Union.state == strong?

[silveradept]

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

And after the possibility that there might not be one, the thing was delayed while the government itself got stood up after he shut it down in petulance over not getting his way now that he has actual opposition.

We have, for your usual perusal, a transcription (interspersed with some amount of fact-checking) for the address. It also will autoplay the actual address itself, if you are so inclined to listen as you follow along. Although, from the looks of things, there are things to see that aren't covered in the transcription, so you may have to follow along, at least with the sound off.

What starts as something making gestures toward working together quickly devolves into something significantly more partisan. (I also find it telling that the first item mentioned of historical significane is not the scientific achievement that it took to get people to the surface of Luna and back home again, but the military instance of turning back the Third Reich from Europe.)

As is traditional for an administrator, he takes credit for an economy he may not have actually had any sort of hand in creating, including job numbers and low unemployment numbers, and in things he might have actually had a hand in, like increased wages and lowered taxes. (Mentioning the estate tax is throwing red meat to the base, though, as most ordinary people would never benefit from it.)

That the administrator is proud of cutting lots of regulations in a short amount of time strongly suggests that very little thought went into whether or not those regulations were there for a reason, and what function they serve.

And then comes a line that probably would have had a recordscratch had it come from any other administrator, where the investigations of the administration and the campaign are called partisan and placed in opposition to the good function and order of the government.

If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.

It sounds suspiciously like a partisan demanding that the very real and important investigations into possibly criminal behavior (behavior that has already resulted in criminal convictions, we might note) must be stopped if there is to be any sort of legislation passed. (And to talk about persons stalled in the Senate usually receives one response: Merrick Garland, Merrick Garland, Merrick Garland.) It sounded remarkably Nixonian.

Beyond that, the administrator then calls out a couple of people whose sentences were commuted or they were released for nonviolent drug offenses. Which is progress, yes, but it would be facile not to point out that the situations that produced these stories were engendered by a draconian drug policy. And also, we note, that both of the people mentioned there are explicitly described to have been good Christians in prison, which likely assisted in making them good examples for the administrator and his base to use. Progress is progress, but there's still more than enough people out there who believe, enforce, and increase the disparity in who gets arrested and sentenced for drug offenses, whether they're good Christians or not. It's not a coincidence that both of the people noted and given specific stories are black.

Partisanship returns in a segment about the nonexistent threat of being overrun by immigrants and asylum-seekers at a lawless border that Mexico is apparently encouraging. It's fantasy of the highest order, one regularly flogged, and in this case, sending more troops to protect against this fantasy and speaking plenty of falsehoods about what the reality of the situation is. Xenophobia has always been part of his platform, and reality has no business trying to assert itself if it is in contraindication to his constructed fantasy. If he were interested in fixing the problem instead of stoking fears, he would be much more interested in disrupting the actual channels of shipping, rather than believing that it's a matter of people crossing at unattended spaces. And he would realize that immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes. (And that it takes more than physical barriers to accomplish these things.)

Then, proving that every speech needs more than just SPAG-checking, the administrator complimented women thoroughly by pointing out they're taking most of the new jobs, and that there are more women in jobs and in the legislature than there had been ever before. I'm fairly certain he didn't get the implications that many of those women were there because of him, his judicial nominees, and the way that he has been the best and most consistent motivator for women to unseat Republicans and other men and put themselves in power.

He's better when he comes back to the script about blaming someone else for trade imbalances, and for calling for something that everyone has been calling for and nobody seems the slightest bit interested in actually building - infrastructure. And talking about possible transparency measures for insurers, hospitals, drug companies, and other entities that make profit by denying care or arbitrarily raising or changing their prices without any rhyme or reason that can be pointed at or to.

There's anodyne parts about defeating HIV/AIDS and cancers, which are laudable goals from anyone, assuming the funding comes with them, but then things get snapped back into the anti-choice party's wheelhouse, talking about figments of imagination about what actually happens and when with regard to pregnancy termination, because the evangelical base that is willing to overloook everything so long as the person at the podium enshrines their beliefs into law wants to hear this spoken aloud.

Past that, though, the authoritarian finally comes home to roost, because it's about military spending, about making sure that nuclear weapons aren't off the table, and in finding whatever erason he needs to go back to the days of being able to destroy everything for eons multiple times over.

And the second quotable line arrives here.

If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.

Which is quite the claim to make, given that Secretary Clinton was Seecretary of State, and therefore has probably had more real interaction with the diplomatic corps and how international relationships actually work than the current adminstrator thinks he has. (A demonstrative point follows, in going for a facile explanation that the Venezuelan government failed because of socialism, and something that might have been a *facepalm* in a more aware administration, by claiming that the United States is against "government coercion, domination, and control." not that far away from his anti-women statements not too long ago.) Which then leads into messaging about the eternal wars that manage to avoid calling it a war of (Jews and Christians) versus (Muslims), but basically run right up to that line and perform a complex tap-dance routine without actually going over it.

Which allows for the speech to loop back at the end from whence it started, the D-Day invasion of Europe and stopping the atrocities of the Third Reich.

I suppose we can't invoke Godwin's Law on it, since no Nazis were mentioned by name or affiliation, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to do just that.

Afterward, the official response (also with fact-check material interspersed), delivered by Stacey Abrams. There's obvious political calculus in letting a black woman deliver the response from a highly diverse party to the speech made by a white man with white men supporting him from his party.

The speech starts with a lot less of unity and a lot more of "our experiences are far more different than alike, despite being in the same country" before pointing out who is at fault for the historic shutdown and reminding us that it is the new normal now for small children to practice drills about what to do if someone intends to murder them.

The hits continue with a reminder of who couldn't be assed to reunite children that it had torn apart from their families, and didn't even bother to keep track of how many times they had done it, and who is trying to revoke the modest gains that came from the Affordable Care Act and prevent the expansion of Medicaid into states that desperately need it.

And who is responsible for voter suppression, redistricting, and other tactics that have made it nearly impossible for anyone who isn't a white Republican to get into politics. Who is still trying to hurt the women he inadverdantly complimented, and who is really trying to hurt queer people as much as possible.

What that means in legislative battles and administrative rules is yet to be seen. But it's pretty clear from this response that the Democrats aren't buying into the framing the administrator wants to put on everything, and that, to their eternal shame, the administrator's party seems quite happy to adopt and try to reinforce in legislation, administration, and from the benches of the judiciary. How much of this turns out to be fodder for cameras and slogans for campaigns instead of real attempts at change is also up in the air.

And as much as the administrator inveighed against them, those investigations still continue, and they continue to produce more indictments, confessions, and convictions as they move along. I don't know whether what's in those investigations will be enough to produce any action, whether in the courts or in the Congress. But there's definitely a spark of something that suggests the abnormality of our lives might be turning back toward "and it needs to be fought," rather than "and there's nothing we can do about it."

Divided government is remarkably good at doing nothing. And that seems to be the plan for the upper house. But it's possible something might change. It's always possible that something might change.

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Comments

[redsixwing]

Thanks. One particular voice is sandpaper on my nerves and I refuse to hear it unless I have to, so this sort of summary + commentary is extremely valuable.

I did watch the response, and Abrams absolutely hit it out of the park. \o/

[silveradept]

This one really can be done from the transcript, if you, perhaps, supplement it with the screenshots going around of the various reactions to certain lines and of the general "we give no fucks about what you have to say" coming from the Democratic Women (except when the accidental compliment was delivered, which prompted much hoot, holler, and high-fives.)

[redsixwing]

I went and found one, and also BBC had a good article with some of those reactions in it. :D Beware autoplaying videos at the link.

"Nancy Pelosi is a mood" is not what I expected out of 2019, but I'll take it.

[silveradept]

This is going to be a year where everyone remembers that Nancy Pelosi is good at her job, especially when that job involves throwing Sol-dimming amounts of shade where it belongs.

[redsixwing]

I'm afraid she is going to have ample opportunity.

Fortunately, she's a BAMF and I don't think it'll stop her from being effective.

[silveradept]

Certainly not. Everyone gearing up for their 2020 run will have Pelosi to thank for a nice agenda to run on.