are conveniently not alive any more to tell us what their opinion of the matter might be, especially those veterans that have served in the conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who might also have a contrary opinion to the jingoism the administrator wants to cultivate, and that continues on in the insistences that the country is united in their willingness to say and respect a pledge that references a specific conception of deity and that makes claims that minorities in this country have long proclaimed are not being fulfilled, that judges who believe the literal words of men of the 18th century are more important than the concepts they attempted to enshrine, and that the reign of guns shall live forever more, unchecked and unhindered by any notions of responsibility or restrictions on the owning or use of those guns. It's very much playing to a particular base that has been supportive of the administration because it's the kind of world they believe already existed and that would be utopic for everyone else to be forced into.
Then there are automobile talks. If the administrator wanted to remove "government mandates that crippled America's great, beautiful auto workers, so that we can get motor city revving its engines again," as he proclaimed, his most effective action would be to fire the state government of Michigan responsible for the Flint poisoning, all emergency managers appointed by the Governor, and sweep cleansing fire through the halls of power in the state for their continued interference and usurpation of local power in predominately minority spaces. That won't happen, of course. And, as before, while there may be an uptick of automotive manufacturing in the United States, there's a lot more of it going on in other parts of the world.
The continued tough talk and lack of results on trade and international relations works against the promises being made by the administrator, although he is quite right that the infrastructure of the country is in dire need of repair. Which could be accomplished with tax revenues and government spending programs, as his predecessor did, but the administrator is wrong-footed in assuming that local bureaucracy is the major cause of why infrastructure improvements haven't happened and in further assuming that states, localities, and the private sector can manage to raise the amounts they would need to do infrastructure themselves.
And all of that assumes that a person is actually able to work, which is not at all true for a good portion of the population. The disabled also deserve dignity and the ability to live their lives without having to exhaust and bankrupt themselves before the government will step in to help them. We can make the system better than it is, certainly, but that usually means having to stand up to corporations and demand they and the rich use their excesses of wealth to support the people who are less wealthy. I can't see that as being a position this administrator takes, even if he advocates for more technical training and supports paid family leave (which is then expected to be funded through unemployment insurance taxes, according to the annotation.)
And because it's this administrator, he can't go a major speech without providing all sorts of insult to immigrants who have darker skin than him, by choosing to highlight a tragedy of gang violence and then blame undocumented immigrants for it, following it up with the story of border patrol agents and other deporters who have been at work sending the undocumented out of the country. By juxtaposing these stories, he's hoping to create a linkage that immigrants, and especially undocumented immigrants, are criminals, gang members, and people who deserve to be sent out of the country. Which was one of his major campaign messages, as well, despite how painful, hurtful, and playing into the hands of white supremacists and other disreputable people it is. That would make it easier to justify the spending on physical border walls, reduced immigration visas from places he doesn't like, and further linkages between people who commit acts of terror and people with brown or black skin. He does not say word one about people with white skin who commit acts of terror, some of them far worse than the things that the administrator is laying at the feet of darker-skinned people.
His talk about making drug problems better is supposedly bolstered by a story about a man who chose to adopt the baby of a woman who was pregnant and using opioid drugs. That's pretty non-sequitur, unless the administrator believes that adopting all the babies of mothers using drugs is a solution to the problem.
And his idea of making the United States seem powerful and worthy of respect is rooted very firmly in the strength of arms and nuclear methods of destruction, as if he can't quite bring to himself the idea that his predecessor's diplomatic overtures might have done real work in raising the stature of the United States in the world. The current administrator wants there to be an Us and a Them, and the Them are terrorists and persons who don't deserve any mercy from the United States. To the point of wrecking any possibility for peace between Israel and the Palestinian authority through a widely-criticized move to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. (As the annotations point out, even solid allies of the United States criticized the move.) And to the point of trying very hard to antagonize North Korea into doing something that can provide a response.
The general form of the speech is rather interesting - it's been built around the stories of the people who have been invited to witness the speech, with matters of policy put in as if they were responses to the situations described. It's different that the previous administration, that often like to put their policy matters forth first and then use the stories of the people attending as accents and highlights of the policy decisions, or people that will soon be receiving the benefits of those decisions. It almost makes the administration seem more reactionary than proactive, which is probably not the kind of image they want to project.
And only the Netherworld knows what will come out of the investigations and other inquiries still going on in the Congress and through the appointed special prosecutor.
On, then, to the official response, situated in a technical college, delivered by a Kennedy. The Loyal Opposition has already missed a trick in their choice of speaker - Senators Warren or Duckworth, or Representative Pelosi would have been a likely superior selection for delivery, if one absolutely felt like there had to be someone noteworthy in front, but the best choice would probably have been Senator Kamala Harris, who has notoriety and the lived experience to make the speech sound a lot less like a white dude chosen for something that others would have been better for, selected mostly on the strength of the name he carries, trying to invoke the power of the past, instead of paying attention and honoring the present.
Especially with the opening salvo about how the last year has not just been about partisanship (it has), but also about positioning things so that the weakest and poorest have to fight amongst themselves, bereft of protections from the richer, the majority, and the government, making it even less safe for them than it was before. And if someone were to dismiss it as "women" coming from their mouths, it would only make things stronger for the womens' marches and those people who are committed to bringing equity.
In fact, the speech itself is talking a lot about the poor, women, minorities, and other people who have been traditionally stomped on by the rich white men that the current administrator wants to court as allies. It's tailor-made for someone who is part of all the marches, the movements, the continual protests and actions being taken every day in all parts of the country. The Loyal Opposition, if they wanted to differentiate themselves and stay in the mind of the people as the party that elected the previous administrator and damn near put a woman in the White House last year, could have let the white men take a big step back and highlight the women, the people of color, and the fantastic results those people have been getting in running for offices in special elections. The millions (and millions!) who have marched, whether adorned with pink hats, under the banner of the Movement for Black Lives, pushing for a vastly-increased minimum wage or a living wage that can allow them to work one job instead of five.
Of course, that might mean the Loyal Opposition would have to stake itself out as a leftist party in actuality, rather than just being the party to the left of the authoritarians. If they would do that, then there might be the potential for real debate and discussion about policy and the value and direction of government. Until then, though, I suppose we should expect more white men claiming to understand the plight of people whose lived experience is vastly different than their own.
The Constitution of the United States only mandates that "from time to time", the President must address the Congress and give them information about various aspects of the world and the state of the Union. Over time, partially from practice and a lot from tradition, it has become an unofficial idea that the President addresses the Congress once per year during the time when the President holds the office.
Tonight was the first run at it for the current administrator. I am working off of the NPR annotated transcript for the speech itself, which also has video of the remarks as delivered, and the NPR annotated transcript of the Democratic response. which also has video of those remarks as delivered.
To the initial speech. The introduction aims to summarize the year previous, which has a fairly high count of disaster, both by nature and by humans, to it. It also jumps straight into the recognition of people, something that could be seen as a way of trying to pull focus away from the polarization of people's opinions on the administrator and into territory where there might be common ground, such as the recognition of heroism in the country. The choices of a firefighter and a Coast Guard captain, meant to call forth stock images of heroism, may instead evoke a bitter opinion as they bring to light the natural disasters that the government's response has been wholly inadequate for.
The next selection, a Congresscritter who was nearly killed by a shooter, betrays that the underlying cause for the shooting was a significant increase in partisan rhetoric, to the point where a person thought that firing upon elected representatives as they were practicing for an inter-party softball game was an acceptable course of action. We are quite happy that the Representative is alive and recovered, in the same way we were happy that Representative Giffords was also able to recover. But the reasons behind those acts of violence undermine any good that can be gathered from the swift action of those who prevented the tragedy from spreading, or claiming lives.
The claim to unite and set aside differences, likewise, rings so far out of tune that one might be forgiven for hearing a completely different pitch than the intended one. The actions of the current administration seems very focused on fulfilling the desires of their partisans much more than on governance or on helping the rest of the country survive.
Strategically, it's a good idea to then go talk about the economy and taxes. Admittedly, every administrator believes they have more control over jobs, wages, and economic growth than they actually do, but the current administrator ran on a platform that insisted that massive tax cuts, deregulation, and giving corporate entities and the rich whatever they wanted would result in an improved economy and better things for everyone. If you go solely by the stock market, you could be fooled into believing that he had delivered on that promise. If you are one of the wealthiest people in the country, you can certainly rejoice in your own newfound largesse, even though it comes with exactly no strings or direction to use it to help others or improve their lives. Which makes it strategically interesting to have found someone to tout who is a small business owner and doing the things that will make people believe corporate titans are doing the same thing, reinvesting their prosperity into wages, new hires, and expansion of business. Which as the annotation points out, might be happening, but not necessarily fully focused in the United States.
The pivot after the economy, however, is the sort of thing that will make the neighborhood canines perk their ears up and possibly set up a howl.
Together, we are rediscovering the American way. In America, we know that faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, are the center of American life. The motto is in God we trust. And we celebrate our police, our military and our amazing veterans as heroes who deserve our total and unwavering support.The Movement for Black Lives, and all the people who have routinely seen and suffered at the hands of police, strongly disagree with you, and with good reason. Furthermore, there are more than enough people in this country whose faith is not the one you have adopted, whose families are of their own choosing, and who are able to be fully themselves thanks to the protections ordered and enshrined by government and the courts and carried out by the bureaucracy that you seem so keen to dismantle or corrupt to another purpose.
To further entangle the issue and attempt to gather legitimacy towards actions and ideas that are decidedly not as far in the mainstream as the administrator would like to believe, he calls out a person who started a movement to place American flags on the graves of veterans, who are conveniently not alive any more to tell us what their opinion of the matter might be, especially those veterans that have served in the conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, who might also have a contrary opinion to the jingoism the administrator wants to cultivate, and that continues on in the insistences that the country is united in their willingness to say and respect a pledge that references a specific conception of deity and that makes claims that minorities in this country have long proclaimed are not being fulfilled, that judges who believe the literal words of men of the 18th century are more important than the concepts they attempted to enshrine, and that the reign of guns shall live forever more, unchecked and unhindered by any notions of responsibility or restrictions on the owning or use of those guns. It's very much playing to a particular base that has been supportive of the administration because it's the kind of world they believe already existed and that would be utopic for everyone else to be forced into.
Then there are automobile talks. If the administrator wanted to remove "government mandates that crippled America's great, beautiful auto workers, so that we can get motor city revving its engines again," as he proclaimed, his most effective action would be to fire the state government of Michigan responsible for the Flint poisoning, all emergency managers appointed by the Governor, and sweep cleansing fire through the halls of power in the state for their continued interference and usurpation of local power in predominately minority spaces. That won't happen, of course. And, as before, while there may be an uptick of automotive manufacturing in the United States, there's a lot more of it going on in other parts of the world.
The continued tough talk and lack of results on trade and international relations works against the promises being made by the administrator, although he is quite right that the infrastructure of the country is in dire need of repair. Which could be accomplished with tax revenues and government spending programs, as his predecessor did, but the administrator is wrong-footed in assuming that local bureaucracy is the major cause of why infrastructure improvements haven't happened and in further assuming that states, localities, and the private sector can manage to raise the amounts they would need to do infrastructure themselves.
We want every American to know the dignity of a hard day's work. We want every child to be safe in their home at night. And we want every citizen to be proud of this land that we all love so much. We can lift our citizens from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity.I recognize this tune, and it sucks. As the annotation notes, a lot of people receiving government assistance to make ends meet are not doing so because they're not working, it's because the work they are doing isn't paying them enough to make ends meet. It's terrible that someone can be employed full-time, possibly even more than full-time, and still not actually be making enough money because the jobs they have are too low in salaries or rely on fluctuating income sources like tips. Some states and municipalities are trying to get their workers to a wage they can live on, but if this administrator wants to drop the rolls of people who are receiving government assistance, he should be at the forefront of advocating for a wage that actually sustains a person.
And all of that assumes that a person is actually able to work, which is not at all true for a good portion of the population. The disabled also deserve dignity and the ability to live their lives without having to exhaust and bankrupt themselves before the government will step in to help them. We can make the system better than it is, certainly, but that usually means having to stand up to corporations and demand they and the rich use their excesses of wealth to support the people who are less wealthy. I can't see that as being a position this administrator takes, even if he advocates for more technical training and supports paid family leave (which is then expected to be funded through unemployment insurance taxes, according to the annotation.)
And because it's this administrator, he can't go a major speech without providing all sorts of insult to immigrants who have darker skin than him, by choosing to highlight a tragedy of gang violence and then blame undocumented immigrants for it, following it up with the story of border patrol agents and other deporters who have been at work sending the undocumented out of the country. By juxtaposing these stories, he's hoping to create a linkage that immigrants, and especially undocumented immigrants, are criminals, gang members, and people who deserve to be sent out of the country. Which was one of his major campaign messages, as well, despite how painful, hurtful, and playing into the hands of white supremacists and other disreputable people it is. That would make it easier to justify the spending on physical border walls, reduced immigration visas from places he doesn't like, and further linkages between people who commit acts of terror and people with brown or black skin. He does not say word one about people with white skin who commit acts of terror, some of them far worse than the things that the administrator is laying at the feet of darker-skinned people.
His talk about making drug problems better is supposedly bolstered by a story about a man who chose to adopt the baby of a woman who was pregnant and using opioid drugs. That's pretty non-sequitur, unless the administrator believes that adopting all the babies of mothers using drugs is a solution to the problem.
And his idea of making the United States seem powerful and worthy of respect is rooted very firmly in the strength of arms and nuclear methods of destruction, as if he can't quite bring to himself the idea that his predecessor's diplomatic overtures might have done real work in raising the stature of the United States in the world. The current administrator wants there to be an Us and a Them, and the Them are terrorists and persons who don't deserve any mercy from the United States. To the point of wrecking any possibility for peace between Israel and the Palestinian authority through a widely-criticized move to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. (As the annotations point out, even solid allies of the United States criticized the move.) And to the point of trying very hard to antagonize North Korea into doing something that can provide a response.
The general form of the speech is rather interesting - it's been built around the stories of the people who have been invited to witness the speech, with matters of policy put in as if they were responses to the situations described. It's different that the previous administration, that often like to put their policy matters forth first and then use the stories of the people attending as accents and highlights of the policy decisions, or people that will soon be receiving the benefits of those decisions. It almost makes the administration seem more reactionary than proactive, which is probably not the kind of image they want to project.
And only the Netherworld knows what will come out of the investigations and other inquiries still going on in the Congress and through the appointed special prosecutor.
On, then, to the official response, situated in a technical college, delivered by a Kennedy. The Loyal Opposition has already missed a trick in their choice of speaker - Senators Warren or Duckworth, or Representative Pelosi would have been a likely superior selection for delivery, if one absolutely felt like there had to be someone noteworthy in front, but the best choice would probably have been Senator Kamala Harris, who has notoriety and the lived experience to make the speech sound a lot less like a white dude chosen for something that others would have been better for, selected mostly on the strength of the name he carries, trying to invoke the power of the past, instead of paying attention and honoring the present.
Especially with the opening salvo about how the last year has not just been about partisanship (it has), but also about positioning things so that the weakest and poorest have to fight amongst themselves, bereft of protections from the richer, the majority, and the government, making it even less safe for them than it was before. And if someone were to dismiss it as "women" coming from their mouths, it would only make things stronger for the womens' marches and those people who are committed to bringing equity.
In fact, the speech itself is talking a lot about the poor, women, minorities, and other people who have been traditionally stomped on by the rich white men that the current administrator wants to court as allies. It's tailor-made for someone who is part of all the marches, the movements, the continual protests and actions being taken every day in all parts of the country. The Loyal Opposition, if they wanted to differentiate themselves and stay in the mind of the people as the party that elected the previous administrator and damn near put a woman in the White House last year, could have let the white men take a big step back and highlight the women, the people of color, and the fantastic results those people have been getting in running for offices in special elections. The millions (and millions!) who have marched, whether adorned with pink hats, under the banner of the Movement for Black Lives, pushing for a vastly-increased minimum wage or a living wage that can allow them to work one job instead of five.
Of course, that might mean the Loyal Opposition would have to stake itself out as a leftist party in actuality, rather than just being the party to the left of the authoritarians. If they would do that, then there might be the potential for real debate and discussion about policy and the value and direction of government. Until then, though, I suppose we should expect more white men claiming to understand the plight of people whose lived experience is vastly different than their own.
